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The Wall Street Journal has a long and proud tradition of vigorous and independent editorial commentary. As early as 1902, Charles Dow wrote a column "Review & Outlook," the title that today runs over our editorials in editions on three continents. In the boom of the 1920s, the paper was distinguished by the reportage and commentary of its proprietor, C.W. Barron. In the years after World War II, Bernard Kilgore was the publishing genius who forged the Journal into a national and now international institution. (See "Barney Kilgore Built His Dream.") But it was for editorial writing that his Journal won the recognition of its first two Pulitzer Prizes, to William Henry Grimes in 1947 and Vermont Royster in 1953. In 1951 Mr. Grimes famously spelled out The Journal's approach to reporting and editorializing in "A Newspaper's Philosophy." 

Looking back over this history, the surprise is not the change of views over the years but the constancy of them. (See "Journal Editorials and the Common Man.") They are united by the mantra "free markets and free people," the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money. Against the interference of taxes and ukases by kings and other collectivists. For the defense of individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities. If these principles sound unexceptionable in theory, applying them to current issues is often unfashionable and controversial.

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