The Bigger Man (1915)

In a prologue, the relationship between capital and labor throughout history is shown in caveman days, Biblical times, and the feudal period. In the main story John Stoddard, a construction chief building a gigantic bridge for capitalist Courtlandt Van Nest, sympathizes with the workers' dissatisfaction with low salaries and subsistence conditions. When his attempts to negotiate with Van Nest fail, the workers, led by agitator Lavinsky, prepare to strike. Van Nest's daughter Janet, who is engaged to a militia captain, visits the site and is appalled by the squalor. Despite their differences, Janet and Stoddard fall in love. When the strike breaks, Van Nest sends in the militia. As they prepare to fire, Stoddard sees Lavinsky about to throw dynamite, and wrestles it away. He then agrees to Van Nest's demand for settling the strike that he refrain from seeing Janet. After Janet leaves home to help poor families, Van Nest looks for her at Stoddard's house where Stoddard demonstrates that because of their similar ancestry, he and Van Nest are not very different. When Stoddard's sister Edith allows Van Nest to witness the surprise reunion of a worker and his wife from Europe, to whom Janet had sent transportation money, Van Nest softens and agrees to Janet's marriage to Stoddard. An epilogue follows showing blindfolded Justice saying to fat Capital and burly Labor, "Why quarrel? You are worthless without the other."