Realist--

Realist*

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP LINCOLN STEFFENS--Two Vols.--Harcourt, Brace ($7,50)./-

Lincoln Steffens is old and grey but not full of sleep. And what he has to say is nobody's pipe-dream but a meaty, marrowy, seasoned report on an active life which many a reader will envy.

Steffens was born in San Francisco (1866) but he took the whole corrupt U. S. to be his province. He learned about city politics from Manhattan of the 1890's. first as police reporter on the Evening Post, then as city editor of The Commercial Advertiser. His personal popularity with crooks and grafters, combined with unassailable integrity and a trenchant style, soon put him in the first rank of reformist journalism, in the forefront of those of whom his great & good friend Theodore Roosevelt dubbed "muckrakers." Steffens came into national prominence with his series in McClure's Magazine on the "shame of the cities": factual but highly colored articles exposing the corrupt politics of Philadelphia, St. Louis. Minneapolis, Pittsburgh. From firsthand, expert knowledge of political crooks Steffens gradually came to like them, began to despair of righteous people, to disbelieve in the value of reform. Some (but they would be illadvised) might take him for a cynic. In his estimates of the history he shared he is realistic; only in his prophecy does he tinge his phrase with a shade of bitterness. ''My prophecy, from the British peak of Europe, is that we also shall have a government of the people by gentlemen for the business men."

Steffens' most noteworthy trait was his ability as an interviewer. From the hardest-boiled bosses he wrung the most astounding admissions. Modestly he explains his success by attributing it to a realization of his own sinfulness. Once he had stepped out of the reformer's attitude; "I was never again mistaken for an honest man by a crook. . . . The politicians . . . and the consciously corrupting business leaders have ever since acted with me upon the understanding that I was one of them. It facilitated my work; it explains much of my success in getting at the facts of a situation."

Not an active disbeliever in capitalist economics, Steffens is skeptical of them; thinks not only that business controls government but that politicians are venal by profession. His journalism might be said to have been more revelatory than reformist. His (implicit) advice: find the facts, clear your soul of cant.

/-Published April 9. *New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City. *Published April 10.

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