If Christ Came to Chicago: W. T. Stead and Transatlantic Crossings

Abstract The bestselling book, If Christ Came to Chicago , was published in 1894. It was a work of sensationalist, exposé journalism, documenting with titillating details the city’s rampant vice, dire social problems such as unemployment and homelessness, and corrupt officials and politicians. The book was, among other things, a contribution to the Social Gospel movement. It even inspired Charles M. Sheldon’s bestselling novel, In His Steps (1896), with its refrain, “What would Jesus do?” The author of If Christ Came to Chicago , W. T. Stead (1849–1912), however, was an Englishman. Stead’s earlier efforts at the New Journalism had been focused upon London, including his “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” articles and ghostwriting In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890) for the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. When he turned to the Windy City, however, Stead was attacked for being an interloper, a foreigner who should not have presumed to pronounce a harsh judgment upon an American city. One of his responses to this charge was to try to recast himself as an insider through evoking the category of “our common English-speaking race.” This article explores transatlantic crossings, collaborations, and condemnations. Stead himself died in one of the greatest failed transatlantic crossings of the twentieth century, the sinking of the Titanic.