Lincoln Steffens

Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6 1866 – August 9 1936) was an American journalist and one of the most famous and influential practitioners of the journalistic style called muckraking. He is best known for his 1921 quote, upon his return from the Soviet Union: "I have been over into the future, and it works." (Often misquoted as "I have seen the future, and it works.")

Steffens was born in San Francisco, California, the son of a wealthy businessman, grew up in Sacramento, and studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was first exposed to radical political views.

At McClure's magazine, Steffens became part of the celebrated muckraking trio of himself, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker. He specialized in investigating government corruption, and two collections of his articles were published as The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle for Self-Government (1906), he also wrote The Traitor State, which criticized New Jersey for patronizing incorporation, in a manner similar to what Delaware practices now. In 1906, he departed McClure's, along with Tarbell and Baker, to form American Magazine.

In The Shame of the Cities, Steffens sought to bring about political reform in urban America by appealing to the emotions of Americans. He tried to make them feel very outraged and "shamed" by showing examples of corrupt governments throughout urban America.

In 1910 he covered the Mexican Revolution and began to see revolution as preferable to reform. In 1919, he visited the Soviet Union together with William C. Bullitt and the Swedish Communist Karl Kilbom, and Steffens developed a short-lived enthusiasm for communism that had soured by the time he wrote his memoirs, published in 1931. He was a member of a group that came to be known as the California Writers Project, funded by the New Deal. Some of its members were socialist or communists, while others had little formal interest in politics. The group came to the attention of the FBI as a possible subversive element and files were opened on most members. Steffens came to symbolize this notion.

Further reading

Autobiograpy of Lincoln Steffens (Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, 2005).