In 1900, Morel put new life into the campaign against Congo misrule (begun a decade before by the American George Washington Williams) with a series of articles detailing his discoveries about the Congo Free State trade imbalances. His inside information made him a powerful voice against the exploitation, as previous activists had lacked his access to precise figures about the trade. In 1903, he founded his own magazine, the "West African Mail", with the collaboration of John Holt, a businessman and friend of Mary Kingsley, who feared that the system of the Congo Free State would be applied upon the rest of the West African colonies. The "Mail" was an "illustrated weekly journal founded to meet the rapidly growing interest in west and central African questions". The paper also received initial financial backing from Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, Morel's former employer at Elder Dempster, apparently in a final attempt to moderate Morel's criticism of the company, but Jones soon discontinued his support. Morel published several pamphlets and his first book, "Affairs of West Africa", a collection of his essays.