Lincoln Steffens Quotes
The longer I live, the more I feel that the individual is not so much to blame - not even the worst individuals, not even the 'best' citizens - as the system of corruption which has grown up about us, and which rewards an honest man with a mere living and a crook with all the magnificence of our magnificent modern life.
Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities. McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904, p. 18.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
What is fascinating about this quotation is that although the head of a religion, Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyles of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
Ireton was one of the leaders of the Parliament faction in the English Civil War. He was such an important figure that when King Charles II regained power after Ireton’s death, Charles II was so rabid that he had Ireton’s body dug up, along with that of Cromwell and John Bradshaw, and mutilated as the would have been had they been executed.
Lincoln Austin Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called "Tweed Days in St. Louis", that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his leftist values.
