- Designated to write an article on the high price of food, reporter June Justice visits the tenement districts where there have been food riots and where the women of the neighborhood have rebelled against the food retailers, thinking that they are to blame for high food prices. June then visits the retailers, the middlemen, and finally interviews Henry Havens, the leader of the ring of food speculators. Havens attempts to bribe June to slant her story, but finds himself falling in love with her instead. Under June's influence, Havens sees the hardship that his policies have wrought, and finally joins her in her push for legislation which would dissolve the food trust.—Pamela Short
- June Justice is a special reporter on the New York Globe. A food riot takes place on the East Side and June is assigned by the city editor to get the story. She interviews store-keepers, jobbers, commission men and farmers, and concludes from the investigation that the middlemen are manipulating prices. The food gamblers, headed by Henry Haven, himself a food commissioner, are met together in Haven's office, when one of their number comes in with a Globe containing the arraignment of price of manipulation written by June. Haven immediately calls up the Globe; says that he has a statement to make, and wants the Globe to send the reporter who wrote the food story up to his office. The city editor sends June and she goes to Haven's office. When Haven sees her it is a case of love at first sight. He had planted a stenographer with the intention of bribing the Globe reporter, but when he sees June he hesitates. One of the gamblers comes forward, however, and attempts to bribe June. She spies the concealed stenographer. She tells them she will expose their whole rotten system. After she has gone out one of the men tells Haven the girl must be silenced. Meanwhile, in a squalid room on the East Side a young Italian's baby is dying from lack of proper food. The man is employed in Haven's commission house. Goaded by his child's condition, the Italian steals fresh vegetables from the commission place and is caught by the watchman. He is brought before Haven and Haven orders him turned over to an officer. The Italian is sent up for thirty days, and when he returns the baby is dead, and his wife maddened by her loss and suffering. The Italian goes directly to Haven's office, gags the watchman, knocks Haven unconscious and drags his body to an icebox used for storage. He locks the unconscious Haven in the box, goes home, finds his wife is dead and hangs himself, first writing a note, stating that Haven's body is in the icebox. The food gamblers, knowing that Haven would not consent to getting June out of the way, frame up a scheme whereby she is accused of selling dope and is put in jail. The city editor of the Globe is notified and bails her out. He realizes that the whole thing is the result of the food ring's fear of June and tells her so. June thinks of Haven and determines to find out how much he had to do with it. The editor and June go to Haven's office and are told that he has not been there for three days and has left no message. Haven meanwhile has gone through a terrific ordeal. Face to face with starvation, he realizes what lack of food means. The note in the Italian's room is finally found and Haven is rescued, when about dead. He is taken to the hospital and there June finds him. He tells her that he will aid her in trying to put the food bill through, and go to Albany to do it. June is happy and forgets for the moment that she is out on bail. But Anthony Flynn, police commissioner and intimate friend of Haven, is around. He asks her if she is the June Justice charged with selling dope. She says she is. Haven is horrified; he recognizes the work of the food gamblers and begs Flynn to extricate June. Flynn consents, runs the case to the ground, and June is freed. When Haven recovers sufficiently to return to his office, his former colleagues accuse him of being a traitor. Haven tells them that he fully intends to go to Albany; that he is going personally to give affidavit of the rottenness of his former methods. A few days later Haven is shot by a yegg as he is leaving his office with June. The final scene is set in the Assembly Chamber at the Capitol. The members of the food ring are there to fight the bill. June Justice is at the press table. As Sloane, one of the members of the ring, gets up to argue against the bill, Haven is wheeled in in a chair. He accuses the food ring of attempting to murder him because he refused longer to be a party to their dishonest methods and proves his charges. The food gamblers are handcuffed and led out. June, standing beside Haven's chair, hears his impassioned plea for legislation to wipe out the food gambling, hears his confession of his own former part in it, and his pledge to do all in his power to make restitution.
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