[4] In its March 27, 1909 issue, the New York-based trade journal The Moving Picture World provides the following description of the film's plot: The story told is a simple one, and grips from the very start.John Wharton, the husband of a true and trusting wife and father of an eight-year-old girl, through the association of rakish companions becomes addicted to the drink habit, and while the demon rum has not fastened its tentacles firmly, yet there is no question that given free rein the inevitable would culminate in time.The play is a dramatization of Emile Zola's "L'Assommoir," which shows how short a journey it is from peace and happiness to woe and despair by the road of rum.Here is shown a most clever piece of motion picture producing, portraying the downward path of the young man who was induced to take his first drink: how it finally became an unconquerable habit, causing poverty and suffering for his wife and child and death for himself, while at the same time presenting a sermon to Wharton in front, sinking deeper and deeper into his heart, until at the final curtain he is a changed man, going homeward with a firm determination that he will drink no more, which he promises his wife upon his return.[6] A moving picture house manager in Moline, Illinois, George Dehl, promised to donate $500 to a local hospital if he could not produce films that have the best sermons beat.