This film combines four short films under the title Bits Of Life. The Bad Samaritan is taken from a story in Popular Magazine in which the son of a Chinese father and a white mother is sold into slavery by his father. The boy becomes a criminal and a cunning but cruel thief. The one time he stops to help a lady in distress he is thrown in jail. Wesley Barry is the young boy and Lon Chaney the grown-up criminal.
Dinty is a newsboy whose fight to care for his ailing mother leads him into conflicts with the other boys on the street and then with drug smugglers in Chinatown.
Tommy Frazer is one of a gang of crooks lead by "Tony the Wop". Frazer gets caught and is sent up the river for three years on a forgery rap. When he gets out of prison, he finds his girl, Ann Whittaker, waiting for him -- and she's got a scheme. She is working in a bank and wants to pull an inside heist.
In managing the shipyard inherited from her father, Derith Keogh has considerable labor problems and accedes to the unreasonable demands of John Trevelyan, an anarchist labor agitator. Derith's brother John is off in pursuit of an adventuress, and Angus Campbell, her superintendent, resigns in exasperation. Angus returns, however, to help Derith persuade Trevelyan to settle a strike, which Trevelyan accomplishes in spite of being shot by one of his own men.
Naive Jacques Lenoi marries money-hungry Madge Vance. When Madge realizes he isn't as moneyed as she assumed she turns a cold shoulder to him and he takes off on a balloon trip to China.
Wrestling legend Bull Montana plays a murderous gorilla with a human brain transplant who is tracked by a feisty newspaper reporter.
In the gold fields of the Canadian Northwest, a man is falsely accused of a crime and determines that a lookalike is responsible.
Young rapscallion Penrod Schofield causes a good deal of trouble in his community, all in the name of protecting kids from too-strict parents and nasty neighbors. He heads the ABPA (American Boys' Protective Association) and through it disrupts a number of local social events. The townspeople are pretty fed up with Penrod and his gang, but when a couple of outlaws come to town, Penrod shows his mettle.
