Meanwhile, a flood is coming, and Ben Merrill—constructor of Gilgal's levee—knows the structure won't hold against the tide, so he willfully causes it to fail and plans to blame the resulting catastrophe on Jim and Banty Tim.

Jim Bludso was a poem from the Pike County Ballads of John Hay, a familiar set piece in the repertoire of elocutionists, actors and other public speakers; the Kalem Company had already made a one-reeler out of the same property in 1912.

Hay's original poem memorialized Jim Bludso's courage and selflessness in sacrificing his own life so that the passengers on his burning boat might survive.

For the film, a happy ending was devised and an entirely different set of circumstances led to the demise of Prairie Bell, which Bludso is piloting in Hay's poem.

Film historian Bernd Herzogenrath reports that “By 1919, [two years] after profitable movies such as Jim Bludso (1917), Browning was an established and successful director and script writer.”[6]