Who was the investigative journalist who published the History of Standard Oil?
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Show Ida Minerva Tarbell was born in a family farmhouse in Erie County, Pennsylvania in 1857, two years before Edwin Drake discovered oil in the nearby Oil Creek, Titusville, which ushered in the modern oil industry in the USA (Geo ExPro Vol. 6, No. 3). In 1860 her father, Franklin Tarbell, moved the family to Rouseville, a village on Oil Creek, and started manufacturing wooden tanks for oil storage. With more oil discoveries in the region, his business grew, and shortly after he formed a local oil production and refining company. Meanwhile, his family had also grown: Ida now had three younger siblings. In 1870, the family moved to a new house in Titusville. This was also the year John D. Rockefeller established the South Improvement Company (later Standard Oil.) His aim was to integrate the oil industry activities in the US under his umbrella enterprise in order to lessen the mushrooming competition from the numerous small companies, which was reducing oil prices. His ambitious and notorious scheme of buying, entering into partnership, or destroying uncooperative smaller companies eventually made Franklin Tarbell’s company go out of business in 1872. Ida Tarbell, then a curious and studious young girl, witnessed this business brutality with a particular interest. In fall of 1876, Ida entered the Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, the only female student in her class. In 1880, she graduated in biology. For the next two years she taught at a school in Portland, Ohio, and then joined the writing staff of The Chautauqua, a home study magazine at Chautauqua, New York. In 1890, the US Congress passed the Sherman Anti-trust Act, although the government was reluctant to enforce it. The following year, Tarbell went to Paris to study the biography of Madame Roland, a woman intellectual during the French Revolution, and also to work as a free-lance journalist for magazines back home. Samuel McClure, who had founded the McClure’s Magazine in 1884, was impressed by Tarbell’s writings from Paris and commissioned her to write articles on Louis Pasteur and Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1894, Tarbell returned to Pennsylvania, and a year later, she published a series of articles on the biography of Abraham Lincoln in the McClure’s which earned her a national reputation. Taking on Standard
All these experiences prepared Tarbell to take on the task of writing The History of the Standard Oil Company, as a series of articles in the McClure’s. “Don’t do it, Ida,” her father cautioned her, “They will ruin the magazine.” But Tarbell went ahead, interviewing people and investigating all documents with help from an editor friend John M. Siddall. The Standard Oil heard of her investigations, and one of its senior managers Henry H. Rogers requested his friend Mark Twain (the famous novelist) to introduce him to Tarbell. For months, Tarbell had access to Rogers for interviews, which Rogers hoped would make Tarbell’s report “right” in the Standard. Their relations were cordial; especially since both were of the same generation who grew up on the Oil Creek. “I remember your father’s tank shop [in Rouseville],” Rogers told Tarbell. But after Tarbell in one of her articles documented how Standard Oil obtained information from the railroads about the sale and shipments its competitors made and then ensured that the shipments did not reach their destinations, Rogers was furious and did not want to meet with her again. Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company, both as articles in McClure’s and in a 1904 book volume, was well received by the public, the media and by the political supporters of Theodore Roosevelt. He had been elected US President in 1903, and was called by some media the “trustbuster.” In 1905, Tarbell went to Kansas and Oklahoma to cover the recent oil discoveries. In 1906, she helped create The American Magazine (where she served until 1915 and was succeeded by John Siddall as editor). In the same year, Tarbell bought a house in Easton, Connecticut, where she would eventually pass away in 1944 (at age 86) during the turbulent years of World War II. Tarbell’s house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993. In October 2000, Tarbell was listed among the National Women’s Hall of Fame in New York, and the Pennsylvania State House declared November 4 as Ida Tarbell’s Day in that state. In her autobiography, All In the Day’s Work (published in 1939), Tarbell remarked on the Standard Oil Company: “I never had an animus against their size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form. I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and rich as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.” This autobiography, as well as a more recent work, Kathleen Brady’s Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (1984,) are informative sources for additional reading on Tarbell. However, Tarbell herself did not like the title “muckraker,” and preferred that she is viewed as a historian journalist. Who published The History of the Standard Oil Company?Ida M. Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company was first serialized in McClure's Magazine starting in 1902 and then published as a best-selling book in 1904.
What is the name of the journalist who exposed the Standard Oil Company?Muckraking journalism emerged at the end of the 19th century largely in response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, and Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous of the muckrakers.
Who wrote how The History of the Standard Oil Company?The History of the Standard Oil Company is a 1904 book by journalist Ida Tarbell. It is an exposé about the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history.
What did Ida Tarbell expose about Standard Oil?Tarbell, pictured here in 1904, made it the focus of her journalistic career to expose Standard Oil and Rockefeller's brutal business practices. Tarbell later claimed she was opposed to Standard Oil not simply because it was dominant but because of what she perceived to be unfair business practices.
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