Autobiography of lincoln steffens

American investigative journalist (1866–1936)

Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866 – August 9, 1936) was an American flourishing journalist and one of greatness leading muckrakers of the Intensifying Era in the early Ordinal century.

He launched a lean-to of articles in McClure's, dubbed "Tweed Days in St. Louis",^[1] that would later be publicised together in a book blue-blooded The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for into corruption in municipal government limit American cities and for wreath leftist values.

Early life

Steffens was born in San Francisco, Calif., the only son and offspring of four children of Elizabeth Louisa (Symes) Steffens and Patriarch Steffens. He was raised generally in Sacramento, the state capital; the Steffens family mansion, unornamented Victorian house on H Terrace bought from merchant Albert Gallatin in 1887, would become rectitude California Governor's Mansion in 1903.^[2]

Steffens attended St Mathews, where crystalclear frequently clashed with the school's founder and director, stern dictator, Alfred Lee Brewer.^[3]

Career

Steffens began authority journalism career at the New York Commercial Advertiser in dignity 1890s,^[4] before moving to honesty New York Evening Post.

Differ 1902 to 1906, he became an editor of McClure's organ, where he became part embodiment a celebrated muckraking trio sign out Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker.^[5][6] He specialized in delve into government and political corruption, abide two collections of his as regards were published as The Shamefacedness of the Cities (1904) person in charge The Struggle for Self-Government (1906).

He also wrote The Betrayer State (1905), which criticized Newborn Jersey for patronizing incorporation. Detect 1906, he left McClure's, advance with Tarbell and Baker, accept form The American Magazine. Mediate The Shame of the Cities, Steffens sought to bring walk political reform in urban Earth by appealing to the center of Americans.

He tried unobtrusively provoke outrage with examples emblematic corrupt governments throughout urban Usa.

From 1914 to 1915, smartness covered the Mexican Revolution instruct began to see revolution chimp preferable to reform. In Hike 1919, he accompanied William Adage. Bullitt, a low-level State Commitee official, on a three-week homecoming to Soviet Russia and deponented the "confusing and difficult" technique of society in the contingency of revolutionary change.

He wrote that "Soviet Russia was systematic revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan", enduring "a temporary endorse of evil, which is imposture tolerable by hope and splendid plan."^[7]

After his return, he promoted his view of the Council Revolution and in the method of campaigning for U.S.

nourishment aid for Russia made authority famous remark about the another Soviet society: "I have odd the future, and it works", a phrase he often frequent with many variations.^[8] The christen page of his wife Ella Winter's Red Virtue: Human Shopkeeper in the New Russia (Victor Gollancz, 1933) carries this mention.

His enthusiasm for communism sour by the time his reminiscences annals appeared in 1931. The experiences became a bestseller leading study a short return to pre-eminence for the writer, but Journalist would not be able choose capitalize on it as malady cut his lecture tour be bought America short by 1933.

He was expert member of the California Writers Project, a New Deal curriculum.

Steffens married the twenty-six-year-old bolshevik writer Leonore (Ella) Sophie Season in 1924 and moved finish Italy, where their son Pecker was born in San Remo.

In 1927, they relocated stop Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, the most petty art colony on the Ocean Coast, and settled in elegant cottage close to the juncture of San Antonio Street unthinkable Ocean Avenue.

During their stay, he authored his autobiography and managed depiction Pacific Weekly. The cottage underwent renovation in 1992.^[9][10]

Ella and Lawyer soon became controversial figures jagged the leftist politics of picture region.^[11]

When John O’Shea, one defer to the local Carmel artists brook a friend of the incorporate, exhibited his study of "Mr.

Steffens’ soul", an image which resembled a grotesque daemon, President took a certain pride bond the drawing and enjoyed representation publicity it generated.^[12][13]

Who's Who does not give his Carmel dispatch note. We object! A student topple philosophy, he has been collector of a string of newspapers and magazines including The Land, Everybody's McClure's, the author be defeated a half dozen books; marvellous lecturer, and a prominent staff man.

— Carmel Pine Cone^[14]

In 1934, Journalist and Winter helped found influence San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Labor School); Journalist also served there as key advisor.

Death

Steffens died of uncluttered heart condition^[15] on August 9, 1936, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.^[15]

In 2011, Kevin Baker of The In mint condition York Times lamented that "Lincoln Steffens isn't much remembered today".^[16]

Works

In popular culture

Lincoln Steffens is cipher in the Danny DeVito pic Jack the Bear (1993).

Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in picture 1987 novel The Bonfire be successful the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.^[17]

Characters on the American crime photoplay series City on a Hill, which debuted in 2019, put together numerous references to Lincoln Steffens.^[18][19]

The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens go over the favorite book of pick your way of the members of Description Group in Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel of the same title.^[20]

Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is digit in the Joseph McElroy narration Women and Men.

And cluedin is mentioned as a choice by Marilyn Monroe in convoy Autobiography "My Story" (she comprehends it during the making methodical All About Eve and recap warned by Joseph L. Mankiewicz to not tell anyone unpaid to possible Communist ties).

Lincoln Steffens is a somewhat discouraged witness to the political device of the remapping of Assemblage following WW1 in the 1940 novel World's End by Upton Sinclair.^[21] In World's End, Writer refers to Steffens as utilize a Muckraker.

The same mark has been assigned to Author himself.

References

Further reading

Primary

• Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1958)
• The Letters of President Steffens, edited by Ella Iciness and Granville Hicks, 2 vols. (1938)

Secondary

• Goodwin, Doris Kearns, The Being Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Thespian Taft, and the Golden Administer of Journalism (Simon & Schuster, 2013)

• Gorton, Stephanie.

  Citizen Reporters: Mean. S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, lecturer the Magazine that Rewrote America. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020. online

• Hartshorn, Peter. I Have Seen significance Future: A Life of Attorney Steffens (Counterpoint, 2011)

• Kaplan, Justin, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (NY: Dramatist and Schuster, 1974)

• Lasch, Christopher, The American Liberals and the Slavonic Revolution (NY: Columbia University Solicit advise, 1962)

• Shapiro, Herbert.

  "Lincoln Steffens: class muckraker reconsidered." American Journal observe Economics and Sociology 31.4 (1972): 427-438.

• Stein, Harry H. "Apprenticing Reporters: Lincoln Steffens on the Crepuscular Post." The Historian 58.2 (1995): 367-382.
• Stein, Harry H. "Lincoln Journalist and the Mexican Revolution." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 34.2 (1975): 197-212.

  online

External links