(center), and maritime labor leader
Andrew Furuseth (left), Steffens began his journalism career at the
New York Commercial Advertiser in the 1890s, before moving to the
New York Evening Post. From 1902 to 1906, he became an editor of ''
McClure's magazine, where he became part of a celebrated muckraking trio with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker. He specialized in investigating government and political corruption, and two collections of his articles were published as The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle for Self-Government
(1906). He also wrote The Traitor State
(1905), which criticized New Jersey for patronizing incorporation. In 1906, he left McClure's
, along with Tarbell and Baker, to form The American Magazine. In The Shame of the Cities'', Steffens sought to bring about political reform in urban America by appealing to the emotions of Americans. He tried to provoke outrage with examples of corrupt governments throughout urban America. From 1914 to 1915, he covered the
Mexican Revolution and began to see revolution as preferable to reform. In March 1919, he accompanied
William C. Bullitt, a low-level State Department official, on a three-week visit to
Soviet Russia and witnessed the "confusing and difficult" process of society in the process of revolutionary change. He wrote that "Soviet Russia was a revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan", enduring "a temporary condition of evil, which is made tolerable by hope and a plan." After his return, he promoted his view of the
Soviet Revolution and in the course of campaigning for U.S. food aid for Russia made his famous remark about the new Soviet society: "I have seen the future, and it works", a phrase he often repeated with many variations. The title page of his wife
Ella Winter's
Red Virtue: Human Relationships in the New Russia (
Victor Gollancz, 1933) carries this quote. His enthusiasm for
communism soured by the time his memoirs appeared in 1931. The autobiography became a bestseller leading to a short return to prominence for the writer, but Steffens would not be able to capitalize on it as illness cut his lecture tour of America short by 1933. He was a member of the
California Writers Project, a
New Deal program. Steffens married the twenty-six-year-old socialist writer
Leonore (Ella) Sophie Winter in 1924 and moved to Italy, where their son Peter was born in
San Remo. In 1927, they relocated to
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, the most significant art colony on the Pacific Coast, and settled in a cottage close to the intersection of San Antonio Street and Ocean Avenue. The cottage underwent renovation in 1992. During their stay, he authored his autobiography and managed the
Pacific Weekly: A Western Journal of Fact and Opinion. In 1934, Willard Kenneth Bassett (15 February 1887 Oakland, California to 26 January 1954) and his wife Dorthea Castlehoun established
The Pacific Weekly as a Carmel, California
Leftist weekly journal, later, Lincoln Steffens gained control in June 1936. Sara Bard Field was an associate editor and Ella Winter was a literary editor. Ella and Lincoln soon became controversial figures in the leftist politics of the region. When
John O’Shea, one of the local Carmel artists and a friend of the couple, exhibited his study of "Mr. Steffens’ soul", an image which resembled a grotesque daemon, Lincoln took a certain pride in the drawing and enjoyed the publicity it generated. In 1934, Steffens and Winter helped found the
San Francisco Workers' School (later the
California Labor School); Steffens also served there as an advisor. ==Death==