This is the story of Claus Spreckles, the German peasant born in 1828, who at the age of eighteen years old, emigrated from Hanover, and by his own pluck, industry and thrift carved for himself a place among America's foremost Captain's of Industry. On the night of April 17th 1906, he and his wife sit in their gorgeously appointed mansion in San Francisco, staring with unseeing eyes into the night, Claus' mind wanders back over his seventy eight years of a busy and eventful life...