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Ida Tarbell, Muckraker

Page history last edited by jung95@... 15 years, 3 months ago

 

"Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists—with it all things are possible" ~Ida M. Tarbell

 

   

 

     Ida Minerva Tarbell was born November 5, 1857 in a log cabin in Hatch Hollow, located in northwestern Pennsylvania. This area was a region that relied heavily on the oil industry and she grew up with a father that was an oil producer and refiner, amidst the Southern Improvement Company Scheme of 1872. This was a hidden agreement between the railroads and oil refiners, led by John D. Rockefeller, that adversely affected many small businessmen of the region, including her father. This resentment would later be the inspiration for perhaps her most famous work, nearly 30 years later, the History of the Standard Oil Company.

 

            Tarbell graduated from Allegheny College in 1880 as the only woman in her class. She moved to Ohio to teach science but after just two years gave it up to write for the editor of a small magazine near her hometown in Pennsylvania, The Chautauquan. Tarbell’s drive to have a successful career pushed her to invest enormous time and effort into her writing and to pursue research projects, such as the story of Madame Roland, leader of an infamous salon during the French Revolution. Tarbell was so enthralled with the story that she moved to Paris at the age of 34 in order to write Roland’s biography.

 

Here, Tarbell further supported herself by writing articles about Paris for popular magazines and attracted the attention of Samuel Sidney McClure, the editor of a new monthly magazine titled McClure’s. Tarbell was hired as an editor in 1894 and became one of the magazine’s most successful writers. She researched and wrote a series on Abraham Lincoln that doubled the circulation of the magazine and with a best-selling biography of Napoleon presented in series form and that sold more than 100,000 copies, established herself as one of the best historical writers of the time.

 

However, events close to home caught her attention and brought her back to the states, spurring what is perhaps her most famous work, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Monopolistic trusts were quickly rising and changing the economic landscape of America, specifically in the small Pennsylvania town she grew up in. Although other investigative journalists, dubbed “muckrakers” by President Theodore Roosevelt, wrote about the Standard Oil company in an effort to expose its corruption, Tarbell launched a personal campaign against it, writing what was originally supposed to be a three-part but turned into a 19-part series for McClure’s that was later turned into a book. Her father feared that owner of Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, would retaliate against the magazine and urged her not to write the piece, but she worked for nearly two years to build a substantial and well-researched case. She delved into piles of public records, court testimonies, state and federal reports and other newspaper coverage to gather the information necessary to translate Rockefeller’s complicated business practices into a story that the reader could easily understand.

 

 It published between 1902 and 1904 and was an instant hit with readers. Many historians say that it was Tarbell’s eloquent writing style that captivated readers and encouraged them to read her work. The series was basically a highly detailed expose of Rockefeller’s unethical practices and portrayed the troubles of Pennsylvania’s independent oil workers in a sympathetic light. She seemed to admire and much as she denounced the company’s flawless business structure, writing “They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.” Tarbell finished off her series with a two-part character study that clearly showed the fascination she had developed with Rockefeller. She used phrases like “the oldest man in the world—a living mummy,” “money-mad” and “our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises” to draw readers in and encourage them to deeply understand him on her level. Rockefeller retaliated by publically calling her “that poisonous woman.”

 

The History of the Standard Oil Company is seen as a landmark in investigative journalism, putting McClure’s at the top of American magazine circulation. It spurred strong negative sentiment against Standard Oil and is considered a contributing factor in the government antitrust action that ultimately led to the company’s breakup in 1911. Throughout her career and beyond, Tarbell hated being called a muckraker and preferred to be called a “fact-finder” or historian.

 

In 1906 Tarbell and other investigative journalists from McClure’s purchased their own journal titled American Magazine. Tarbell’s major contributions were about another issue regarding monopolies, the high protective tariff as another way for trusts to gain monopolistic control. The magazine was sold to Crowell Publishing Company in 1915 and it was at this time that Tarbell began her 17 year lecturing tour on the Chautauqua Circuit. She spoke on a variety of topics, especially on the need for social responsibility in business, problems of peace, the Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations and disarmament.

 

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Tarbell to the Women’s Committee of the Council on National Defense. After the war she attended the Paris Peace Conference as a correspondent for Red Cross Magazine. In 1919 she was named delegate to Wilson’s Industrial Conference and in 1921 to President Harding’s Conference on Unemployment. The next year in 1922 the New York Times named her as one of the 12 most important women in America. In 1925 she traveled to Italy to interview and observe new radical fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

 

Tarbell penned her autobiography All In The Day’s Work in 1939 at age 82 and died of pneumonia in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1944 at age 86. In 1993, the home she bought with money from her Standard Oil series, the Ida Tarbell House, was declared a National Historic Landmark, and in 1999 The New York Times ranked The History of the Standard Oil Company No. 5 on its list of top 100 works of journalism of the 20th century. In 2000 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, and the Pennsylvania State House declared November 4 as “Ida Tarbell Day” because "Ida Tarbell's passion for truth and knowledge is an enduring legacy for the citizens of this Commonwealth and deserves special recognition." In 2002 the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring her as part of a series of stamps honoring fellow women journalists Marguerite Higgins, Ethel Payne, and Nellie Bly.

  

 

Other works by Ida M. Tarbell:

The Tariff in Our Times (1911)

The Business of Being a Woman (1912) 

Ways of a Woman (1915)

New Idealism Business: An Account of Their Practice and Their Effects Upon Men and Profits (1916)

Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise (1922)

 

 

Read Tarbell's infamous expose History of the Standard Oil Company, broken down by chapter at http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM

 

Read Tarbell's other well known work, The Business of Being a Woman at http://books.google.com/books?id=Zq_LUrKuwIYC&dq=ida+tarbell+articles&pg=PP1&ots=PSLuPyHLxd&source=in&sig=-7s0qA3M9SUd2BIG86omVlfLjx0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result#PPA1,M1

 

Read Tarbell's autobiography at http://books.google.com/books?id=qrZBbVRIO10C&dq=ida+tarbell+articles&pg=PP1&ots=kuFGEqbJW0&source=in&sig=8zwRkfWmjYJWTvHRyZ9rDGz8uRc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=13&ct=result#PPA252,M1

 

Check out a book review of a new book by Steve Weinberg, Taking on the Trust: the Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller at http://www.newsobserver.com/print/sunday/sunday_journal/story/1027110.html

 

View the page dedicated to Tarbell at the National Women's Hall of Fame Web site at http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=156

 

  

 

 

References

 

1) Brady, Kathleen. Portrait of a Muckraker. New York: Seaview/Putnam,1984.

This book gives a detailed description of Ida Tarbell's life and career. It includes information about her early life and her various works, focusing on the ones that made her famous.

 

2) Marzolf, Marion. Up From the Footnote. New York: Hastings House Publisher, 1977.

This book provides a very basic overview of Tarbell's life and career. It is presented in chronological fashion with emphasis on her Standard Oil series, the piece that she is most known for.

 

3) Ritchie, Donald A. American Journalists: Getting the Story. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 172-177

This book provides a good summary of Tarbell's career with sidebars that lay out basic biographical information and a list of her major works. It clearly shows how Tarbell contributed to the muckraking era and pioneered this new form of journalism.

 

4) Schilpp, Madelon G. Great Women of the Press. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. 103-112

This book gives an overview of Tarbell's early life and career, with particular details regarding her most famous works. It also explains why she didn't like to be labeled a "muckraker" and provides information about her efforts after the peak of her writing career.

 

5) "Ida Tarbell." American Experience. 2000. PBS. 1 Nov. 2008 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_tarbell.html>.

This Web site provides a readable biography with good analysis of Tarbell's major works, focusing primarily on her Standard Oil series. It also contains links to further analysis and excerpts of this series.

 

6) McCullough, Helen. "Ida M. Tarbell." Ida Tarbell Homepage. 2005. Allegheny College. 1 Nov. 2008 <http://tarbell.allegheny.edu/>.

 This is a home page on the Allegheny College Web site maintained by the campus library. It provides good biographical information, analysis of some of Tarbell's major works, further reading, and current news about Tarbell, such as her induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

 

Comments (3)

Howie Good said

at 9:51 pm on Nov 23, 2008

Very nice. . . I highlighted one sentence that really goes clunk. . . Wrap up her life and achievement in next graf or two

Howie Good said

at 1:57 am on Nov 30, 2008

Wonderful job. Really admirable work.

jung95@... said

at 7:04 pm on Dec 7, 2008

Oh, thanks! =)

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