Tom, filho mais velho de uma pobre família de trabalhadores rurais, retorna para casa após cumprir pena por homicídio involuntário. Ele planeja levar os parentes até a Califórnia, onde dizem que trabalho não falta. Durante a viagem eles passam por diversos tipos de provações e quando finalmente chegam na "Terra Prometida" descobrem que é um lugar bem pior do que aquele que deixaram.
Marcia, a pretty young girl, goes to work as a model for a lecherous dress-shop owner. She resists his advances, despite his giving her expensive gifts. One day Mrs. Reilly, a prominent society woman and a customer of the shop, invites Marcia to a party she's throwing. Marcia winds up impersonating a famous writer in order to impress a "duke" for Mrs. Reilly, who doesn't know the "duke" isn't really a duke. Complications ensue.
Bill Crane is a fun-loving cowboy who likes to play pranks with an Australian bull-whip, much to the dismay of his ranch-owning uncle, Pete Perry. Bill and his cousin, Jack Perry, compete for the affections of Mary Pinkleby. Jack, unknown to Bill, is also an outlaw gang-leader, known as Poncho. The latter frames Bill as being the gang leader, and now Bill has to elude the sheriff and also prove his own innocence.
When a trio of criminals kidnap a rich man's daughter and nurse, a detective goes undercover into the Italian-immigrant ghetto where they're being held.
The film carries the slogan: ‘He Stole From the Rich to Give to the Poor’. It is a story of the ‘nobleman-bandit’, Brennan O'Malley, who is captured and imprisoned, but an attempt to drown him through flooding his cell fails. Recaptured after his escape from prison, he overwhelms a soldier and escapes again. He then holds up Lord Hastings and changes into his clothes. He escapes through a secret passage with Betty, Lady Lorrequer whom he had earlier rescued and with whom he had fallen in love. The couple cross a chasm with the aid of a human chain to elude Lord Hastings' troop of soldiers. In the pursuit, Hastings falls into the sea and is killed, while Brennan and Betty escape by ship.
