Known in business as “The Loan Shark King,” Hartman, a man without conscience, has one good trait in his nature, his love for Helen, his motherless daughter. She is not aware of the nature of her father’s business and is very fond of him. For the first time in his life, Hartman is thwarted by his daughter when she refuses absolutely to marry Barbes, his favored suitor, because she is already in love with Henry Graham a young artist. Graham is forbidden the house, and then to Hartman’s sorrow, Helen and her lover elope. Five years later Helen and Graham, with their two children, are destitute. She falls sick and Graham desperately decides to borrow from the loan sharks. He selects the Aines Loan Company, one of Hartman’s organizations. Working night and day, Graham undermines his health and, unable to meet his payments, the loan sharks attach his salary, with the result that he is discharged by his employers. Hounded from one job to another, Graham is slowly crushed, body and soul, and dies. Helen goes to the loan office to beg for leniency, where her father, on his regular visit to the manager of the Aines Company, meets her and learns how his system has brought misery upon his own daughter. A reconciliation follows. Helen’s heart is broken, however, and she dies, leaving her children in Hartman’s care, never knowing that her own father was back of the remorseless system which had pursued herself and her husband, while he is left to dwell over the awful truth, and to use his utmost endeavors to make reparation for the past.