There's enough material in this story about "The Ex-Convict" to fill a full-length feature, so as a one-reeler it is quite packed with story developments. Although the quick pace slightly dilutes its impact, for its era and genre it is a solid effort.
The story would most likely have been quite topical in its day, and it is not at all without relevance now. It focuses on a former convict who is earnest and sincere in his desires to reform and to support his family, yet who faces one obstacle after another. The injustices that he encounters because of his past seem believable, and although some of the later story developments are rather coincidence-dependent, they help in making the point. The plot is also well within the understood conventions of its time.
Although many of the movies from 1900-1905 concentrate strictly on just one or two story developments, there are a fair number of features, like this one, that are more ambitious. It's rather interesting that in so many cases, even an involved plot like this was filmed as a one-reeler, when it might have been even more effective at greater length. To some degree at least, it was still just a convention that movies were so much shorter than stage productions - but after all, in every era there are conventions that are accepted, to a large extent, just because everyone else follows them.
All that aside, this is a solid enough film for 1904, and it may well have served a useful purpose in dramatizing a social problem that is by no means limited to its own era.
