A scientist invents a poison gas; the villain and his gang will do anything to get the formula; our hero, "Lightning Hutch", is sent to save the scientist, the scientist's beautiful daughter, and the formula.
A young working girl must support her family on only five dollars a week. The strain of trying to feed, house and clothe her mother, her father and three sisters finally gets to be too much, and she winds up selling her body for a pair of shoes.
Widower Calvert Paige leaves his baby daughter Johnnie in New York and goes West where he becomes wealthy as a mine owner and newspaperman. Lil Magill, who came to work on his newspaper, becomes infatuated with Paige, as he is with her, and they become lovers. After several years Lil has become a successful author but Paige has tired of her. Their estrangement grows when Lil takes the side of striking miners against him.
