Toil and Tyranny

David Powers, lumber king, treats his employees as inconsiderable details of his business, to be replaced without question at his pleasure. He is backed in his patrician contempt for labor by his legal adviser, Perry Travis. Both Powers and Travis love Powers' daughter Laura with a love that amounts fairly to worship. Laura has promised to marry Travis. Karl Hurd, his wife Mina, and their six-year-old daughter Betty form, a pathetic example of struggling poverty. Hurd works as a stevedore for Powers. In a fight with his foreman, Hurd is beaten with a club and laid up for many months. His wife, slaving to support her family, contracts tuberculosis. When Hurd, still weak, again applies for work at the lumber yard, Powers drives him away. Conditions become unbearable in Powers' plant and his workers decide to strike. Laura's pleas for the workmen are of no avail. Mina dies. On a mission of exploration to the workers' homes, Laura finds Hurd sitting beside the lifeless body of his wife