Part 1

Outlook Editorials

At His Desk in the Outlook Office]

Outlook Editorials

Theodore Roosevelt

New York The Outlook Company 1909

Copyright 1909 by The Outlook Company New York All rights reserved

The first eleven editorials of Theodore Roosevelt, published in The Outlook from March sixth to July seventeenth, nineteen hundred and nine

Contents

PAGE

Why I Believe in the Kind of American Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands 1

A Judicial Experience 11

A Scientific Expedition 23

Where We Cannot Work With Socialists 29

Where We Can Work With Socialists 51

Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic 65

The Japanese Question 71

Tolstoy 81

A Southerner’s View of the South 95

The Thraldom of Names 101

Give Me Neither Poverty Nor Riches 121

By Way of Welcome

From The Outlook of March 6, 1909

It would be a singular affectation to introduce to the readers of The Outlook its new Associate Editor, Theodore Roosevelt. He is the most widely known representative of the present world movement towards industrial democracy. It is needless here to describe that movement, so fully has it been described by editorials in The Outlook, and by the public addresses and state papers of the retiring President of the United States. Unconsciously co-operating, we have pursued a common end, which in the future we shall pursue in conscious co-operation. Our object is to bring the industrial institutions of democracy into harmony with its political and educational institutions. Our resolve is that the money power in America, as its political and educational power, shall come from the people, be exercised for the people, and be controlled by the people. Our motto is, Special privilege for none, equality of opportunity for all. In the name of the editorial and publishing departments of The Outlook, I frankly acknowledge our gratification that Theodore Roosevelt has chosen this journal to be the medium for his published utterances on social, economic and political subjects, and in their name I welcome him as an Associate to its editorial staff.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

Why I Believe in the Kind of American Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands

I first came into close contact with The Outlook when Governor of New York, ten years ago, and I speedily grew to have a peculiar feeling of respect and regard for Dr. Abbott and his associates. We did not always agree, and as our convictions were strong our disagreements were sometimes positive; but experience taught me that, in the first place, Dr. Abbott and his associates always conscientiously strove to be fair, and that, in the second place, they not only desired to tell the truth, but made a serious endeavor to find out the facts. I found, moreover, that they combined to a peculiar degree a number of qualities, each of them good, but rarely found in combination.

Every owner, editor, or reporter of a conscientiously and ably conducted newspaper or periodical is an asset of real value to the whole community. It would be difficult to overestimate the amount of good which can be done by the men responsible for such a publication――responsible for its editorial columns, responsible for its news columns, responsible for its general policy. We have many newspapers and periodicals, big and little, of this kind. But we also have many that are emphatically not of this kind.

During the last few years it has become lamentably evident that certain daily newspapers, certain periodicals, are owned or controlled by men of vast wealth who have gained their wealth in evil fashion, who desire to stifle or twist the honest expression of public opinion, and who find an instrument fit for their purpose in the guided and purchased mendacity of those who edit and write for such papers and periodicals. This style of sordid evil does not even constitute a temptation to The Outlook; no influence of any kind could make the men who control The Outlook so much as consider the question of abandonment of duty; and they hold as their first duty inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.