Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) was the most famous of the American muckraker journalists of the period 1903-1910. His exposés of corruption in government and business helped build support for reform.

Lincoln Steffens was born on April 6, 1866, in Sacramento, Calif. The son of a wealthy businessman, he went to an expensive military academy where he began showing signs of the rebelliousness that would eventually lead him to political radicalism. After barely graduating from the academy, he went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he became convinced that the answers to the great questions of life and politics lay in the study of philosophy. Upon graduating in 1889, he continued his pursuit of "culture" in Europe, studying at universities in Germany and France.

When Steffens returned to New York in 1892, secretly married to an American girl he had met in Germany, he found a $100 check from his father...