The Shame of the Cities: The Famous Muckraking Expose of Corruption in America's Cities: St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York

by Lincoln Steffens

Renowned muckraker and investigative reporter Lincoln Steffens recounts a series of historic corruption scandals in cities of the United States. The various backhanders and embezzlements occurring in the urban councils of the USA in the late 19th century are recalled here. Though the country was in a period of great development and advancement, this rise to industrial prowess was accompanied by an egregious culture of dishonesty. The development of ?old boy networks?, whereby a group of insiders would conspire to siphon public funds and favour one another in matters of politics or business, became a serious problem. Steffens was a leading opponent of such nepotism, and did his utmost to root it out. In this book are images he gained of dishonest accounting; these, among other documentary evidence, led to certain corrupt officials losing their position and facing charges.

118 pages, Hardcover

Published June 23, 2019

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.