To whose backers does John sell stolen cargo?
College football hero John Hawks lets himself be goaded by wealthy socialite Alison Corning (Loyd/Todd) into forgoing a job coaching the college team to be "a real man, and make real money" in the big city with her father, Stephen Corning, on Wall Street. He soon has more than he can stomach, making money by bilking the poor out of their meager savings with junk bonds. Mr. Corning tells John he doesn't have what it takes to succeed in the brutal world of share trading. John replies he will seek a new line of work where he will not go after elderly widows' savings.
John decides to go after those who deserve to lose their money: bootleggers. He gets inside information on Big John's (Fred Kohler) rum-running operation from Slim through his gun moll, Sophie. Sophie taps out the information in Morse code with her typewriter to a confederate who informs John of alcohol shipments. Hawks is a modern pirate.
With his friend, 'Chub' (Frank McHugh), he captains the Corsair, a gunboat, which preys on bootleggers and then resells the cargo to their wealthy backers. He only forgot two things: that in the cutthroat world of junk bonds and margin calls, they don't use real knives, machine guns, and bombs, like the gangsters; and the girl hiding in the hold.
bootleggers