SO ferocious was the reputation of the warriors who swept out of the steppes in the 13th century that the appearance of a single Mongol horseman at the gates of a city might be enough to compel its surrender.

In the early 20th century, a lone journalist could, by his very presence, induce American cities to submit as well. Their leading inhabitants disclosed to him their clandestine mingling of business and political affairs, their techniques for corrupting the polling booth and courthouse and police station. So awesome did the journalist's fame become that civic organizations begged him to document their shame, to publicize their failures of democracy. Then he went on to muckrake the states, and then to study the Federal government, and then to witness revolutions in Mexico and Russia. In 1931, in The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, he muckraked himself and produced a classic of American letters.