Mrs. Tom Ricketts

After his brother's death, Arnold Downs, to save the reputation of his brother's sweetheart, Clara Myers, marries her, though he is in love with Sada Block, his employer's daughter. Five years later finds Arnold in business for himself and Block's competitor. The father of the girl never has been able to forgive the young man for giving up his daughter for Clara, and by bribing Arnold's bookkeeper he takes his revenge in driving Downs to the verge of bankruptcy. Clara's child, who is an adept at picture puzzles, takes some torn papers from the waste basket, matches them and shows them to her mother. Clara sees by them how her husband has been underbid by Block. That night she and her father, disguised as robbers, enter Arnold's office and take the traitorous bookkeeper prisoner. They present the evidence to Arnold who is saved from failure, and husband and wife discover that they have come to love one another.

"Damaged Goods" pictures the terrible consequences of vice and the physical ruin that follows the abuse of moral law. It is a stirring plea for a pure life before marriage, in order to make impossible the transmission of hereditary traits to future generations.