The Whims of Society

• Watchlist

In the New England mill towns, poverty-stricken young women are forced not only to work for slave wages but to endure the unwelcome attentions of the men who run the factories. One such woman is Nora Carey, who earns nine dollars per week in John Travers' ribbon factory. Attracted by Nora's beauty and honesty, Hugh Travers, the mill owner's son, offers to send her sister Katherine to boarding school, and after Nora is discharged for rejecting the gruff advances of Marlinoff, the foreman, Hugh establishes her in an apartment. The angry Marlinoff reports Hugh's activities to the elder Travers, who threatens to disinherit his son unless he breaks his engagement to Nora. Travers then discharges Marlinoff. He is about to sign a new will when a bomb planted by the vengeful Marlinoff explodes, killing the old man. True to his word, Hugh then marries Nora and inherits his father's millions.