Tarbell, Ida M.
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Wikipedia-Article "Ida M. Tarbell"
Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857–January 6, 1944) was an author and journalist, known as one of the leading "muckrakers", whose famous exposé of the nefarious business practices of the Standard Oil Company established her as a pioneer of investigative journalism.
Ida Tarbell was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Two of her brothers knew Abraham Lincoln, and her father was an oil producer whose business failed due the ruthlessly anti-competitive practices of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company. These connections would prove influential in her later career. She received her bachelor's degree in 1880 and her master's in 1883, both from Allegheny College.
She was hired by McClure's magazine in 1894, and her series on Abraham Lincoln nearly doubled the magazine's circulation. She soon turned to investigative journalism, and she and her fellow staff members Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens became a celebrated muckraking trio.
Tarbell became acquainted with Henry H. Rogers, who by then was the most senior and powerful director of Standard Oil, through his friend, Mark Twain. Meetings between Tarbell and Rogers began in January of 1902 and continued regularly over the next two years. Tarbell would bring up various case histories and Rogers would provide for her an explanation, documents and figures concerning the case. Rogers was surprisingly open with Tarbell, as he knew she would write the series with or without his help, and he wanted to make sure her information was correct, and for the company's case to be made right.
Following extensive interviews with Rogers, her investigation of Standard Oil for McClure's ran in 19 parts from November 1902 to October 1904. These were collected and published as The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. It came fifth in a 1999 list of the top 100 works of journalism in the 20th century.
Although public opposition to Rockefeller and Standard Oil existed prior to Tarbell's investigation, her work fueled public attacks on Standard Oil and on trusts in general, and the book is credited with hastening the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil. "They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me", she wrote about the company.
In 1906, Tarbell, Baker, Steffens, and editor John Phillips left McClure's and bought American Magazine, where they departed from the muckraking style and adopted a more optimistic approach. She and most of the rest of the staff left the magazine in 1915. During this time, Tarbell also contributed to Collier's Weekly.
Tarbell's other books include Life of Abraham Lincoln (1900), The Business of Being a Woman (1912), The Ways of Women (1915), biographies of Elbert H. Gary (1925) and Owen D. Young (1932), The Nationalizing of Business, 1878–1898 (1936), and her autobiography, All in the Day's Work (1939).
She died of pneumonia in 1944, at the age of 86.
On October 7, 2000, Ida Tarbell was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. On September 14, 2002, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Tarbell as part of a series of four stamps honoring women journalists.
See also
External links
- Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870-1930, Ida Tarbell (1857–1944). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Ida Tarbell.
- The Ida Tarbell Home Page
- American Experience: The Rockefellers
- National Women's Hall of Fame - Ida Tarbell
- The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell
- Works by Ida M. Tarbell at Project Gutenberg