The struggle for self-government; being an attempt to trace American political corruption to its sources in six states of the United States

by Lincoln Steffens

CONTENTS

DEDICATION To His MAJESTY, NICHOLAS THE SECOND,
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, EMPEROR AND AUTOCRAT OF
ALL THE RUSSIAS, CZAR OF POLAND, GRAND DUKE OF
FINLAND, ETC., ETC v

FOLK'S FIGHT FOR MISSOURI SHOWING How TO BEAT
THE BOODLE SYSTEM OF ST. Louis, THE PEOPLE HAD
TO CHALLENGE THE SAME SYSTEM IN THE STATE . . 3

CHICAGO'S APPEAL TO ILLINOIS SHOWING How, SINCE
THE CORRUPTION OF A STATE AND ITS CITIES is ALL
ONE SYSTEM, MUNICIPAL REFORM MUST INCLUDE
STATE REFORM 40

WISCONSIN: REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT RESTORED
THE STORY OF LAFOLLETTE'S WAR ON THE RAILROADS
THAT RULED His STATE 79

RHODE ISLAND: A CORRUPTED PEOPLE SHOWING THAT
AMERICAN CITIZENS CAN BE BOUGHT (CHEAP) TO
SELL OUT THEIR CITIES AND STATES 120

OHIO: A TALE OF Two CITIES SHOWING BUSINESS
RULERS OF A STATE RESORTING TO ANARCHY TO
CHECK MUNICIPAL REFORM 161

NEW JERSEY: A TRAITOR STATE, PART I. THE CON-
QUEST: SHOWING How THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
SEIZED THE GOVERNMENT 209

NEW JERSEY: A TRAITOR STATE, PART II. THE BE-
TRAYAL: SHOWING How THIS BOUGHT STATE SOLD
OUT THE UNITED STATES TO THE TRUSTS FOR MONEY 253


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FOLK'S FIGHT FOR MISSOURI

SHOWING HOW, TO BEAT THE BOODLE SYSTEM OF

ST. LOUIS, THE PEOPLE HAD TO CHALLENGE

THE SAME SYSTEM IN THE STATE

(April, 1904)

EVERY time I attempted 1 to trace to its sources the polit-
ical corruption of a city ring, the stream of pollution
branched off in the most unexpected directions and spread
out in a network of veins and arteries so complex that
hardly any part of the body politic seemed clear of it.
It flowed out of the majority party into the minority;
out of politics into vice and crime; out of business into
politics, and back into business ; from the boss, down
through the police to the prostitute, and up through the
practice of law into the courts ; and big throbbing arteries
ran out through the country over the State to the Nation
and back. No wonder cities can't get municipal reform !
No wonder Minneapolis, having cleaned out its police ring
of vice grafters, discovered boodle in the council! No
wonder Chicago, with council-reform and boodle beaten,
found itself a Minneapolis of police and administrative
graft! No wonder Pittsburg, when it broke out of its
local ring, fell, amazed, into a State ring! No wonder
New York, with good government under Mayor Seth Low,
voted itself back into Tammany Hall !

1 See " The Shame of the Cities," McClure, Phillips & Co.




They are on the wrong track; we are, all of us, on the
wrong track. You can't reform a city by reforming part
of it. You can't reform a city alone. You can't re-
form politics alone. And as for corruption and the under-
standing thereof, we cannot run 'round and 'round
in municipal rings and understand ring corruption ; it
isn't a ring thing. We cannot remain in one city, or
ten, and comprehend municipal corruption; it isn't a
local thing. We cannot " stick to a party," and follow
party corruption ; it isn't a partisan thing. And I have
found that I cannot confine myself to politics and grasp
all the ramifications of political corruption. It isn't
political corruption. It's corruption.

Kindle Edition

First published May 20, 2009

About the author

As managing editor of McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1906, American journalist Joseph Lincoln Steffens exposed governmental corruption in a series of articles, inaugurating the era of muckraking.

In a wealthy family, he attended a military academy. Following graduation from the University of California, he studied in France and Germany.
Steffens began his career at the New York Evening Post. He later part of a celebrated trio with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker. He specialized in investigating politics and published collections as The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle for Self-government (1906). In 1906, he left alongside Tarbell and Baker.

From 1914–1915, he covered the Mexican revolution and began to prefer it to reform. In March 1919, he accompanied William C. Bullitt, a low-level official of state Department, on a three-week visit to the Soviet Union and witnessed the "confusing and difficult" process of a society in the process of revolutionary change. He wrote that "Soviet Russia was a revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan," enduring "a temporary condition of evil, which is made tolerable by hope and a plan." After return, he promoted his view of the Soviet revolution and in the course of campaigning for food aid of United States for Russia made his famous remark about the new Soviet society: "I have seen the future, and it works," a phrase he often repeated with many variations.

His enthusiasm for communism soured before the time of his memoirs in 1931. The autobiography, a bestseller, led to a short return to prominence for the writer, but Steffens ably capitalized not as illness cut his lecture tour short by 1933. He joined as a member of the California writers project, a program of New Deal. He died of heart failure in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.