"The Spender" is Bill Dickinson, a liquor salesman. There is difference of opinion between Rev. Colton and the wealthiest member of his congregation, Amos Dunn, on the temperance question. Dunn blames the curse of drink to the saloon and the minister maintains that it is just as wrong to have strong drinks in one's house. Their differences are brought forcibly and unexpectedly home to them when they both discover their sons, Hal Colton and Rex Dunn, in a drunken condition and learn that the two lads have received their first impetus to drink from the open wine cellar in the rich man's house. At this time the wife of Bill dies. Rev. Colton and his wife express their sympathy by calling on the salesman and his lovely daughter. Lottie, and the kindness of the clergyman and his wife brings the two families close together. Hal, the minister's son, falls in love with Lottie, and her sweetness and nobleness urges him on to finer things. Rex Dunn, however, who has been cast aside by his father, goes from worse to worse, until one night he and his co-partners in crime waylay Hal, knock him senseless, drag him to the home of Rex's father and leave him still senseless, incriminating evidence that he was one of the robbers who sacked the Dunn's wine cellar, but the plot is all revealed the next day in court, and Amos Dunn, a saddened and much wiser man, takes his son back to his home and acknowledges to the minister that he has been wrong.