Homer Croy

14 февраля 1912 года Аризона становится штатом в составе США. У губернатора Тафта собирается кружок его близких друзей. Джон Грифф, специалист по подделкам, написавший о них авторитетный труд, рассказывает о похождениях одного из самых странных аферистов, которых знавала аризонская земля: Джеймса Эддисона Ривиса, окрестившего себя «Бароном Аризоны». Выдающийся мошенник Джеймс Ривис потратил годы, тщательно подделывая документы и права на владение землей, делающие его и его подопечную Софию единоличными хозяевами целого штата Аризона.

Bob Ford murders his best friend Jesse James in order to obtain a pardon that will free him to marry his girlfriend Cynthy. The guilt-stricken Ford soon finds himself greeted with derision and open mockery throughout town. He travels to Colorado to try his hand at prospecting in hopes that marriage with Cynthy is still in the cards.

Grant Jordan, bachelor botany professor, marries Katie, a widow with three kids, despite the machinations of Grant's former girlfriend Minna. But on the wedding day, Aunt Jo, who was to babysit, breaks a leg; so the kids come along on the honeymoon.

Sweeney Bliss, champion mule raiser in Missouri, takes his prize mule Samson to London, where the British government is trying to decide whether to buy mules or tractors for its colonial troops. He is accompanied by his ritzy wife Julie who has high society aspirations and hopes to have her younger sister Lola Pike marry a British diplomat. Complicating matters is a business rival, Porgie Rowe, who is trying to sell tractors to the government and keeps knocking Sweeney's prize Missouri mules.

Excitement runs high when a family's farm is chosen as the site for a big cornhusking contest.

In a small town in Indiana in the 1890s, the domineering and ambitious Mrs. Biddle arranges a marriage between her spoiled daughter Thelma and the town's prize catch, harvester David Langston, who is wedded to the soil. David is friends with orphan Ruth Jameson and, although she is in love with him, he eventually gives in to the machinations of Mrs. Biddle and consents to marry Thelma. Meanwhile, technological advances come to town, including its first gasoline buggy, galvanic battery, and metal bathtub fitted with running water. When Mrs. Biddle tries to convince David to give up the farming life and join her husband in real estate, Mr. Biddle, hen-pecked and dissatisfied with city life, warns David against selling his farm.

Kelly's daughter falls for a revenue agent, and his divorced wife is after alimony.

Oklahoma mechanic Pike Peters finds himself part owner of an oil field. His wife Idy, hitherto content, decides the family must go to Paris to get "culture" and meet "the right kind of people." Pike and his grown son and daughter soon have flirtatious French admirers; Idy rents a chateau from an impoverished aristocrat; while Pike responds to each new development with homespun wit. In the inevitable clash, will pretentiousness and sophistication or common sense triumph?