The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine.Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 1. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him "the first muckraker."Robert B. Downs, Books that Changed America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 132.
Though Steffens' subject was municipal corruption, he did not present his work as an exposé of corruption but wanted to draw attention to the public's complicity in allowing corruption to continue. Steffens tried to advance a theory of city corruption, which he claimed was the result of "big business men" who corrupted city government for their own ends and special educational "the typical business man," average Americans who ignored politics and allowed such corruption to continue. He framed his work as an attempt "to sound for the civic pride of an apparently shameless citizenship" by making the public face their responsibility in the persistence of municipal corruption.Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 9, 3, 1.
Background Steffens began working on the articles that would become The Shame of the Cities after he joined the staff of McClure's in 1901. He had been hired as a managing editor for the magazine but, as Steffens biographers note, struggled with the job.Robert B. Downs, Books that Changed America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 133; Patrick F. Palermo, Lincoln Steffens (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978), 37. Steffens writes that S. S. McClure, the magazine's co-founder, sent him on an open-ended assignment to learn how to become an editor. According to Steffens, McClure said, "Get out of here, travel, go—somewhere. Go out in the advertising department. Ask them where they have transportation credit. Buy a railroad ticket, get on a train, and there, where it lands you, there you will learn to edit a magazine."Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 364.
After setting out in the spring of 1902, Steffens learned of and arranged a meeting with Joseph W. Folk, the recently elected circuit attorney of St. Louis.Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 103. Folk had been elected thanks to a temporary alliance between a business-backed reform movement and Edward Butler, the boss of the city's Democratic Party machine; Butler allied with the reformers, in part, to help get his son elected to Congress.Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 105. After his election, though, Folk launched a massive investigation into the city's corruption, arresting many prominent St. Louis legislators and businessmen, while scaring others into fleeing the state—and, in some cases, fleeing the country.Robert B. Downs, Books that Changed America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 135.
Steffens was not the first author of "Tweed Days in St. Louis", the McClure’s piece detailing Folk's investigation of Butler's machine; he initially commissioned Claude Wetmore, a St. Louis author, to write the piece. Wetmore, according to Steffens biographer Justin Kaplan, "was an honest reporter, but he happened to live in St. Louis and he wanted to continue to live there. And so Wetmore steered a middle course, left out crucial names and facts, went easy on prominent citizens went easy even on Butler, who was to come to trial that summer".Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 106. Steffens rewrote the article from scratch, adding all of the details Wetmore had left out; Wetmore, in turn, insisted that Steffens sign the article as well, so that he too would be targeted when St. Louis citizens accused them of slander.Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 105-106.
Steffens' next assignment was in Minneapolis. He claimed that McClure tried to take editorial control of his story. According to Steffens, before he left for Minneapolis, McClure told him that his next article would "point out that democracy is at fault [for urban corruption], that one man has to run a city just as one man has to run a business to make it a success. …We had a pretty hot fight, and McClure won. What I went to Minneapolis to write about was that democracy was a failure and that a good dictator was what is needed."Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 374. McClure had also been concerned by the anti-business bias he perceived in "Tweed Days in St. Louis.Peter Hartshorn, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 99; Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 109.
In Minneapolis, Steffens discovered a massive protection racket enforced by the police and headed by the mayor, Dr. Albert Alonzo Ames. He learned that the mayor and the police, consulting professional criminals for advice, had organized a citywide system to extort protection money from the city's houses of prostitution, which were actually forbidden under city law, and its saloons.Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 376-377. He also obtained and publicized "The Big Mitt Ledger," an accounting book that a group of card cheats used to record their winnings and the bribes that they had paid to city officials.Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 111.
McClure and Steffens argued over what city to cover next. Steffens wanted to return to St. Louis, but McClure wanted Steffens to investigate Chicago and thought that it would have even more corruption than Minneapolis and lead to even greater public interest and magazine sales. Ida Tarbell helped settle their dispute in Steffens' favor, and he returned to St. Louis to continue writing about Folk's efforts to clean up the city.Peter Hartshorn, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 103.
Steffens then received a request from the children of the late Jay Gould to investigate Pittsburgh, where, they claimed, they had evidence that the dominant political machines were conspiring to keep them out of the city's railroad business. The Goulds decided not to help Steffens after all once he arrived in the city, but Steffens found a different ally: Oliver McClintock, a businessman who had spent years learning about the city's corruption on his own. Using McClintock's findings, Steffens published his article on Pittsburgh in the May 1903 issue of McClure's.Peter Hartshorn, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 105.
Steffens then traveled to Philadelphia. In his autobiography, Steffens notes that he expected Philadelphia to be like every other city that he had visited, but he was surprised by his findings there. The city government was still corrupt despite having been reformed; in fact, he found, the city's charter, known as the Bullitt Charter, centralized power in the mayor's office, a reform Steffens himself had suggested in the past. Because of his findings in Philadelphia, Steffens later wrote, he "had to note a ... new and startling theory, viz.: that the form of government did not matter; that constitutions and charters did not affect essentially the actual government".Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 409.
After finishing in Philadelphia, Steffens, at McClure's suggestion, went to Chicago, expecting to find sensational corruption. He did not find the story he anticipated. Instead, as he learned from talking to Chicago reformer Walter L. Fisher, Chicago reformers had waged a long campaign against corrupt politicians and had actually taken control of the city legislature. After his article about Chicago received a positive popular response, Steffens returned to New York to write a final article about good city governance.Peter Hartshorn, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 108-109.
When politicians backed by the Tammany Hall political machine won the New York elections of 1903 and ousted the good government Steffens had praised, Steffens, feeling "all up in the air," traveled to Cos Cob, Connecticut, where he adapted these articles into The Shame of the Cities. McClure, Philips, and Co. first published the book in 1904.Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 434.
Synopsis Steffens' first article in The Shame of the Cities is "Tweed Days in St. Louis", published in October 1902. Steffens discusses Circuit Attorney Folk's efforts to clean up the city's corruption. Bribery, Steffens noted, had become commonplace in city government by the turn of the century. Responding to public concerns about corruption, the local Democratic Party put together a "reform" ticket, though this was "[s]imply part of the game", rather than out of a sincere desire to reform. Folk, however, took his duties seriously. He launched an investigation into the city's corruption after seeing a newspaper article which claimed that a bribe fund had been set up in a local bank to pay off city legislators who helped pass a streetcar bill. Folk found the bribe money in the bank, and began indicting participants in the bribery plot, leading a few of them to flee the state or the country. As he began to win convictions, other men involved in corruption decided to testify against their associates. Steffens concludes the article by claiming that "In all cities, the better classes—the business men—are the sources of corruption"; Folk, he notes, "has shown St. Louis that its bankers, brokers, corporation officers,—its business men are the sources of evil". Furthermore, he warns, "what went on in St. Louis is going on in most of our cities, towns, and villages. The problem of municipal government in America has not been solved".Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 19, 23-24, 25, 27, 32-39, 40, 41.
"The Shame of Minneapolis", published in January 1903, tells the story of Mayor "Doc" Ames. Steffens claims that Ames, on being elected mayor in 1900, "set out upon a career of corruption for which deliberateness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled". Ames and the complicit police force, in exchange for bribes, chose to ignore illegal gambling and prostitution. This arrangement attracted criminals to the city, many of whom arranged with the police to be left alone—according to Steffens, "the government of a city asked criminals to rob the people". The foreman of the city's grand jury, Hovey C. Clarke, was primarily responsible for breaking up the Ames machine. After being selected to the jury in April 1902, he and his colleagues paid several private detectives to investigate the machine. After the conviction of Ames' brother, Fred, Mayor Ames fled the state, and the city government was thrown into disarray. The new acting mayor, Alderman D. Percy Jones, replaced Ames' men on the police force with good officers Ames had fired. "Minneapolis should be clean and sweet for a little while at least", Steffens concluded.Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 42, 46-47, 51, 58-63, 65, 68.