Joseph lincoln steffens biography summary
Lincoln Steffens in The Man with the Muckrake
Basic Information
Name: Lincoln Joseph Steffens
Nickname: Lincoln "King of the Mustache-Goatee Combo" Steffens
Born: April 6, 1866
Died: August 9, 1936
Nationality: American
Hometown: San Francisco, California
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Journalist
Education: University of California (Nowadays UC Berkeley—Go Bears!), Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Elizabeth Louisa Steffens, Joseph Steffens
Siblings: Three sisters, with none of their names popping up anywhere we can find
Spouses: 1st wife Josephine Bontecou, 2nd Ella Winter
Children: Pete Steffens
Friends: Teddy Roosevelt (back in Roosevelt's police chief days), Sam McClure, James Joyce, Jimmy Cagney, Woodrow Wilson
Foes: None, really—he was the kind of person where he could tell you you're wrong straight to your face, and you'd be friends with him afterwards (ask Teddy Roosevelt himself)
Analysis
Like any good opening act (that's actually popular, not just awkwardly tacked onto the concert), Lincoln Steffens set the tone for muckrakers to follow. A Berkeley-trained journalist who cut his teeth in Europe, Steffens returned to the United States to cast some light on the political corruption that hung on cities like a jacket you haven't gotten around to dry cleaning yet.
His first heavy-hitting work was called "Pittsburgh is Hell with the Lid Off/ Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed" (best title, or best title?) and the next few years of his journalistic career were spent digging deep in the muck and printing his findings in the popular press.
However, unlike Teddy Roosevelt, who was convinced journalists had the pace of reform in a claw-like fist, Steffens became more and more disillusioned about whether publishing muckraking articles actually did anything to stop the corruption he fought so hard against.
Early Days
Steffens was born in that great Rice-a-Roni
Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866 – August 9, 1936) was an Americanjournalist and one of the most famous and influential practitioners of the journalistic style called muckraking. He is also known for his 1921 statement, upon his return from the Soviet Union: "I have been over into the future, and it works." His more famous quote "I've seen the future, and it works" can be found on the titlepage of his wife's, Ella Winter, 1933 edition of Red Virtue. His journalism courted controversy but also represents the "fourth estate" at its best. Politicians are of course bound by the same laws as the rest of the population but their office sometimes makes it possible for an unscrupulous individual to by-pass legal constraints, or to ignore them and unless their actions are made public, no action can be taken to censure them. In free societies, this role tends to fall within the remit of the press, which, although a non-official, commercial—not a civil society—enterprise, regards itself as serving the public interest. This is why the press is sometimes referred to as the fourth branch of government (or as the fourth estate), alongside the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Did you know?
Lincoln Steffens was one of the most influential of the early muckrakers
Steffens annoyed many of the people about whom he wrote but he had a gift and a passion for investigating corruption, poverty and human failings and a penetrating interest in their causes, in the depths of human experience. His muckraking was a socially responsible enterprise, somewhat different from the type of sensationalist journalism that intrudes into the personal lives of celebrities to expose behavior which, however immoral, ought to remain as private as the conduct of non-elite people does in whom the press rarely shows an interest. Steffens wanted all people to enjoy a reasonable standard of life in freedom and with dign
Spartacus Educational
Primary Sources
(1) Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography (1931)
It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done; not often, but the fact that a proportion, however small, of college students do get a start in interested, methodical study, proves my thesis, and the two personal experiences I have to offer illustrate it and show how to circumvent the faculty, the other students, and the whole college system of mind-fixing. My method might lose a boy his degree, but a degree is not worth so much as the capacity and the drive to learn, and the undergraduate desire for an empty baccalaureate is one of the holds the educational system has on students. Wise students some day will refuse to take degrees, as the best men (in England, for instance) give, but do not themselves accept, titles.
My method was hit on by accident and some instinct. I specialized. With several courses prescribed, I concentrated on the one or two that interested me most, and letting the others go, I worked intensively on my favorites. In my first two years, for example, I worked at English and political economy and read philosophy. At the beginning of my junior year I had several cinches in history. Now I liked history; I had neglected it partly because I rebelled at the way it was taught, as positive knowledge unrelated to politics, art, life, or anything else. The professors gave us chapters out of a few books to read, con, and be quizzed on. Blessed as I was with a "bad memory," I could not commit to it anything that I did not understand and intellectually need. The bare record of the story of man, with names, dates, and irrelative events, bored me. But I had discovered in my readings of literature, philosophy, and political economy that history had light to throw upon unhistorical questions. So I proposed in my junior and senior years to specialize in history, taking all the courses required.
(2) Joseph Steffens, letter to his son, Lincoln The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, published in 1931, recounts the pioneering investigative journalist’s life in his own very quotable words. Beginning with his childhood in Sacramento during the early days of California statehood, Steffens describes how he began his career in journalism and developed the leftist politics that ended with his embrace of Soviet Communism. Steffens is remembered today as one of the first “muckraking” journalists, who helped to make the investigation of corruption central to the profession in the United States.
Steffens was born in San Francisco, the only son of wealthy businessman Joseph Steffens and his wife, Elizabeth, but his earliest memories take place in the state capital, Sacramento. His family home would later become the California Governor’s Mansion. The first two hundred pages of Steffens’s memoir recount an idyllic childhood spent exploring the city and its hinterland on the back of a beloved pony. His curiosity endears him to the people he encounters, and he learns many lessons that point to his future career. For instance, he realizes at a young age that the horse races which his father loves to bet on are fixed, to take advantage of “suckers.” The adult Steffens reflects that even then, though he loved his father, he “did not care for suckers,” and resolved never to become one.
Steffens leaves home to pursue a degree at Berkeley, although later he would come to think little of the education he gained there: “It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done; not often.” As well as a degree, Steffens acquires a secret fiancée during his time in Berkeley.
Upon graduation, Steffens asks his father to fund a trip to Europe. There, he studies psychology and philosophy under notable figures in Leipzig, Paris, and other major cities, but he continues to find education frustrating. His teachers “could not agree upon what was knowledge, nor upon what was good a
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
Steffens was born in San Francisco, the only son of wealthy businessman Joseph Steffens and his wife, Elizabeth, but his earliest memories take place in the state capital, Sacramento. His family home would later become the California Governor’s Mansion. The first two hundred pages of Steffens’s memoir recount an idyllic childhood spent exploring the city and its hinterland on the back of a beloved pony. His curiosity endears him to the people he encounters, and he learns many lessons that point to his future career. For instance, he realizes at a young age that the horse races which his father loves to bet on are fixed, to take advantage of “suckers.” The adult Steffens reflects that even then, though he loved his father, he “did not care for suckers,” and resolved never to become one.
Steffens leaves home to pursue a degree at Berkeley, although later he would come to think little of the education he gained there: “It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done; not often.” As well as a degree, Steffens acquires a secret fiancée during his time in Berkeley.
Upon graduation, Steffens asks his father to fund a trip to Europe. There, he studies psychology and philosophy under notable figures in Leipzig, Paris, and other major cities, but he continues to find education frustrating. His teachers “could not agree upon what was knowledge, nor upon what was good a