The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens

The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, published in 1931, recounts the pioneering investigative journalist’s life in his own very quotable words. Beginning with his childhood in Sacramento during the early days of California statehood, Steffens describes how he began his career in journalism and developed the leftist politics that ended with his embrace of Soviet Communism. Steffens is remembered today as one of the first “muckraking” journalists, who helped to make the investigation of corruption central to the profession in the United States.

Steffens was born in San Francisco, the only son of wealthy businessman Joseph Steffens and his wife, Elizabeth, but his earliest memories take place in the state capital, Sacramento. His family home would later become the California Governor’s Mansion. The first two hundred pages of Steffens’s memoir recount an idyllic childhood spent exploring the city and its hinterland on the back of a beloved pony. His curiosity endears him to the people he encounters, and he learns many lessons that point to his future career. For instance, he realizes at a young age that the horse races which his father loves to bet on are fixed, to take advantage of “suckers.” The adult Steffens reflects that even then, though he loved his father, he “did not care for suckers,” and resolved never to become one.

Steffens leaves home to pursue a degree at Berkeley, although later he would come to think little of the education he gained there: “It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done; not often.” As well as a degree, Steffens acquires a secret fiancée during his time in Berkeley.



Upon graduation, Steffens asks his father to fund a trip to Europe. There, he studies psychology and philosophy under notable figures in Leipzig, Paris, and other major cities, but he continues to find education frustrating. His teachers “could not agree upon what was knowledge, nor upon what was good and what evil, nor why.”

When he lands in New York, the twenty-six-year-old Steffens finds a letter from his father waiting for him. Enclosed with $100, the letter instructs him “to stay in New York and hustle” until he has learned the “practical side” of life. In Europe, Steffens married his fiancée (still without mentioning her to his family), so he feels he has no choice but to do as he is told.

Soon, Steffens finds work at the New York Commercial Advertiser, although what the older Steffens chiefly remembers from that time is not the work but the afternoons spent drinking on the fire escape and throwing grapefruits at pedestrians. Steffens moves on to the New York Evening Post and later McClure’s Magazine. There, together with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker, Steffens helps to pioneer the magazine’s brand of investigative journalism. Steffens’s specialism is exposing corruption in local governments. He publishes two collections of articles, The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle For Self-Government (1906), as well as a book, The Traitor State (1905) about New Jersey’s decision to patronize incorporation. He develops an interest in the systemic nature of political corruption, seeking to move past the belief “that political evils were due to bad men of some sort and curable by the substitution of good men.”



In 1906, Steffens, Tarbell, and Baker leave McClure’s to establish The American Magazine. Their stated mission is to provoke the outrage of American citizens by exposing the corruption of government officials. However, the magazine’s impact does not live up to its editors’ expectations.

Steffens covers the Mexican Revolution 1914 through 1915; here he begins to develop a conviction that revolution might be more effective than reform. When the Russian Revolution breaks out, Steffens remains open-minded to Soviet Communism, accompanying a State Department official on a three-week visit to the newly-formed Russian Soviet Republic. Although he witnesses a “confusing and difficult” situation there, he concludes that it is “a temporary condition of evil, which is made tolerable by hope and a plan.”

Steffens becomes a staunch Communist, and on his return to the U.S. declares, “I have seen the future, and it works.” He becomes involved in activism on behalf of Russia, raising food aid in the U.S., and marries Communist writer Ella Winter.



His increasing leftism alienates Steffens’ American readership, and in 1924, he and Winter leave for Europe, where he continues to involve himself in revolutionary politics. He moves at the center of Paris’s circle of ex-pat writers and intellectuals: when Hadley Richardson famously lost a suitcase full of Ernest Hemingway’s manuscripts, she was taking them to Steffens for his perusal.

The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens revived its author’s reputation in the United States, and he returned to his native California, where he continued to be involved in leftist activism. His Autobiography is regarded as a fascinating account of early twentieth-century American politics, enlivened by Steffens’ wit and journalistic skill.