The Phantom Extra (1915)

Overview

John Zeldon, the newly elected State senator and pledged to fight for the Miners' Bill, requiring the installation of new safety devices in the coal mines, in his speech to the miners the night before his departure, assures them that they can count on him to the last ditch.On his arrival in the capital he is taken up by Mr. Whalen, the brains of the lobby and secretly its chief, who flatters John and invites him out with a brilliant set of men and women who make a lion of him in order to gain his vote against the proposed bill. John's head is turned by their flattery and when Hazel Flemming, his fiancée and star reporter on his home paper, comes to the capitol for an interview with John, she is amazed to find him wavering and realizes the fight is lost unless she can make him realize the mistake he is making. To do this she has a phantom extra printed telling in thrilling headlines of a horrible accident in the coal mines, wherein 200 miners have lost their lives