Brought up in idleness, Geoffrey Manning is one of the most self-complacent individuals possible to imagine. His hardworking father often reprimands him for his laziness, but he only laughs, until a young social "uplifter" gives him a verbal jolt that sets Geoffrey to thinking. The result is that, taking only Mathews, the family lawyer, into his confidence, Geoffrey tells his father he is going hunting indefinitely, and disappears from his little world. In a cheap suit of clothes, and with very little money in his pockets, he sets out determined to make his own living unaided. What a rude awakening he experiences. No training, no experience, he finds himself unable to secure a job, of no use to anyone. Finally he gets work tearing up the street with a rough gang, and although he is strongly built, the work almost kills him. But he is game. Then he gets a job in the big steel mills, the very one owned by his father.