A MUCKRAKER’S ATTACK ON CITY CORRUPTION
- Lincoln Steffens By 1900 many Americans felt that something had to be done to reform American government and American
life. This push toward reform was known as the Progressive movement. Some of the most important
supporters of the Progressive movement were the writers and newspaper reporters who were making
Americans aware of how widespread corruption In government and abuses of power had become in the
United States.
These crusading, reform-minded writers were disliked by some Americans, including Theodore
Roosevelt. In a speech in 1906, Roosevelt described the writers by referring to a character in the book
Pilgrim’s Progress–“the man with the muckrake.” One writer, Lincoln Steffens, proudly adopted the term
“muckraker” to refer to anyone who wanted to uncover, or rake up, corruption. Soon the term became
very popular.
Steffens became famous because of his magazine articles on corruption in American cities. The
following selections are from his book The Shame of the Cities.
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There is hardly a government office from United States Senator down to alderman in any
part of the country to which some business leader has not been elected. Yet politics remains corrupt and government pretty bad. Business leaders have failed in politics as they
have in good citizenship. Why?
Because politics is business. That’s what's the matter with everything–art, literature,
religion, journalism, law, medicine. They’re all business, and all as you see them.
Make politics a sport, as they do in England, or a profession, as they do in Germany.
Then we’ll have–well, something else than we have now–if we want it, which is another
question. But don't try to reform politics with the banker, the lawyer, and the merchant.
For they are business people and there are two things that make it very difficult for them
to achieve reform: One is that they are different from, but no better than, the politicians.
The other is that politics is not “their line.”
There are exceptions both ways. Many politicians have gone into business and done
well. (Tammany ex-mayors, and nearly all the old bosses of Philadelphia, are important
financiers in their cities.) Business managers have gone into politics and done well.
(Mark Hanna, for example.) The politician is a businessman with a specialty. When a
businessman in some other line learns the business of politics, he is a politician, and there
is not much reform left in him. Consider the United States Senate, and believe me.
The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of
individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade, not principle.
We cheat our government and we let our leaders rob it. We let them persuade and
bribe our power away from us. True, they pass strict laws for us, but we let them pass
bad laws too, giving away public property in exchange. Our good, and often impossible,
laws we allow to be used for oppression and blackmail. And what can we say? We
break our own laws and rob our own government–the woman at the tax office, the
lyncher with his rope, and the captain of industry with his bribe and his rebate. The spirit
of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
The people are not innocent. This will not be news to many observers. It was to me.
When I set out to describe the corrupt systems of certain typical cities, I meant to show
simply how the people were deceived and betrayed. But in the very first study–St.
Louis–the startling truth showed that corruption was not merely political. It was financial,
commercial, and social. Its offshoots were so complex and far-reaching that one mind
could hardly grasp them all.
The corruption of St. Louis came from the top. The best citizens–the merchants and
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A MUCKRAKER’S ATTACK ON CITY CORRUPTION
- Lincoln Steffens 35
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big financiers–ruled the town, and they ruled it well. They set out to overtake Chicago.
The commercial and industrial war between these two cities was a picturesque and
dramatic spectacle such as is seen only in our country. Business leaders were not just
merchants, and politicians were not just grafters. The two kinds of citizens got together
and used the power of banks, railroads, factories, the prestige of the city, and the spirit of
its citizens to
gain business and population. And it was a close race. Chicago, having a head start, always led. But St. Louis had spirit, intelligence, and tremendous energy. It pressed
Chicago hard. It excelled in a sense of civic beauty and good government. There are
those who still think it might have won. But a change occurred. Public spirit became
private spirit, and public enterprise became private greed.
Along about 1890, public franchises and privileges were sought, not only for
legitimate profit and common convenience, but also for loot. Taking only slight but
always selfish interest in the public councils, leading merchants and financiers misused
politics. Other less important and even less honest men, catching the smell of corruption,
rushed into the Municipal Assembly, drove out the remaining respectable leaders, and
sold the city–its streets, its wharves, its markets, and all that it had–to the now greedy
business people and bribers.
So gradually has this taken place that these same citizens hardly realize it. Go to St.
Louis and you will find the habit of civic pride in them. They still boast. The visitor is
told of the wealth of the residents, of the financial strength of the banks, and of the
growing importance of the industries. Yet the visitor sees poorly paved streets full of
garbage, and dirty or mud-filled alleys. He passes a broken-down firetrap of a building
crowded with the sick, and learns that it is the city hospital.
In Pittsburgh graft falls into four classes: franchises, public contracts, vice, and public
funds. There was, besides these, a lot of other loot-public supplies, public lighting, and
the water supply. But I cannot go into these. Neither can I stop to discuss the details of
the system by which public funds, earning no interest, were put in favored banks from
which the city borrowed money at a high interest rate. All these things were managed
well within the law. That was the great principle underlying the Pittsburgh plan.
The vice graft, for example, was not blackmail as it is in New York and most other
cities. It is a legitimate business, conducted not by the police, but in an orderly fashion
by syndicates. The leader of one of the parties at the last election said it was worth
$250,000 a year. I saw a man who was laughed at for offering $17,500 foro the slotmachine concession. He was told that it was leased for much more. “Speakeasies” have to
payoff so many people that even though they may earn $500 or more in 24 hours, their
owners often just about make a living.
We Americans may have failed. We may be selfish and influenced by gain.
Democracy with us may be impossible and corruption inevitable, but these articles, if
they have proved nothing else, have shown that we can stand the truth. There is pride in
the character of American citizenship. This pride may be a power in the land. So this
record of shame and yet of self-respect, disgraceful confession, yet a declaration of
honor, is dedicated, in all good faith, to the accused–to all the citizens of all the cities in
the United States.
[Source: Adapted from Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities, as presented in Sources in American History: A
Book of Readings (Chicago, Illinois: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1986), pages 251-253.]
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A MUCKRAKER’S ATTACK ON CITY CORRUPTION
- Lincoln Steffens READING REVIEW
Continue your answers onto the back of this page, if you require additional space.
1. (a) What were the reasons Steffens gave to support his viewpoint that business leaders
made bad politicians?
(b) Do you think this premise is applicable to today's society? Why or why not?
2. How did he propose to eliminate corruption?
3. Whom did Steffens blame for corruption?
4. Using information from your text, describe the role that “muckrakers” played in the
Progressive movement.
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