Opening in a quaint city, the film shows us a happy couple of the laboring class strolling along the river front. As they pass a little flower girl the youth buys for his sweetheart a bunch of May lilies. In an exceedingly true to life scene he presents them to her and asks her hand in marriage. Several dainty scenes during their betrothal are next shown in perfect photography, followed by bits of the life in their new home after the marriage. Time passes and a little girl comes to bless their union and make life even more beautiful for them. After a few years of absolute happiness they receive word of a strike at the factory in which the husband is employed. The leaders overcome his aversion to trouble by making him secretary of the organization. Swift poverty comes to the little home, while the one-time happy wife is neglected in favor of meetings and speeches and carousing of the men. Hunger next assails the little household, but while their families suffer, the misguided husband, and his associates, still attempt to gain the concessions which they have asked of the factory owners. Finally, in despair, the wife goes to the factory where she gains a promise of work for her husband if he will return. Now, in order to get him to leave the trouble makers and return to his shop, she secures a basket of the memory laden May lilies. She then takes her little girl to a corner which she knows the father will pass. Here she leaves the little lady to sell them. As the poor woman expected, when her husband with one of his friends comes upon his own baby selling flowers in the street, he is touched with the memory of the days when first he bought flowers for his wife. Following these thoughts he realizes how he has made her suffer and how thoughtless he has been in his devotion to the men. The picture happily ends by showing his remorse and repentance.