Gale: Literature Resource Center
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936)
The Shame of the Cities
New York: Hill and Wang, 1957
[Originally published in 1904 by McClure, Phillips & Co.]
The publication of The Shame of the Cities in 1904 brought together six McClure's articles by Lincoln Steffens that exposed the corruption of governments in Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and New York. As one of America's early muckrakers, he worked as a police reporter in the 1890s for the New York Evening Post, sharpening his investigative reporting skills of corruption and reform with Jacob Riis serving as a mentor. His work in exposing police corruption in New York helped to defeat the Tammany machine's candidate for mayor in 1894 and elect a reform candidate, William Strong, who subsequently established a board of police commissioners, that was headed by future President Theodore Roosevelt. He also wrote The Struggle for Self-Government in 1906, which examined corruption in politics on the state level. Much of his work explored the idea that the resources of American business interest allowed them to pervert the traditions of representative government.
Sources:
"Steffens, Lincoln." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth
Edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. <http://www.bartleby.com/65/st/Steffens.html>.
Mooney-Melvin, Patricia. "Steffens, Lincoln." American
National Biography. Edited by John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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