The writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when dealing with those who have never practiced it towards him.  He wrote a letter to the editor of the “Outlook”, asking what the magazine might have to say upon this matter.  The reply, signed by Lawrence F. Abbott, President of the “Outlook” Company, was that the “Outlook” did not know that Mr. Baxter had any salaried connection with the New Haven, and that they had paid him for the article at the usual rates.  Against this statement must be set one made under oath by the official of the New Haven who had the disbursing of the corruption fund—­that the various papers which used the railroad material paid nothing for it, and “they all knew where it came from.”  Mr. Lawrence Abbott states that “the New Haven Railroad bought copies of the ‘Outlook’ without any previous understanding or arrangement as anybody is entitled to buy copies of the ’Outlook’.”  I might point out that this does not really say as much as it seems to; for the President of every magazine company in America knows without any previous understanding or arrangement that any time he cares to print an article such as Mr. Baxter’s, dealing with the affairs of a great corporation, he can sell ten thousand copies to that corporation.  The late unlamented Elbert Hubbard wrote a defense of the Rockefeller slaughter of coal-miners, published it in “The Fra,” and came down to New York and unloaded several tons at 26 Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the copper strike in Michigan, and again in the case of “The Jungle”—­and all this without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or authority!

Mr. Abbott answers another question:  “We certainly did not return the amount to the railroad company.”  Well, a sturdy conscience must be a comfort to its possessor.  The President of the “Outlook” is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his establishment.  He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe it, if the thief were obscure.  But when the thief is the most notorious in the city—­when his picture has been in the paper a thousand times?  And when the thief swears that the broker knew him?  And when the broker’s shop is full of other suspicious goods?  Why did the “Outlook” practically take back Mr. Spahr’s revelations concerning the Powder barony of Delaware?  Why did it support so vigorously the Standard Oil ticket for the control of the Mutual Life Insurance Company—­and with James Stillman, one of the heads of Standard Oil, president of Standard Oil’s big bank in New York, secretly one of its biggest stockholders!

Also, why does the magazine refuse to give its readers a chance to judge its conduct?  Why is it that a search of its columns reveals no mention of the revelations concerning Mr. Baxter—­not even any mention of the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon of transportation virtues?  I asked that question in my letter, and the president of the “Outlook” Company for some reason failed to notice it.  I