Amos Winthrop, owner of the Winthrop newspaper syndicate of "yellow" journals, delights in posing as the patron of ambitious youth, and he appoints Allan Stone as business manager of the Daily Pioneer at Columbia. The Rev. Timothy Neal, compelled to resign his pastorate because of advancing years, and his granddaughter, Esther, arrive in Columbia, where the minister hopes to make a living selling books. The one failure in Amos Winthrop's life is his pampered son, Roy, and the father sends Roy to Columbia to work as a reporter on the staff of the Daily Pioneer. Rev. Neal takes many and varied lessons in the gentle are of book-agenting but success does not come to him and Esther is at her wit's end trying to instruct her grandfather how to approach strangers. Their little store of savings dwindles. Jim Barnes is editor of the Daily Pioneer and he delights in applying big-town methods to a small-town paper. He prints sensational stories and is supported in his methods by young Winthrop.