The Highbinders

• 1915
• Other, Suspense, Drama

Maggie, daughter of Pat Gallagher, a brutal saloonkeeper, to escape being forced into marriage with a bully and protege of her father's, takes refuge in a shop in Chinatown, just around the corner from her father's resort. The Chinese merchant, who has given her shelter, at last persuades her to marry him. Thus she exchanges a miserable existence for another even more repugnant. Years later finds Hop Woo, the merchant, selling his daughter by his white wife into slavery. Ah Woo's brother, overhearing his father bartering with the highbinder, who is a member of the powerful Hip-Yi-Tong society, runs for help to Jack Donovan, an attractive young Irishman, who keeps a gambling hall on the borders of Chinatown. The brother shoots and kills the slave dealer. Hop Woo is suspected of the crime and visited with the blood atonement by the Infuriated Hip-Yi-Tong. Ah Woo is carried away a prisoner. Her brother and Donovan, who loves the beautiful Chinese-American girl, rescues her from the Third Circle, the lowest of the underground passageways in Chinatown and later, Donovan shoots dead the hounding highbinders. Maggie, the mother, meanwhile has committed suicide. The young Irishman sells his establishment and buys a ranch, where he takes his bride, Ah Woo, and her brother.