It goes with out saying that with her fathers success came a more privileged life in which she was exposed to the arts, to education, and to a love of reading. Over and over again she snagged any material possible and began to gain interest in the world outside her own. When the time came to graduate from high school, Tarbell was head of her class, and so she went on to study at Allegheny College, and would soon after land her first publication job –a teaching one none the less, at The Chautauquan. After a fallout with the editor she wound up in France during the French Revolution, during this time she would interview many influential people on the movement and put her intuitiveness to work. After her stint in France she came to back to America and began working her way up at McClure’s Magazine where she would become on authority on Abraham Lincoln after writing a 20-part series on the late president, and in turn establish herself as a true journalist in America. (Tarbell, 1939)

Her central moment as an American journalist arrived in the form of an exposé, The History of the Standard Oil Company a 19-part series grew to become Ida’s most historical work. In the series Ida exposed Rockefeller’s unethical tactics. A pioneer in what we now call investigative journalism, Ida set forth with hundreds of documents, interviews –an amount of work rare to the business those years. Tarbell would bring Rockefeller’s strong-arming in the industry to the forefront and help shape the progressive era in which this was yet another example of big business marginalizing smaller businesses and consumers, all the while being labeled a “muckraker” by businessmen and political leaders at the time –a term not viewed upon in a positive manor in her time. The portrayals of her work in a negative light never affected her effort, and she kept on using her investigative power to shed light on the abuses she witnesses. It also is important to note that she did not condemn capitalism itself, but “the open disregard of decent ethical business practices by capitalists.” (Brevard, 2010, p.33) Remaining as impartial as possible, even with stories that struck close to home. Rockefeller’s Stand Oil Company’s methods, once revealed by Ida, outraged the public and led the government to prosecute the company for violations of the Sherman anti-trust act of 1890. (Somervill, 202, p.48) Realization of fairness in the marketplace was one step closer.

Be sure to read parts I and III.

References

Brevard, K. M. (2010). The story of oil: how it changed the world. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books.

Somervill, B. A. (2002). Ida Tarbell: pioneer investigative reporter. Greensboro, N.C.: M. Reynolds..

Tarbell, I. M. (1939). All in the day’s work;. New York: The Macmillan Co..

While a truly enduring representation of American journalism at its finest, Ida Minerva Tarbell contributed much more than her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company. Ida Tarbell stands as a woman who was successful at what many in her era were not, journalism. From childhood, Ida closely observed and with a profound curiosity questioned everything and anything and later applied this inquisitiveness to her life and career. A woman who dared to think beyond what was being presented to her by her friends, family, colleagues, ministers and the like set the ideals for honest journalism.

Of truly humble beginnings –even for mid-1800’s standards, Ida was to be born in a log house in Erie County Pennsylvania (Tarbell, 1939, p.8) With a story beginning like most other immigrants at the time, her parents strived for land of their own, for success, and a westward move that would occupy most family planning through Ida’s early years in which Ida’s father would work in Iowa while striving to earn enough money to bring his family along with him, yet this isn’t the most important part of her life, and there is no defining moment –only sets of moments, that in which she begins to notice the things in life that are out of place or wrong in her view, and question them. At the age of a year and a half Ida’s father, Frank Tarbell, moved back after success evaded him in Iowa, and as the story was told to and then by Ida “I deeply resented the intimacy between he strange man and my mothers so far my exclusive possession. Flinging my arms around my mother, so the story went, I cried ‘Go away, bad man.’” (Tarbell, 1939, p.8) As Ida’s childhood progressed, her farther took advantage of the Pennsylvania boom at the time and used his skills to build wooden oil storage tanks of which later opened opportunities to become an oil producer and refiner, she was growing up feet from her fathers work and witnessed success, tragedies of workers, wives, and news of presidents lost to an assassin –the world which would define her up-bringing. Throughout her 1939 autobiography All in the day’s work patterns other than her curiosity arise, yes she questions, but she also observed. In one case she wondered what exactly dictated whether objects tossed in the creek floated or sank to the bottom –to add one more to the list, she led her younger brother to a footbridge near her house and dropped him in, it turns out to her delight, even after being spanked she remembered “only the peace of satisfied curiosity in the certainty that my brother belonged to the category of things which floated” (Tarbell. p.8) Exhibiting her tenacity for getting to the bottom of things.

Be sure to read parts II and III.

References

Brevard, K. M. (2010). The story of oil: how it changed the world. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books.

Somervill, B. A. (2002). Ida Tarbell: pioneer investigative reporter. Greensboro, N.C.: M. Reynolds..

Tarbell, I. M. (1939). All in the day’s work;. New York: The Macmillan Co..