In the Manhattan editorial office of McClure's Magazine, one day in 1902, Samuel Sidney McClure gave his goateed managing editor a jolt straight from the shoulder. McClure told Lincoln Steffens: "You don't know how to edit a magazine." Snapped Steffens: "How can I learn?" Said McClure: "You can't learn here . . . Buy a railroad ticket, get on a train, and there, where it lands you, there you will learn." Steffens, then 36, and already a crack reporter (New York Evening-Post), bought a ticket to Chicago. Before his U.S. travels were over, he...
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