For the millions of persons who read The World agree that it does big things in a big way. Else they would not read it. Nor would they crowd its columns with advertisements, themselves most interesting and important reading.
Even to enumerate the big things The World has done in the last twelve months, to rehearse the public services it has rendered, would take too long here. But consider for a moment the last of these. The World’s determination to improve the housing conditions of this city resulted in its discovery and exposure of unprecedented building graft. The inquiry by the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing, compelled by The World, has resulted in further amazing revelations. No prophet is needed to foretell that infinite good may come of it.
Really, it seems not impossible, if the Legislature will do its share, that a New Yorker of moderate means will be able to house his family decently and have enough money left to buy food and clothing.
THE EDITORIAL PAGE
The newspaper that would obey the precepts laid down by The World’s founder has need of an editorial page, sound, strong and independent.
That The World’s attitude on public questions is guided by these instructions of Joseph Pulitzer is generally agreed by the reading public. Its editorial policy is one of intelligent liberalism. It would seek for the evils of democracy a cure in more democracy. It would welcome the widest opportunity for change and experiment in fitting popular government to new conditions, while setting its face like a flint against revolution by force and the subversive doctrines of anarchy. It finds in freedom an assurance of safety alike from reaction and Bourbonism and from half-baked soap-box theories of “direct action.”
Yet any man or woman who has something really worth while to say and who can say it briefly and with propriety may find a hearing in The World’s Editorial Forum.
A cartoon is an editorial—when it is one. The daily cartoons of Rollin Kirby upon The World’s editorial page are almost as often reproduced in Europe as in the United States as the finest examples extant of American public opinion portrayed at a glance in pictorial form. They thus combine present-day political effect with permanent historic value.
POLITICAL WRITERS
The World is particularly fortunate in its political writers. In that direction, the greatest achievement of the year was Louis Seibold’s interview with the President of the United States. By the courtesy of The World the interview was published in newspapers all over the country. It and the writer were lauded by magazines, reviews and papers devoted to journalism.