Joseph Lincoln Steffens- who went by his middle name- was born in 1866, and went on to spend a picturesque childhood in Sacramento, California. With his mother, Elizabeth Symes, and father, Joseph Steffens, Lincoln lived in a large white mansion which later become the governor's home. At age 15, his independent and rebellious ways unfortunately landed him in a military boarding school. Steffens later attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he excelled in English and history, but graduated near the bottom of his class due to his lack of interest in other classes.
Despite his efforts to keep Lincoln close to home, Joseph Steffens reluctantly gave into his son's persistence on pursuing philosophy and agreed to pay his way to the German universities at Heidelberg and Leipzig. There, he fell in love with fellow student, Josephine Bontecou, and the couple secretly married in 1891. He finally returned to New York in 1892, after attending the Sorbonne University in Paris for a year.
A message from his father, telling him "to say in New York and hustle", fueled Steffens to pursue his journalistic career. He got a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post, a highly respectable and conservative newspaper that ignored the scandalized stories published in the Pulitzer and Hearst papers. Here, he first uncovered the secrets behind Wall Street, becoming fascinated with J.P. Morgan. Later, he shifted to the police beat and reported about the workings of the immigrant slums of the Lower East Side, sweatshops, and crime. He also grew close to the energetic young police commissioner of New York, Theodore Roosevelt. Inspired by the Post's veteran crime reporter, Jacob Riis, Steffens made it his duty to delve deeper into crime, in order to discover the root of the human-interest stories.
In 1897, Steffens traded reporting for a position as city editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser. He attempted to make the paper livelier by hiring fresh young reporters, but his efforts ultimately failed, and he moved on to try his hand at writing fiction. When this did not work out either, he joined the staff of McClure's Magazine, first as an editor and then as a writer.
It was at McClure's that Steffens truly shined, as the magazine exposed the truth behind social ills, such as corporate monopolies and political machines, horrible working conditions, and the contaminated food and drinks of the time. Steffens traveled from city to city, uncovering and revealing stories of corruption to the American public. Steffens complied his exposés into a single publication- a book called The Shame of the Cities.
In 1906, Steffens, along with other journalists such as Ida M. Tarbell, left McClure's to publish their own American Magazine, which highlighted "good people...coming out on top." Steffens continued to exploit more than just the corruption in nations around the world, but the underlying roots and foundation of the issue.
Steffens was very significant to the field of journalism as he went beyond the normal realm of muckraking, and pursued the notion of providing his readers with factual details in order to portray how the world truly is. His goal was to, "shame them into taking action to reform the system." (Rtichie)
-Emilie Boyer
Works Cited:
Baker, Kevin. "Lincoln Steffens: Muckraker's Progress." NY Times. NY Times, 13 May 2011. Web. 21 Oct. 2013.
Ritchie, Donald A. "Society's Critics: Lincoln Steffens." American Journalists: Getting the Story. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. N. pag. Print.
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