Rose and Esther Bernfeld leave their home in Skidel in Poland to join Itzi Bernfeld in New York. It is 1900. Itzi, and then his sons, left several years earlier to make their fortune in America. They finally accumulated enough to send passage money for wife and daughter. Esther is unhappy about leaving the boy she loves.
Richard Chance is the orphaned nephew of Morton Pembroke’s butler, Robert. Pembroke is having a financial meeting with a moneyed group at his estate in Highland Park, New Jersey. Richard, substituting for his sick uncle, hears the hosts and guests plotting with John Gates to take advantage of Charles Schwab and Pierpont Morgan’s plan to create a steel combine. Although he says he will not use the knowledge he has gained, Richard convinces Pembroke to give him a job at his firm in Wall Street and to lend him $10,000 to invest. Richard loses his virginity to the beautiful, coffee-colored girl who acts as his uncle’s kitchen help.
Unwilling to have his family live in a single room in New York, Itzi Bernfeld buys a small dairy store in Highland Park. Esther, despite her lack of English, meets Richard’s Aunt Harriet and makes her first friend in America. She gets the idea of delivering milk and bread each morning in a wagon. The family adopts the idea and the business starts. She meets Evelyn Pembroke, Morton’s niece, who is charmed by her, and Evelyn offers to tutor her in English.
Richard in his new job comes across some private information, and taking advantage of this, he invests and reinvests, profiting each time. When US Steel is formed, he quickly parlays his winnings into a million dollars. Richard discovers fraudulent dealings going on at Pembroke’s brokerage firm and is rewarded with a permanent position and the friendship of his employer. Pembroke sees the beginning of a dominant financial person in Richard.
Richard rapidly becomes his employer’s protégé, with urging from Evelyn, and he is trained to rise in social station. At the same time Evelyn and Ether become close. Richard squires Evelyn at a large social in Pennsylvania.
In New York, at Malke’s boarding house, Reb Yisroyeyl guards a packet of diamonds. A few streets away, Son Jones, the unofficially adoptive son of Mother Jones, the radical leader, is having difficulty with Jewish union leaders. In the Hotel Martinique Lord Gordon-Gordon, a scam artist, is planning his next job. Esther, having gone as far in education in New Brunswick as she could, comes to New York for further study.
At a union meeting Esther makes the acquaintance of Son Jones. He tells her of working as a child in the Pennsylvania mines, inviting her then for a beer. They discuss labor relations. He threatens her with a knife, forces her to go to his room, and there he rapes and cuts a cross on her chest.
She escapes, totters back to her boarding house, mistakes Reb Yisroyeyl’s room for her and sees him examining all his diamonds. She faints. Malke realizes what has happened to Esther. She allows only women in the house to help her. That night Esther wakens from a nightmare and rushes out of her room to discover that Reb Yisroyeyl has been murdered.
Lord Gordon-Gordon sells diamonds to Pembroke and his colleagues. Richard and Evelyn become engaged. Esther recognizes one of Evelyn’s new diamonds as being one she saw on the Reb’s table.
Richard buys a house in New York. On a snowy day Esther visits him there. She tells him about the jewels. He notices her beauty. She tells him of the rape, that she is damaged goods, who will never be able to marry. She shows him the cross cut into her chest. They eventually embrace and sleep together.
Richard bankrolls the Bernfeld’s business. He marries Evelyn. The newlyweds cruise down to Florida and up the Gulf coast. Richard sees the future and buys large quantities of land.
Esther meets Marcus Savage at a meeting in New York. He convinces her to go to a college in the Midwest. She participates as an observer in a coal strike and begins to write for labor papers.
Evelyn, who probably had a lesbian experience at college, begins to demonstrate her sexual proclivity. Tulip introduces her to lesbian sex.
Richard becomes progressively richer and powerful under the tutelage of Morgan. Esther has Richard’s child, Richard Bernfeld. Her father disowns her. Evelyn goes down hill, emotionally disabled by her strange sexual needs, and eventually she has to be institutionalized. Esther meets Eugene Debs and participates in his run for the presidency.
Richard is sent by Morgan to stop the miners’ strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. He sends in hoodlums as strike breakers. Esther is shot in the melee and is nearly killed.
She is reported as dead, and Richard goes to the area to find her body. When Doctor Gruner brings her back to life, Esther is unaware of who she is. Her memory returns; Richard finds her, and they will probably live together or eventually marry.
