Dramatizes the life of Henry William Stiegel, who came to America from Germany and rose from a worker in an iron foundry to be head of a large glass factory. Describes Stiegel's realization, following his financial ruin, that material success did not make him superior to other men, but that his greatness lay in the beauty of the glassware which he created. He built a church and received as rent, one red rose.

The events leading to the construction of the Monitor, the ironclad ship built by the Federal Government during the Civil War to oppose the Merrimac.