A poor university student, Ntinos Vristhenis, has abandoned his studies due to financial difficulties and is searching for a job. He is hired as an actor in a troupe, where he meets and falls in love with the leading actress. When she yields to a businessman who promises her a bright future, Nikos, feeling disappointed, leaves the theater. Poverty forces him to join the proletariat and become a tobacco worker in order to make ends meet. There he comes face to face with the exploitation that the workers endure and so decides to participate in the establishment of a union and to lead the fight for social justice, even in the face of persecution by the police.