‘The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.’
The Shame of the Cities was originally published as a series of articles written for McClure’s Magazine. The articles reported on the operations of corrupt political machines in several American cities and some of the efforts made to combat them. The book is now considered to be one of the major pieces of muckraking journalism and an important historical account of machine politics during the Progressive Era.
Lincoln Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the most influential muckrakers of the Progressive Era.