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.