Steffens, (Joseph) Lincoln

Lincoln Steffens was born on April 6, 1866, in San Francisco, California, to a middle-class family. His father, a banker in Sacramento, bankrolled his extensive education. Steffens was sent to St. Matthew's Hall, a military school, as a teenager because his father worried that his son was not disciplined enough. Steffens attended the University of California–Berkeley from 1885 to 1889 and traveled to European universities in Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris during 1890. Upon his return to America, his father severed financial ties with his son and encouraged him to find work in New York.

Lincoln got his first writing job as a reporter for the New York Post, working on stories of the ethnic neighborhoods in New York. The rise of Lincoln Steffens through the world of journalism was rapid, and he attained the Wall Street and police station beat within his first year on the job. In this capacity, he met Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1895 became commissioner of police in New York City. This relationship would carry through to Roosevelt's presidency and would allow Steffens insight into the inner workings of the government. Steffens moved on to become city editor at the Commercial Advertiser and by 1901 joined McClure's Magazine as an editor to writers like Ray Stannard Baker and Ida Tarbell.

At McClure's, Steffens wrote a series of articles that would become the 1904 book The Shame of the Cities. These articles detailed the problems of city government in six American cities, with the first article of the series focusing on St. Louis. The fame that arose from the success of series made Steffens a popular figure on the lecture circuit and an important figure in reforming America's cities. The writer would go on to mediate the McNamara case in Los Angeles and to observe the Mexican Revolution in 1914.

The visit to Mexico was followed by two trips to Russia, first in 1917 to witness the end of the tsarist regime and again in 1919 to observe the counterrevolution and eventual success of Leninist forces. As part of the Bullitt commission, sent to negotiate peace with the Russians, Steffens was seen as sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause, and many Americans cast a suspicious eye to the writer. His return to the United States was part of an attempt to promote peace and the creation of the League of Nations. The failure of Woodrow Wilson's agenda in the United States and the environment of postwar America caused Steffens to leave the country from 1920 to 1931.

[Page 764]Steffens's return to California, due to illness and homesickness, allowed him to write The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. This book, published at the beginning of the Great Depression, was extremely popular among students and young adults looking for change in government and in American culture. Steffens lectured on the topics of governmental reform, his experiences in Russia, and his life until 1935. Steffens passed away on August 9, 1936.