Fighting Odds (1917)

James Copley is a young and successful automobile manufacturer in a middle western city. He believes with Henry Ford that well-paid labor is productive labor and strives to keep his men contented. His splendid success, which he owes in a large measure to his wife, excites the greedy envy of the unscrupulous John W. Blake, a crooked financier of Wall Street. Blake persuades Copley to become head of a fake motor merger, and then by a switching of figures in important account books, wrecks the company and has Copley sent to Sing Sing. Mrs. Copley, left alone to fight to redeem her husband's honor, pretends she is a wealthy English widow, and manages to get an introduction to Blake. He, unsuspecting, becomes enamored of her. Working with the district attorney, she learns that the documents she needs to clear her husband are in a vault in Blake's home. She is on the verge of getting them when Blake discovers her identity, locks her in the vault and prepared to flee. He is interrupted by his butler, who is really a detective, and eventually goes off to prison to take the place of the man he unjustly accused.