Toil and Tyranny
About Toil and Tyranny
David Powers, a lumber king, tells his foreman not to spare the men. Karl Hurd (Henry King), a stevedore, is clubbed in a fight with the foreman and laid up. His wife Mina works herself into tuberculosis and dies. Powers turns Karl away when he asks for his job back. The yard strikes. Powers's daughter Laura (Ruth Roland), who had been promised to the lawyer Perry Travis, goes toward the strikers and is shot when a pistol fired at her father's car hits her instead.
Cast & crew
More about Toil and Tyranny
Episode 12 of Pathé's series Who Pays?, released in the United States on 28 June 1915. Harry Harvey directed. Henry King wrote the script and played Karl. Ruth Roland plays Laura Powers. Daniel Gilfether is David Powers and Ed Brady is Perry Travis. E. D. Horkheimer and H. M. Horkheimer produced for Balboa. Pathé Exchange distributed it.
Themes
Background
Pathé released the episode in June 1915, in a run of social-problem shorts that paired a rich household with a workman's family.
Making
Balboa in Long Beach turned out the Who Pays? episodes for Pathé with the same stock company. This one sets a strike against a birthday party in the same day's cutting.
Preservation
A print survives and is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- The series title on some listings is Who Pays? #12: Toil and Tyranny.
- King, later a director, is the writer and the beaten workman in this episode.
- A doctor in the story refuses payment from Karl's family.
- Laura's birthday party is the same day as the lockout. Strikers walk in as Powers announces her engagement to Travis.
- The Internet Archive identifier is silent-toil-and-tyranny.
- Mollie McConnell plays in the episode alongside Roland and King.
Scenes
- The foreman clubs Karl, and Mina later dies of tuberculosis.
- Strikers enter Laura's birthday party as her engagement to Travis is announced.
- A shot aimed at Powers's car hits Laura, who was on her way to the strikers.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-toil-and-tyranny)