As a lawyer specializing in monopolies and patents, he began to invest in the railroad industry, and then the Electric Storage Battery Company, of which he became president in 1897.
Throwing himself and his personality into the work, he became critical of board members who thought that it was beneath the dignity of the journal to directly solicit manuscripts from major writers focused on contemporary issues.
Page relinquished the editorship in 1895, over a squabble regarding control, and was hired by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, the publishers of Atlantic Monthly.
From January through October 1888, The Forum ran a symposium series entitled “What Shall the Public Schools Teach”, which included contributions from William T. Harris and Lester Frank Ward.
The Forum made its definitive statement of the education system in 1891–93 when it published a series of incisive muckraking articles by Joseph Mayer Rice.
As anticipated by Page, Rice's study generated outraged reactions among a public that heretofore had assumed a fully functioning and effective educational system.
The nine articles that Rice wrote for The Forum chart an exhaustive tour of public schools from the East Coast to the Midwest taken from December 1891 through first half of 1892.
"It is indeed incomprehensible," he wrote, "that so many loving mothers...are willing without hesitation to resign the fate of their little ones to the tender mercies of ward politicians, who in many instances have no scruples in placing the children in class-rooms the atmosphere of which is not fit for human beings to breathe, and in charge of teachers who treat them with a degree of severity that borders on barbarism."
Articles referring to this later study include: From 1898 to 1900, The Forum analysed the implications of the United States' flirtation with imperialism in Guam, the Philippines, China and Puerto Rico.
Composed in 1899, the policy allowed multiple imperial powers to access China without committing to direct control, as was the case with Great Britain in India.
In November 1893, Walter Hines Page wrote in "The Last Hold of the Southern Bully"[28] that lynching was a social crime unheard of during the era of slavery, and was something that society should be spared from, due to its inflammable nature.
The answer was to build a social and political alliance between state conventions, ecclesiastical organisations and the media to defeat the evil practice.
The Mind of the Lynching Mob[35] by John P. Fort Following the departure of Page, Alfred Ernest Keet spent a short period as editor from 1895-1897 before he was replaced by Joseph Mayer Rice, who served until 1907.
A few days before he died in 1916, Washington wrote to The Forum suggesting an article dealing with "the definitive, indisputable facts relating to the Negro's progress as a race.'
His death meant the article was never completed, but Washington did send notes, which were published in the March 1916 issue under the title Fifty Years of Negro Progress.
He concluded: "Often I feel proud that I belong to a race in America which can never hope to be superior to the races about it in physical power; but whose growth must be in matters of the spirit and the ever-increasing success which attends such growth... are making the Negro into that fine type of citizen who may yet become the conservator of the finest and best of real civilization."
In August 1893's “Big Game Disappearing in the West”,[43] Roosevelt boasts of his prowess as a hunter, and describes a series of potential American hunting experiences in vivid detail.
Identifying the overhunting of cattle near his ranch in Little Missouri, he stated: “It is always lawful to kill dangerous or noxious animals, like the bear, cougar and wolf; but other game should only be shot when there is a need of the meat.” Echoing his subsequent success as President in allocating land for forest conservation and preservation, Roosevelt concluded his article with a demand: “We need, in the interest of the community at large, a rigid system of game laws,” and to “establish, under the control of the State, great national forest reserves, which shall also be a breeding-grounds and nurseries for wild game; though I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system of large private game-preserves kept for the enjoyment of the very rich.” In July 1894's “The Manly Virtues and American Politics”,[44] Roosevelt described the corrupt politician as a greater foe of the nation than the private trusts and monopolies.
A righteous man “must do his share, unless he is willing to prove himself unfit for free institutions, fit only to live under a government where he will be plundered and bullied...on account of his selfish timidity.” In April 1894, "What 'Americanism' Means"[45] emphasised how strong the emotion of patriotism could be, and that it was the responsibility of the truest Americans were those who protected patriotism from those who used it as a cloak for evil - “the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil doing.” True patriotism was neither foolish optimism, nor ignoble pessimism, but a sober acceptance of the many advantages America held.
“A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native born citizen...we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, ad that we all work together, heart, hand and head, for the honour and greatness of our common country.” Other articles written by Roosevelt: In 1908, The Forum returned to monthly publication and expanded its format to include fiction, poetry and reviews.
The first novella to appear was The Point of Honor: A Military Tale[49] by Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, The Outcast of the Islands and The Secret Agent.
From that point, The Forum attracted contributions from some of the most distinguished authors and playwrights of the day, including Thomas Hardy, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells.
[59] Mencken's contribution were slight by comparison, consisting of a review of Willard Huntington Wrights A Man of Promise in April 1916 entitled America Produces a Novelist.
As a consequence, public confidence in government was a matter of great concern, and the differentiation between partisan assertions and reality had to be made clear.
Along with the usual pleas to embrace representative government over dictatorship and special interests, he stated that to make false appeals would rob the nation of its dignity, and would drag the attention of the American people into the mire.