THE SHAME OF THE CITIES BY LINCOLN STEFFENS [Illustration] NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. MCMIV _Copyright, 1904, by_ McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, March, 1904 Second Impression COPYRIGHT, 1902, 1903, BY S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION; AND SOME CONCLUSIONS 3 TWEED DAYS IN ST. LOUIS 29 THE SHAME OF MINNEAPOLIS 63 THE SHAMELESSNESS OF ST. LOUIS 101 PITTSBURG: A CITY ASHAMED 147 PHILADELPHIA: CORRUPT AND CONTENTED 193 CHICAGO: HALF FREE AND FIGHTING ON 233 NEW YORK: GOOD GOVERNMENT TO THE TEST 279 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION; AND SOME CONCLUSIONS This is not a book. It is a collection of articles reprinted from _McClure’s Magazine_. Done as journalism, they are journalism still, and no further pretensions are set up for them in their new dress. This classification may seem pretentious enough; certainly it would if I should confess what claims I make for my profession. But no matter about that; I insist upon the journalism. And there is my justification for separating from the bound volumes of the magazine and republishing, practically without re-editing, my accounts as a reporter of the shame of American cities. They were written with a purpose, they were published serially with a purpose, and they are reprinted now together to further that same purpose, which was and is—to sound for the civic pride of an apparently shameless citizenship. There must be such a thing, we reasoned. All our big boasting could not be empty vanity, nor our pious pretensions hollow sham. American achievements in science, art, and business mean sound abilities at bottom, and our hypocrisy a race sense of fundamental ethics. Even in government we have given proofs of potential greatness, and our political failures are not complete; they are simply ridiculous. But they are ours. Not alone the triumphs and the statesmen, the defeats and the grafters also represent us, and just as truly. Why not see it so and say it?