The story is of an English manufacturing town in which Henry Little, a workman and inventor, is persecuted by trades unions, jealous because he was better trained than his fellows. Squire Raby, Little's uncle, is a forcible character, and a pleasant love story offsets the labor troubles. A purpose of the novel was to expose, without censure, the errors of early trades unions.
OriginUSA GenresAdventure ActorsFlorence La Badie, Marguerite Snow, James Cruze, Frank Farrington, Sidney Bracey, Lila Chester Rating60% A prologue for The Million Dollar Mystery introduced the characters and groups. After the opening title card shows "hundreds of hands" grasping for the money and then a shot of the check for $10,000 the solver of the mystery is shown prior to the beginning of the first reel. Baby Florence is left at a boarding school with a note and half a bracelet instructing that her father will come to take her back upon her eighteenth birthday. Hargreaves, here played by Alfred Norton, is chased by the Black Hundred, but he receives a note and money before attempting to escape by balloon on the top of a building. The balloon is shot down and the first chapter ends.