Lincoln Steffens: Corruption In The Government

Lincoln Steffens: A reporter who worked at McClure 's and later became a "muckraker" to expose the corruption in the government.

CONTENTS
1 Introduction
2 Industrial Revolution
3 Progressive Era
4 Legacy and Lasting Impact
5 References (Step One)
5.1 Primary Sources (1-3) and Secondary Source (4-5)

Introduction

Steffens was born in San Francisco, California. He grew up in Sacramento and attended a military academy. He than attended Berkeley. Before Steffens worked for McClure 's, he was a reporter for New York Evening Posts. After doing numbers of works for evening post, he became newspaper 's first police reporter. In 1894, investigation of police corruption lead to the arrest of Tammany machine 's candidate for election as mayor in New York. In 1902 he became a muckraker. Muckraker 's Goal was to expose , understand, and promote changes.

Many political machines used this to be elected into government. They would find jobs and places to stay for immigrants, in exchange they would have to vote the political machines into government. After political machines got into government he than would put his friends into office. This made the the government corrupt because the people in office did not do their jobs. Another kind of corruption was people with monopoly would pay the government so they could do want they want or keep monopolizing. Monopolizing made Steffens used his investigating skills and saw that the government was corrupt and wrote about it.

Progressive Era

This was part of the progressive era. The progressive era was finding problem and trying to fix them. Steffens was a muckraker trying to fix the corrupt government. With his Investigating skills and writing skills he showed the people the corruption of the government. After people read about the corruption, they came out ways to prevent the corruption. They came out with the 17th amendment and Sherman Anti Trust Act.

Legacy and Lasting