The System

The "muckraker" Lincoln Steffens dug deep into business criminality and political corruption in a powerful series of articles written for McClure's magazine. Establishment newspapers and "System" politicians dismissed his work as just another example of the decrepit modern journalism that could never pass for genuine writing. But Steffens' dogged quest for truth and justice set the bar high for investigative journalists in print, television and the Internet who follow in his footsteps. This new collection from The Archive includes the author's detailed and dramatic pieces on the civic troubles in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, and New York. In addition, The System includes early pieces Steffens wrote on architecture and the newspaper business, three pen portraits of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, and eyewitness descriptions of the social turmoil in early Soviet Russia.