Disgusted with his son's preference for free verse over free trade, Willoughby Whipple's businessman father disowns him, after which Willoughby, to indulge his literary fantasies, leaves Manhattan and buys a small town newspaper. He hires Virginia Winters, a local poet, as associate editor, and Daddy Eggleston as the printer. With their help, the newspaper runs smoothly until Willoughby refuses to endorse the unscrupulous Squire Benjamin Barton for mayor. For revenge, Benjamin, who owns the newspaper building, evicts Willoughby and then, after burning it down, claims that Willoughby is the arsonist. Before dying in the blaze, however, Eggleston manages to blame Benjamin in a hastily scribbled note, which is discovered just as the townspeople prepare to lynch Willoughby. Then, instead of killing him, they decide to make him mayor, after which he and Virginia are married, and Willoughby's father, now proud of his son, constructs a new building for the paper. -AFI