The Lincoln Steffens Legacy
Story by Bella Wexler, photograph by the Oregon Journal
“Care like hell! Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.”
Eighty four years ago today, the influential man who uttered those words fell silent for the first and last time in his life. Lincoln Steffens was an ambitious, muckraking journalist of the American Gilded Age whose writing penetrated the heart of American society by calling attention to some of its gravest injustices. Steffens peeled back the curtain that had shrouded the time period in false economic and political prosperity, revealing to his readers the mirror underneath.
Steffens began his life as the son of a wealthy businessman in San Francisco. His college years at the University of California at Berkeley exposed him to radical political perspectives and sparked his appreciation for philosophy as the fundamental lens through which society should be assessed. This revelation compelled him to further his studies in Europe and, upon his return in 1882, delve into investigative journalism.
Steffens entered this field determined to use it as it had never been used before. As managing editor of McClure’s (deemed one of the era’s “most popular and prestigious magazines” by the New York Times), he published his own exposés alongside Ida Tarbell’s and other muckrakers’ of the day (Baker). He was situated in an economic climate where monopolistic industry leaders like Rockefeller and Carnegie could suppress working class uprisings and protect their fortunes in the name of the American Dream. Meanwhile, political machines like Tammany Hall exploited immigrant voters to fuel their power and fraud (“Vote: The Machinery of Democracy”). All the while, the rich sat in blissful ignorance of the squalor of the inner city poor.
Frustrated by the web of foul play he discovered “involving the police, elected, and appointed officials”, Steffens put pen to paper and wrote scathing criticisms of American capitalism and corruption (New World Encyclopedia). Many of his critical analyses of American urban life were immortalized in his collection entitled “Shame of the Cities” in 1904.
His words were electric.
“You may blame the politicians, or, indeed, any one class, but not all classes, not the people. Or you may put it on the ignorant foreign immigrant, or any one nationality, but not on all nationalities, not on the American people. But no one class is at fault, nor any one breed, nor any particular interest or group of interests. The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people” (Steffens).
In passages like this, he directly addressed American readers, pointing out their unjust xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants for the United States' faults. “The ‘foreign element’ excuse is one of the hypocritical lies that save us from the clear sight of ourselves,” "Shame of the Cities" continues (Steffens). Lincoln frankly and unapologetically reminded Americans that the responsibility of deciding the fate of their government rests on their shoulders as voters and contributors to American culture. Furthermore, by famously holding that “the spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit”, he asserted that the abusive nature of those in power during the Gilded Age could only be a reflection of the degradation of American values by American society itself (Steffens).
Steffens attributed the source of America’s fall from grace to her embrace of capitalism. He argued that, “the commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle” (Steffens). He opposed the influence of industrial giants in promoting Laissez Faire values because of his belief that the path to get rich necessitated the endless exploitation of those who were not (New World Encyclopedia). He also criticized the upperclass businessman persona idealized for American leaders. “‘Give us a business man,’ he says (‘like me,’ he means). ‘Let him introduce business methods into politics and government; then I shall be left alone to attend to my business’” (Steffens). Steffens saw this perspective as egotistical and self centered and spared no expense at accusing well-off American citizens of upholding it.
Despite his communist sympathies (or perhaps because of them), Steffens’s advocacy against the United States’ economic policies were not ignored. It is not surprising that his voice gained traction considering the ever-widening wealth gap that threatened to swallow most Americans whole. Lincoln participated in the California Writers Project and continued to publish works that revealed the shortcomings of the Gilded Age and helped take down corrupt political figures (New World Encyclopedia).
Lincoln Steffens’s legacy is undeniably significant. His work refrained from sensational journalism unlike much of what we see in journalism today. His exposés did not prod into the personal lives of celebrities—in fact, he was a strong proponent of maintaining all people’s right to privacy (New World Encyclopedia). Rather, he spent his energy digging deeply into American corruption to study a broader theory of the human experience: that capitalist elitism breeds a system of oppressive, normalized injustice.
Lincoln Steffens cared deeply about political legitimacy and economic equity. When he died, he left behind the resounding plea for others to “care like hell” for what they believe in, too (Livernois). But something about being told to “sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend” while injustices fester under the gilded shell of present day America doesn’t sit well with many of us. We face a world riddled with performance, from performative activism by those grasping desperately for political correctness on social media to performative silence by those sitting quietly though others’ problematic rants for the sake of avoiding confrontation. The stage has changed, but the acting has not. Now, on the anniversary of Lincoln Steffens’s death, the words of even this radical muckraking journalist ring true like eerie echos through time.
We've been told we must “care like hell”. But we've also spent our lives studying historical figures like Lincoln Steffens who did more than just "care". Now, as America stands at these all-too-familiar crossroads, we must ask ourselves if performative caring is enough to uproot injustice… and brace ourselves for the fact that it isn’t.
Works Cited and Consulted
Baker, Kevin. “Lincoln Steffens: Muckraker’s Progress.” The New York Times, 13 May 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/books/review/lincoln-steffens-muckrakers-progress.html. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.
“Lincoln Steffens - New World Encyclopedia.” Newworldencyclopedia.Org, 2019, www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lincoln_Steffens. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.
“Lincoln Steffens Papers, 1863-1936.” Www.Columbia.Edu, www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4079365/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.
Livernois, Joe. “The Muckraker.” Voices of Monterey Bay, 23 Oct. 2017, voicesofmontereybay.org/2017/10/23/steffens/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2020.
Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities. New York, Mcclure, Phillips, 1904.
“Vote: The Machinery of Democracy.” Si.Edu, 2019, americanhistory.si.edu/vote/reform.html.
