Lincoln Steffens This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Pay to Play: The FBI Bug in the Mayor's Office and the Corruption Investigation

   www.orchardpressmysteries.com/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/16/2003   Last Visited: 5/13/2006

   A hundred years ago Lincoln Steffens wrote that Philadelphia was corrupt and contented.
   
   Philadelphians are nothing if not proud of our history, so it was no surprise to me that Philadelphia Mayor John Street was recently reelected despite the discovery of a FBI bug in his city hall office shortly before the election. The news of the bug and the subsequent story that his administration was being investigated for illegally issuing city contracts to campaign contributors actually helped invigorate his campaign.

2. 2. The shame of Minneapolis -- 100 years ago

   www.startribune.com/stories/46 - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/8/2003   Last Visited: 1/8/2003

   His name was Lincoln Steffens, and his article was titled "The Shame of Minneapolis." It ran in the nationally known McClure's Magazine in January 1903. In painful detail, Steffens blew the whistle on Minneapolis city government.
   
   That word "Shame" caught the public eye, but the Steffens article had a subtitle that was less grabby: "The Rescue and Redemption of a City That Was Sold Out." Steffens credited the people and the process that cleaned up the town.
   
   Minneapolis City Hall in 1902
   
   Minneapolis Tribune/ Minnesota Historical Society
   
   ...
   Here's how Steffens told the story:
   
   Minneapolis back then had grown to a population of more than 200,000. Immigrants from Norway and Sweden had streamed in. But "Yankees settled the town, and their New England spirit predominates." The people "work hard, they make money, they are sober, satisfied, busy with their own affairs. There isn't much time for public business."
   
   ...
   Steffens wrote that Ames was vain and led a loose life. He came to most enjoy the society of the barroom and the streets. If a man was a hard drinker, Ames cheered him with another drink. If he had stolen something, Ames helped to get him off.
   
   He changed political parties to get ahead. He rose from smaller offices to be a Republican mayor, then twice was a Democratic mayor. His political success was confined to the city; he lost races for Congress and governor.
   
   According to Steffens, Ames neglected his own family in favor of friends downtown. The worst was shortly before the election of 1900. His wife died. The family wouldn't have him at the funeral. "But he appeared -- not at the house, but in a carriage across the street. He sat across the way, with his feet up and a cigar in his mouth, till the funeral moved; then he circled around, crossing it and meeting it, and making altogether a scene which might well close any man's career."
   
   ...
   It did not arouse the citizens, Steffens contended, but it did attract criminals. More and more thieves and swindlers came hurrying to Minneapolis: "There was room for all. This astonishing fact that the government of a city asked criminals to rob the people is fully established. The police and the criminals confessed it separately."
   
   The good guys
   
   ...
   "He did not want to be a grand juryman, he did not want to be a foreman; but since he was both, he wanted to accomplish something," Steffens wrote.
   
   ...
   Steffens wrote, "A gentleman who knew him by sight saw him sitting up at 11 o'clock in the smoking room of the sleeping-car, an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his face ashen and drawn, and at 6 o'clock the next morning he still was sitting there, his cigar still unlighted." Ames went to an Indiana health resort, "a sick and broken man, aging years in a month."
   
   Ames never served jail time. His henchmen did. That included his brother, sentenced to six years in Stillwater Prison. The city was without a mayor, the ring was without a leader.
   ...
   To Steffens, Jones had decided that "Minneapolis should be clean and sweet for a little while at least, and the new administration should begin with a clear deck."
   
   So in Nathanson's opinion, Steffens' "The Shame of Minneapolis" was a classic morality tale, with good triumphing over evil. It took a group of courageous reformers to oust the crooks from City Hall and restore decency and morality to Minneapolis' government.
   
   What: Talk by Iric Nathanson, local historian, about the century-old City Hall scandals.
   
   Where: Hennepin History Museum, 2303 3rd Av. S., Minneapolis.
   
   ...
   Lincoln Steffens led the muckrakers Excerpt from 'Shame of the Cities' (American Social History Project)
   
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