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Type in the content of your new page here. __ Lincoln Steffens was born in __

San Francisco, California, on 6th April, 1866. The son of a wealthy businessman, he studied in France and Germany before graduating from the University of California, where he developed radical political views.

In 1892 Steffens became a reporter on the New York Evening Post. Later he became editor of McClure's Magazine, where he became associated with the style of investigative journalism that became known as muckraking. One of Steffen's major investigations involved exposing local government corruption. A collection of Steffen's articles appeared in the book The Shame of the Cities (1904). This was followed by an investigation into state politicians, The Struggle for Self-Government (1906).

In 1906 Steffens joined with the investigative journalists, Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker to establish the radical American Magazine. He continued to write about corruption until 1910 when he reported the Mexican Revolution. He became a strong supporter of the rebels and during this period developed the view revolution, rather than reform, was the way to change capitalism.

Steffens visited Russia in 1919 and when he returned in 1921 made the famous comment, "I have seen the future and it works." Steffens enthusiasm for the Soviet form of government did not last and by the time he wrote his memoirs, Autobiography (1931), he was disillusioned with communism. Lincoln Steffens died in 1936.


 * __the rise of mass circulation magazines combined with the reform impulses of the early 20th century to create the form of investigative journalism known as "muckracking" (so named by President Theodore Roosevelt after the muckrake in Bunyan’s //Pilgrim’s Progress// who could "look no way but downward, with a muckrake in his hands"). In the 1890s, changes in printing technology made possible inexpensive magazines that could appeal to a broader and increasingly more literate middle-class audience. In October 1902 //McClure’s// //Magazine// published what many consider the first muckraking article, Lincoln Steffens' "Tweed Days in St. Louis." The "muckrakers" wrote on many subjects, including child labor, prisons, religion, corporations, and insurance companies. But urban political corruption remained a particularly popular target, perhaps because it was so blatant, and perhaps because the differences between the muckrakers (mostly middle class and of native Protestant stock) and the political bosses (mostly from Catholic and immigrant backgrounds) made the rule of the immigrant machine appear as an alien intrusion, a corruption of American citizenship.__**

Lincoln Steffens

From: **The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition** | Date: 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. Lincoln Steffens (Joseph Lincoln Steffens), 1866-1936, American editor and author, b. San Francisco, grad. Univ. of California, 1889, and studied three years in Europe. Steffens became one of the leading [|muckrakers] __, and while he held (1902-11) successive editorial positions on //McClure's,// the //American,// and //Everybody's// magazines he wrote sensational articles exposing municipal corruption; they were later collected in //The Shame of the Cities// (1904), //The Struggle for Self-Government// (1906), //Upbuilders// (1909), and other volumes. His autobiography (1931) contains not only personal reminiscences but also valuable information on the leftist movements of his era__

"I have seen the future; and it works. (Following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1919)"

"I have been over into the future, and it works." "First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation."

"The unknown is the province of the student; it is the field for his life's adventure, and it is a wide field full of beckonings"

"Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago." ""So you've been over into Russia?" said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, "I have been over into the future and it works" "Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization." "Morality is only moral when it is voluntary." "Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it." "Somebody must take a chance. The monkeys who became men, and the monkeys who didn't are still jumping around in trees making faces at the monkeys who did."