"Autobiography of Lincoln Steffans," bookjacket, 2005. Larger.
Since its founding in 1868, The University of California has become one of the world's most prestigious universities, one of our state's proudest institutions.
In his 1931 autobiography, muckraker and magazine editor Lincoln Steffens recounts one of his earliest memories of his life at Cal, confronting authority at the University and taking great pride in the power of a rebellious assembly.
One evening, before I had matriculated, I was taken out by some upper classmen to teach the president a lesson. He had been the head of a private preparatory school, and was trying to govern the private lives and public morals of university "men" as he had those of his schoolboys. Fetching a long ladder, the upperclassmen thrust it through a front window of Prexy's house, and to the chant of obscene songs, swung it back and forth, up and down, round and round, till everything breakable within sounded broken. He was allowed to resign sonn thereafter and I noticed that not only the students but many faculty and regents rejoiced in his downfall.
Steffens' willingness to question authority, even as a student at Berkeley, undoubtedly lay the foundations for later works, like his 1904 muckraking classic Shame of the Cities.
"Lincoln Seffens," photographed by Rockwood, 1894. Larger.
"I've seen the future and it works," said muckraking writer Lincoln Steffens about the Soviet Union. And even if Steffens got it wrong about the USSR, there's still plenty he got right in his muckraking career.
But before Steffens became a leading proponent of social change, he spent his boyhood growing up on horseback in Sacramento then attending the University of California, where thanks to his equestrian skills the socially backward Steffens excelled in an unlikely area.
I shone only in the military department. The commandant, a U.S. Army officer, seeing that I had had previous training, told me to drill the awkward squad of my class, and when I had made of them the best-drilled company in college, he gave me the next freshman class to drill. In the following years I was always drill-master of the freshman and finally commanded the whole cadet corps. Thus I led my class in the most unpopular and meaningless of undergraduate activities. I despised it myself, prizing it only for the chances it gave me to swank and, once a week, to lord it over my fellow students, who nicknamed me the "D.S."—damn stinker.
After attending the University of California, Steffens studied in Europe and then wrote a study of government corruption, the 1904 book The Shame of the Cities.
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