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''The Shame of the Cities'' is a book by Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for ''McClure’s Magazine''.〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Shame of the Cities'' (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 1.〕 It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major U.S. cities, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, though Steffens later claimed that this work made him "the first muckraker."〔Robert B. Downs, ''Books that Changed America'' (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 132.〕 Though Steffens' subject was municipal corruption, he did not present his work as an exposé of corruption; rather, he wanted to draw attention to the public's complicity in allowing corruption to continue. Steffens tried to advance a theory of city corruption: corruption, 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.〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Shame of the Cities'' (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 9, 3, 1.〕 ==Background== Steffens began working on the articles that would become ''The Shame of the Cities'' after he joined the staff of ''McClure's'' in 1901. He had been hired as a managing editor for the magazine, but, as Steffens biographers note, he struggled with the job.〔Robert B. Downs, ''Books that Changed America'' (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 133; Patrick F. Palermo, ''Lincoln Steffens'' (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978), 37.〕 Steffens writes that S. S. McClure, the magazine's co-founder, sent him on an open-ended assignment to learn how to become an editor. According to Steffens, McClure said, "Get out of here, travel, go—somewhere. Go out in the advertising department. Ask them where they have transportation credit. Buy a railroad ticket, get on a train, and there, where it lands you, there you will learn to edit a magazine."〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 364.〕 After setting out in the spring of 1902, Steffens learned of and arranged a meeting with Joseph W. Folk, the recently elected circuit attorney of St. Louis.〔Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 103.〕 Folk had been elected thanks to a temporary alliance between a business-backed reform movement and Edward Butler, the boss of the city’s Democratic Party machine; Butler allied with the reformers, in part, to help get his son elected to Congress.〔Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 105.〕 After his election, though, Folk launched a massive investigation into the city’s corruption, arresting many prominent St. Louis legislators and businessmen, while scaring others into fleeing the state—and, in some cases, fleeing the country.〔Robert B. Downs, ''Books that Changed America'' (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 135.〕 Steffens was not the first author of "Tweed Days in St. Louis", the ''McClure’s'' piece detailing Folk’s investigation of Butler’s machine; he initially commissioned Claude Wetmore, a St. Louis author, to write the piece. Wetmore, according to Steffens biographer Justin Kaplan, "was an honest reporter, but he happened to live in St. Louis and he wanted to continue to live there. And so Wetmore steered a middle course, left out crucial names and facts, went easy on prominent citizens went easy even on Butler, who was to come to trial that summer".〔Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 106.〕 Steffens rewrote the article from scratch, adding all of the details Wetmore had left out; Wetmore, in turn, insisted that Steffens sign the article as well, so that he too would be targeted when St. Louis citizens accused them of slander.〔Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 105-106.〕 Steffens' next assignment was in Minneapolis. He claimed that McClure tried to take editorial control of his story. According to Steffens, before he left for Minneapolis, McClure told him that his next article would "point out that democracy is at fault (urban corruption ), that one man has to run a city just as one man has to run a business to make it a success. …We had a pretty hot fight, and McClure won. What I went to Minneapolis to write about was that democracy was a failure and that a good dictator was what is needed."〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 374.〕 McClure had also been concerned by the anti-business bias he perceived in "Tweed Days in St. Louis.〔Peter Hartshorn, ''I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens'' (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 99; Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 109.〕 In Minneapolis, Steffens discovered a massive system of graft headed by the mayor, Dr. Albert Alonzo Ames. He learned that the mayor and the police, consulting professional criminals for advice, had organized a citywide system to extract bribes from the city’s houses of prostitution, which were actually forbidden under city law, and its saloons.〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 376-377.〕 He also obtained and publicized "The Big Mitt Ledger", an accounting book a group of card cheats used to record their winnings and the bribes they paid to city officials.〔Justin Kaplan, ''Lincoln Steffens: A Biography'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 111.〕 McClure and Steffens argued over what city to cover next: Steffens wanted to return to St. Louis, while McClure wanted Steffens to investigate Chicago. Chicago, McClure thought, would have even more corruption than Minneapolis, leading to even greater public interest and magazine sales. Ida Tarbell helped settle their dispute in Steffens' favor, and he returned to St. Louis to continue writing about Folk’s efforts to clean up the city.〔Peter Hartshorn, ''I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens'' (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 103.〕 Steffens then received a request from the children of the late Jay Gould to investigate Pittsburgh, where, they claimed, they had evidence that the dominant political machines were conspiring to keep them out of the city’s railroad business. Though the Goulds decided not to help Steffens after all once he arrived in the city, Steffens found a different ally: Oliver McClintock, a businessman who had spent years learning about the city’s corruption on his own. Using McClintock’s findings, Steffens published his article on Pittsburgh in the May 1903 issue of McClure’s.〔Peter Hartshorn, ''I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens'' (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 105.〕 Steffens then traveled to Philadelphia. In his autobiography, Steffens notes that he expected Philadelphia to be like every other city he had visited, but that he was surprised by his findings there. The city government was still corrupt despite having been reformed; in fact, he found, the city’s charter, known as the Bullitt Charter, centralized power in the mayor’s office—a reform Steffens himself had suggested in the past. Because of his findings in Philadelphia, Steffens later wrote, he "had to note a…new and startling theory, viz.: that the form of government did not matter; that constitutions and charters did not affect essentially the actual government".〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 409.〕 After finishing in Philadelphia, Steffens, at McClure’s suggestion, went to Chicago, expecting to find sensational corruption. He did not find the story he anticipated. Instead, as he learned from talking to Chicago reformer Walter L. Fisher, Chicago reformers had waged a long campaign against corrupt politicians, and had actually taken control of the city legislature. After his article about Chicago received a positive popular response, Steffens returned to New York to write a final article about good city governance.〔Peter Hartshorn, ''I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens'' (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 108-109.〕 When politicians backed by the Tammany Hall political machine won the New York elections of 1903, ousting the good government Steffens had praised, Steffens, feeling "all up in the air", traveled to Cos Cob, Connecticut, where he adapted these articles into ''The Shame of the Cities''. McClure, Philips, and Co. first published the book in 1904.〔Lincoln Steffens, ''The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931), 434.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Shame of the Cities」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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