The Shame of the Cities

The Shame of the Cities
AuthorLincoln Steffens
LanguageEnglish
SubjectMunicipal government, political corruption, political machines
GenreMuckraking
PublisherMcClure, Phillips and Company
Publication date
1904
Publication placeUnited States

The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine.[1] It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him "the first muckraker."[2]

Though Steffens' subject was municipal corruption, he did not present his work as an exposé of corruption but wanted to draw attention to the public's complicity in allowing corruption to continue. Steffens tried to advance a theory of city corruption, which he claimed was the result of "big business men" who corrupted city government for their own ends and "the typical business man," average Americans who ignored politics and allowed such corruption to continue. He framed his work as an attempt "to sound for the civic pride of an apparently shameless citizenship" by making the public face their responsibility in the persistence of municipal corruption.[3]

  1. ^ Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 1.
  2. ^ Robert B. Downs, Books that Changed America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 132.
  3. ^ Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 9, 3, 1.