1866-1936
Muckraker

A Privileged Boyhood.

When they had a son the year after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Lincoln Steffens's parents named their child in honor of the fallen leader. Steffens grew up in Sacramento with all the privileges of wealth. He loved horseback riding, literature, and writing and attended the University of California, Berkeley. Afterward he went to Germany to study philosophy and then to Paris to study psychology. When he arrived home with a new wife, he found that his father expected him to make his own living immediately. He secured a job covering Wall Street for the New York Evening Post.

Business and Politics Mix.

Covering the financial community, Steffens observed the strong and corrupt connections between powerful business interests and government at every level. He admired the men who, having been drawn into a corrupt system, used their knowledge to help...