Unemployed lumber salesman Bill Austin is determined to get a job with the Ricks' Lumber Company in San Francisco. When neither Lloyd Skinner nor Matt Peasley, the two men who run the company, will hire him because he is lame from a war wound, Bill approaches the owner, Cappy Ricks, directly. While he is waiting to see Ricks, he strikes up a conversation with Margaret Ricks, not knowing that she is Ricks's daughter. He assumes that she is also looking for a job and asks her to attend a movie with him that evening. After she accepts, she is ushered into Ricks's office, where she convinces her father to give Bill a job by telling him that both Skinner and Peasley turned him down. Ricks tells Bill in Skinner's presence that he will be given the toughest job at the company, selling skunk spruce, and if he does not make good he will be out of a job. Confidently, Bill welcomes the challenge. Although believing at first that Margaret is a maid in the Ricks's home, Bill still wants to date her when he learns she is Ricks's daughter. That evening Bill and Margaret fall in love, but the next day, Bill is off on his sales trip. He is very successful, selling all the skunk spruce on hand as well as more orders than the company can fill. When he closes a difficult deal, he is awarded a raise. Before he assigns Bill to head the Shanghai office, Ricks devises a test to ensure that he is the right man for the job. He asks Bill to buy a certain vase with his own money and deliver it to him on the Santa Barbara train. In the meantime, Bill asks Margaret to marry him and she accepts. Ricks is unwilling to lose his only daughter and now is doubly determined to see Bill fail. Ricks has given Bill the wrong location of the store and, by the time he finds it, the store is closed. Bill then tracks down the owner, pawns Margaret's engagment ring for the money to buy the vase, and finds an old shipmate to fly him to meet the train. Ricks is astonished to see Bill, but pleased. When he tells Bill that the whole thing was a trick to test him, Bill is initially crushed, but after he learns about the new job, he announces that he and Margaret will marry before he leaves, which they do despite Ricks's protests. Ricks then tries to prevent their sailing to Shanghai by purchasing all the staterooms on the ship. Bill and Margaret outwit him by coming aboard in a car. Then Ricks learns that the strikers at his company will only talk to Bill. He wires Bill aboard ship, and true to his motto, "It Shall Be Done," Bill, accompanied by Margaret, comes ashore. Bill settles the strike and Ricks sends Skinner to Shanghai, awarding Bill with Skinner's old job.