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The Eternal Grind Synopsis

Owen and Ernest Wharton, sons of sweatshop owner James Wharton, become interested in two of their father's employees. Owen, a settlement worker, falls in love with Mary, while Ernest, a full time womanizer, makes her sister Amy his mistress. Another sister, Jane, grows increasingly consumptive, but when Mary asks James for some money for Jane's treatment, he refuses. Hearing of the trouble, Ernest offers money to Mary, but only if she too agrees to be his mistress. Enraged, Mary forces him at gunpoint, to marry Amy. Then Owen, knocked unconscious in an accident, calls out for Mary. James begs her to see Owen, but before agreeing to go, Mary makes him promise to improve sweatshop conditions. Finally, Owen recovers and he and Mary plan their marriage. Meanwhile, marriage has turned Ernest into a devoted husband, and James keeps his word about shop conditions.

Vanity Synopsis

Robert Armstrong, falsely accused of a murder committed thirty years ago in a western gambling hall, faces the alternative of imprisonment or paying blackmail. A letter from Tom Mason, formerly a miner, prepares him for a visit, at which time he must make his choice. Armstrong confides in his son, Dick, assuring him that the murder was committed by Mason, who used trickery to make it seem that he (Armstrong) was the culprit. Dick broods over the injustice to his father, and Armstrong cannot conceal his nervousness. The visitor comes and makes his demands. Armstrong grapples with him as the lights are turned off. Suddenly there is a shot, and when the lights are turned on again Mason is lying dead on the floor. Fearing the servants will enter, Dick drags the body through a window to the grounds outside, takes Mason's pistol out of his pocket, fires a shot into the body and places the weapon in the dead man's hand. Dick returns to the house and a policeman hurries to the scene. Dick thinks he has covered up his tracks, but Burke, chief of detectives finds the other bullet in the body and has no difficulty in connecting the murder with the Armstrong family. He does not succeed in getting a confession from either father or son, and decides to resort to strategy. Phyllis Lord is a model in Martel's establishment for women's apparel. The discrepancy between the gowns she wears to display to customers and her own modest raiment eats into the girl's consciousness. Then, too, she is befriending Bessie Allen, a young wife who has been deserted by her husband, and finds herself unable to help Bessie as she would like. A wealthy woman who is buying gowns boasts of having won five hundred dollars at Crandell's, a fashionable gambling resort, on a five dollar wager. Phyllis obtains a card of admission to Crandell's, without permission borrows one of Martel's gowns, and visits the gambling house. She loses the money she has brought and fifty dollars more which Crandell loans her. Burke, who has been watching the girl, has Phyllis dismissed from Martel's, making it appear that she has stolen money, and she is placed in such a position that she is obliged to accept Burke's offer to help him with a case. She consents to get a confession from Dick Armstrong. She is installed in a handsome apartment and given beautiful clothes. Bessie Allen, who is ill, is taken to a hospital. Burke puts a dictaphone into Phyllis's apartment. The pre-arranged courtship progresses favorably. Dick finds the trick Phyllis has played and denounces her. Phyllis is heartbroken, and anxious to atone for what she has done. She goes to Dick's father, and Armstrong, greatly agitated, writes a confession saying that he alone shot Mason. At police headquarters Dick is put through the third degree, and finally he gasps, "I did it." Phyllis, in the next room, hears him, and rushes in with Armstrong's confession. Burke's lieutenant makes out a warrant for his arrest. Phyllis goes home, exhausted, when a messenger brings a letter from Bessie, written just before her death. The letter encloses her marriage certificate, and photograph of the husband who deserted her. Phyllis rushes to the minister who performed the ceremony, and takes him to Burke's office. It is Burke who is Bessie's husband, and as he has illegally married another woman, Phyllis threatens him with arrest on a charge of bigamy. She offers to exchange her documents for Armstrong's confession, and Burke accepts. Then Phyllis falls sobbing into a chair, holding out her hands in supplication to Dick.