The American Way

After divorcing her husband Kent, actress Anne Wetherall returns to the stage. Upon receiving a plea for help from childhood chum Nell Jerrold begging Anne to save Nell's daughter Betty from marrying Kent, the ex-Mrs. Wetherall decides to journey to the Jerrold's home in the town of Wheaton to investigate.

Penny arrives in the West by aeroplane. She is considered a suspicious character and thrown into jail. Kurt Walters, a ranch foreman and deputy sheriff, discovers that she is the same girl that his friend, Jo Gary, met in Chicago. Gary fell in love with her, but she confessed she was a thief. Since Penny claims she wants to reform, Walters releases her and sends her to live with Mrs. Kingdon. In spite of her teasing and taunts (or perhaps because of them), Walters finds himself falling in love with Penny.

The girl decided after what happened at the garden party that she did not want his love any longer, but could not live without it. She decided to leave this world. Her unexpected caller had something to say about that. He did not have to read "Sarah Hardcrab's Advice to the Lovelorn" to know what to do. Being a very human and sensible person, he brought two young people together in his own original way.

A little girl and her father are among the settlers in a small western town. The father is very friendly with the neighboring Indian tribe and is presented with a quaint piece of metal representing a dragon's claw, the tribe's good luck omen. Some time later, while traveling with his daughter, he is held up by a band of bandits and shot dead. A bandit takes from him this dragon's claw. Years pass. The little girl has grown into a beautiful young lady. She marries. Their love is very real and their life most happy. He decides to go out west to see a mine that yields the richest gold and his wife expresses a desire to go along with him. The mine is christened "The Dragon's Claw," because of an Indian charm the man owns. While out on a western desert, he shows the dragon's claw to his wife. She then recognizes it as the kind her father possessed when he was killed. She has understood it to be the only one of its kind. She now believes it is her husband who killed her father.

When brilliant lawyer Harry Sevier, an alcoholic, cannot cope with the prosecution's tactics, his innocent client Paddy the Brick goes to prison. After Harry's sweetheart Echo Allen, the daughter of Judge Beverly Allen, breaks their engagement, Harry leaves to combat his problem. Meanwhile, Cameron Craig, whose interest in a distilling corporation is threatened when a suit is brought before Judge Allen, steals incriminating love letters written by the Judge years earlier. Echo boards a train to offer to marry Craig for returning the letters. Harry, on the same train, and now beardless, follows Echo to Craig's home, where a burglary occurs. After Harry, not recognized by Echo, gives her the letters, Craig is shot, and Harry, along with Paddy--now a burglar--is sent to prison. Harry escapes and finds himself nominated to run for governor on the "dry" ticket. After Echo confirms that he was innocent of shooting Craig, Harry wins the election and her love.

When her father goes broke in the stock market, Jane Lee is forced to leave her prestigious boarding school. Glad-handing John Brock, an old friend of Jane's father, arranges for the girl to be hired as his stenographer. But Brock's lecherous ulterior motives become obvious when he locks Jane in the office and tries to rape her. When she manages to escape his advances, Brock vengefully frames the girl on a robbery charge.

A young woman goes to visit friends but mistakenly rings at the wrong address. She is greeted and taken in out of the storm by a handsome young man to whom she is immediately attracted. What she does not know, however, is that this young man has been fleeced by her father and has sworn vengeance against him.

An American agent exchanges places in prison with a condemned British officer and brother of a woman he greatly admires and goes to the gallows.

His subjects have been vainly petitioning the king for improvements in his reign, without avail. The king pays too much attention to the sweetheart of a country bumpkin who shows his resentment by chasing his royal highness with a pistol and perforating the royal legs. The king takes refuge in the top of a tree, from which ignominious position he is finally rescued by his courtiers. In consideration of the bumpkin promising not to tell the queen of this latest escapade, the king grants the petition of his subjects.

Making the best of her genteel poverty, our heroine prepares to attend the dance to which she has been invited, and, after surveying the general effect of her plain and somewhat passé attire, goes on her way with a painful self-consciousness to the home of her friend.

Against the wishes of Cecelia, his wife, the Reverend Eric Norton leaves his position in a fashionable New York congregation to preach in a poor mining town.

When her husband dies and leaves her penniless, Mrs. Lawrence Evringham moves in with her wealthy but grim father-in-law and schemes to marry Eloise, her daughter, to the rich Dr. Ballard.

While working his way through college, Paul Potter acquires a flock of wealthy friends who encourage him to give up his hometown fiancée, Sylvia Castle, for Muriel Evers, a flirtatious married woman. After Sylvia releases Paul, and Muriel's husband divorces her for infidelity, Paul and Muriel marry. Meanwhile, when Sylvia's father dies after being ruined in the stock market, she goes from one job to another in the city until she tries acting in a stock company. There she befriends Henry Leamington, an alcoholic leading man, who, as he tutors her, falls in love and stops drinking because of her. When Paul discovers Muriel's unfaithfulness, he renews his acquaintance with Sylvia, who still loves him.

After Roger Laroque maims Louversan, his look-alike, in an honorable duel during the Franco-Prussian War, Louversan swears revenge on his better. In Paris, Roger falls in love with Julia, who he later discovers is married to Lucien, his close army friend. Out of duty to Lucien, Roger ends the affair and leaves for the country where he meets and marries Marie Greville, his uncle's ward. Furious at Roger's desertion, Julia vows revenge and joins forces with Louversan.