At the Silver Creek National Bank in post-Depression Vermont, a man known as "Uncle Ed" sees a fellow bank customer, Mason, placing a large sum of cash inside his safety deposit box. Ed decides to tell Mason the story of $1,000 and how it helped a lot of people: During a bank holiday in the fourth year of the Depression, Ed works for an innkeeper named Horace Taylor. One day, Horace's supplier, Jay Jay Johnson, refuses to send him any more supplies for the inn dining room until he pays his outstanding balance. Horace, meanwhile, hopes to collect $900 in back rent from his daughter Francine's sweetheart, Waldo Williams, an artist who is also a guest at the inn. Waldo soon learns, however, that a buyer who had commissioned a painting from him has committed suicide after losing his fortune in the stock market. Back at the inn, guest Eustace Peabody, a New York City art collector, asks Ed to hold $1,000 for Ab Follansbee, whose wife is expecting. Ed quickly stashes the money in the inn's safe, while two gangsters lurk in the dining room. When Francine tries to convince wealthy Geraldine Atherton to sit for a portrait painting, she explains that Johnson owes her three months rent. After Geraldine learns that Tom O'Connor is likely to lose his law practice for lack of clients, she asks him to draft a writ to evict Johnson. In Waldo's room at the inn, Tom's wife Audrey then tells Waldo that she will not be able to pay for the portrait that he has been working on. After threatening to close the inn, Johnson demands that Horace give him the $1,000 that he knows is in the safe. When Horace finds it there, he assumes that the money is payment for one of Waldo's paintings and gladly gives it to Johnson. Johnson pays Geraldine, who then gives the money to Tom as a retainer fee. When Horace learns that the money actually belongs to Ab, he rushes to retrieve it from Johnson, but is too late. He returns to the inn and demands that Waldo leave immediately. After Tom takes the money to Audrey, Peabody returns to retrieve it from the safe, so in order to stall for time, Horace says that he does not know the combination. Ed asks the gangsters to watch the desk, but they crack the safe instead. When Tom learns that Audrey was seen entering Waldo's room at the inn, he assumes that they are having an affair. He rushes in and punches Waldo in the face, but then realizes that she is only posing for her portrait. With the painting complete, Audrey pays Waldo, who rushes to Horace with the money. When Ab, now the proud father of twins, arrives to collect his money, Horace finally pays him. Thanks to Ed's story, Mason is convinced that the best place for his cash is in circulation.