Ida Tarbell:
Innovative Woman Journalist







                                

                                
                                Alexandra White
                                March 10, 2003
                                English S
                                Mrs. Leete

Alexandra White

Ida Tarbell

I. Introduction
A.    early life
B.    family’s connection with oil industry
C.    education

II. Body
A.    early career
B.    career with McClure’s Magazine
C.    “The History of Standard Oil”
D.    later career
1.    American Magazine
2.    Feminism

III. Conclusion
A.    Various jobs
1.    Red Cross
2.    Touring lectures
3.    Committees
4.    Last works
B.    Death
C.    Acclamation for works
D.    Understanding of topic

IV.  Works cited



Citation Page


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

2.  Goetz, Philip W., ed.  The New Encyclopedia Britannica.  Vol. 11.  Chicago:
    Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1989.

3.  Hofstadter, Richard.  The Age of Reform.  New York: Vintage Books, 1955.

4.  Hofstadter, Richard, ed.  The Progressive Movement.  New Jersey: Prentice-         Hall, 1963.

5.  Kochersberger, Robert C.  More Than a Muckraker: Ida Tarbell’s Lifetime in
    Journalism.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

6.  Link, Arthur S., and William B. Catton.  American Epoch: A History of the     United States since 1900.  Vol. 1.  New York: Knopf, 1980.

7.  McCullough, Helen. “Ida Tarbell”  23 October 2002: Internet. 5 Feb. 2003.
    Available online: http://tarbell.alleg.edu/.

8.  “People and Events: Ida Tarbell, 1857-1944”  author unknown. Accessed 5     Feb. 2003. Internet. Available online:
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_tarbell.html.

9.  Tarbell, Ida M.  The History of the Standard Oil Company.  New York:     McClure, Phillips and Co., 1904.  Also Available online:
    http://www.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM.

10.  Weinberg, Steve. “Ida Tarbell, Patron Saint” Internet 5 February 2003.     Available online: http://www.cjr.org/year/01/3/tarbell.asp.

11.  Whitman, Alden, ed.  American Reformers. New York: The H.W. Wilson
    Company, 1985.

12.  Yergin, Daniel.  The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.  New     York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.




Ida Tarbell, a reformer in her time, opened the field of modern journalism to women; breaking into a man’s profession with her persistence, intuition and stamina, leaving a legacy to the feminist movement.  Ida contributed her intelligence and hard work to the field of journalism, to foreign affairs, teaching and lecturing.  She helped mold the course of history with her most famous work The History of the Standard Oil Company, in which she redefined investigative reporting and applied the technique to many of her numerous works throughout her career.  The accomplishments made by Ida Tarbell would leave a mark in the profession of journalism and encourage women after her to pursue the same career path, and emulate one of the greatest women journalists of our time.
Ida Minerva Tarbell was born November 5, 1857 in Hatch Hollow, Pennsylvania to parents Franklin Sumner Tarbell and Ester Ann Tarbell, a schoolteacher. (11, 793)  Ida was the eldest of four children; she had one sister and two brothers. (793)
Ida and her family settled in Rouseville, Pennsylvania when oil was discovered in the neighboring “boomtown” of Titusville.  Her father took advantage of the discovery and started a successful business in the production of wooden tanks. (11, 793)  The Tarbell family moved to Titusville in 1870, when Ida was thirteen years old. (794)  It was here that Frank Tarbell joined the Oil War by banding together with other independent oil producers in 1872 to oppose the attempts of the South Improvement Company to monopolize the oil industry in the region.  Frank Tarbell would later advise Ida not to write her series on Standard Oil because he knew the company’s power and knew they could destroy the magazine. (12, 102)
Ida’s official education began when her family moved to Titusville, where she first entered a public school.  Up until that point, Ida’s education came mostly from her own independent reading and observations. (11, 794)  When in school, she became interested in biology and the theory of evolution.  These interests in science forced her to reevaluate her Presbyterian beliefs, as she tried to make religion and science agree.  As a result, she compromised her beliefs so that she still believed in God, but not salvation. (794)
Ida wanted to broaden her education and follow her interests in science, so she attended Allegheny College, a coed Methodist school in Pennsylvania. (11, 794)  She graduated in 1880 with a degree in biology (794) and as the only woman in her class. (8,1)
Despite Ida’s keen interest in the sciences and her extensive knowledge of biology, she could not find a job for a woman in the predominantly male scientific field.  Instead, Ida became a teacher at Poland Union Seminary in Ohio, a more accepted profession for women. (11, 794)  She later resigned from teaching (794) when Theodore L. Flood of The Chautauquan asked her to work on the magazine.  This magazine provided easily accessible information for various home study courses for the public. (794)  Ida’s job on the magazine was to annotate the information; checking dates, translations, pronunciations, and definitions, among other things.  The job worried her not only because she would distress over giving wrong information, but also because she feared she would get too “comfortable” with the job and never do anything else with her life. (5, xxxi)  To rid herself of this fear, Ida left for Paris in 1891 (11, 794) to study history and the French women whose lives had caught her interest. (5, xxxi)  Ida had a particular appeal for women of the French Revolutionary era and the influence they had on the revolution.  This intrigue led her to write a biography of the revolutionary hero, Madame Manon Roland. (11, 794)  This work and numerous others caught the eye of Samuel Sidney McClure, publisher of the newly established McClure’s Magazine.  McClure admired Tarbell’s work and hired her to write for his magazine. (794)  While working with McClure’s, Ida had personal interviews with leading French figures, including Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola and Alexander Dumas fils. (794) Ida also took on the job of historian for the magazine, and wrote a biography of Napoleon in 1894, which first appeared as a series, and was later published as a book titled A Short Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. (794) She also wrote an extensive biography of Abraham Lincoln, with information otherwise unknown and unused in previous biographies.  This series ran from November 1895 to December 1898 and was published in 1900 as The Life of Abraham Lincoln. (794) McClure and his associates decided they wanted to focus on the social issues of their time, such as various American trusts, which were not widely understood by the people.  These ideas were what brought on the concept for Ida’s world-famous report, The History of the Standard Oil Company. (794)
The type of writing and reporting that Ida Tarbell and her contemporaries would become known for was referred to as “muckraking”.  The term originated with President Theodore Roosevelt, who used it in a negative way to refer to the journalists of the progressive movement whose works were “too focused on the vile and debasing” aspects of their topics, namely politicians and corporations.  Roosevelt felt that the works of these so-called “muckrakers” would encourage the people of the country into revolution and towards socialism or anarchism. (12, 106)  The general idea of a muckraker came from a work by Bunyan, called Pilgrim’s Progress in which a man with a muckrake is someone who digs for dirt and concentrates on “carnal instead of spiritual things”.  The story admits that although it is sometimes necessary to see the “vile and debasing”, a muckraker is generally a threat to society and a force of evil. (4, 18)  However, this “threat to society” became very popular amongst readers of the middle class.  They seemed to be intrigued by the uncovering of the shame and corruption of American life. (6, 64)  McClure recognized this interest and touched off the muckraking movement to enhance circulation of his magazine. (3, 192-193) The muckraking movement helped to unify the middle class in the progressive movement, so that it became “a national uprising instead of a series of sporadic campaigns”. (6, 64)
Ida Tarbell started her muckraking career at 43 years old, when she began research for her Standard Oil Company report.  She was the first to really use investigative reporting, as we know it today, redefining this in-depth technique of writing.  Ida’s method was to use various documents concerning the Standard Oil Company, accompanied by interviews of employees, competitors, lawyers and experts on the topic. (10, 1)  McClure had intended for her series to come out in February of 1897, but because Ida had to spend five hard years researching the company, the series first began appearing in November of 1902. (6, 65)  She especially wanted to uncover the deals made for railroad-rates that gave John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil a monopoly on the oil market. (11, 795)  In order to gain such confidential information, Ida needed a direct connection to the company.
    That direct connection came from H.H. Rogers, who was “the most senior and powerful director of Standard Oil”.  Tarbell became acquainted with Rogers through the famous author, Mark Twain, who was a mutual friend of both McClure and Rogers, and who arranged a meeting for Ida. (12, 102-103)  The meetings 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”. (104)
Most of what Ida was researching was the corruption behind the trusts of Standard Oil.  She learned that refiners would make deals with the railroads to regulate prices in their favor, therefore putting independent refiners out of business. (11, 795)  Companies such as South Improvement and Standard Oil would further their monopoly by making agreements to disallow crude oil to be exported to foreign countries, forcing them to buy only their refined oil.  They would also name their own price on the crude oil, seeing as how they were the only company in business and the oil corporation had no choice but to comply. (4, 20)  To add to Ida’s extensive research, she also had a personal familiarity and knowledge of the oil trusts, due to her father’s business.  This, however, caused controversy over the objectivity of her piece, since she may have harbored some kind of resentment to the companies and how they overran her father’s tank business. (11, 795)
The History of the Standard Oil Company was published as a nineteen part series starting in November of 1902 and running through until October of 1904 (8, 2), the same year in which the series was published into a book. (11, 795)  The series immediately became a “bombshell” and “the talk of the nation” (12, 104) as it was very widely read, creating a reputation and following of readers for Ida. (11, 795)  The series was considered a “strong condemnation” of the Standard Oil Company, an expose that turned into “an indictment of business corruption, special privileges and arrogance”. (795)  Ida’s contact, Rogers, was originally satisfied with her article, until he read one installment of the series that revealed how the intelligence network of Standard Oil Company operated.  This infuriated Rogers and he cut off all relationships with Ida. (12, 104)  Ida had never intended for her work to be controversial but “a straightforward narrative history of the Standard Oil Company, as picturesque and dramatic as I can make it, of the great monopoly”. (104)  Despite the overall misconception of the motives behind her series, Ida remained “totally unrepentant” of what she’d written. (105)  She claimed “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”. (105)  
The publication of Ida’s series not only caused public and personal reaction, but also governmental reaction.  President Roosevelt pushed for increased government regulation of companies and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that the Standard Oil Company break itself up into smaller, individual companies to eliminate their monopoly on fuel. (10, 1)  In addition to this, a bill in Congress was passed which established a Department of Commerce with a Bureau of Corporations. (11, 795)  Ida’s series also “quickened the antitrust prosecution of the Standard Oil Company by the federal government”. (795)
In 1905, Ida continued her work concerning the Standard Oil Company by writing a personal portrait of John D. Rockefeller.  The portrait was a bit of a contemptible piece, which ratted on Rockefeller’s appearance and “moral decrepitude”. (12, 106)  Ida insulted him by calling him “the oldest man in the world, a living mummy”, “money-mad” and “a hypocrite”. (8, 2)  Rockefeller did not let this go without a retort in his defense.  He replied by saying “…whenever a man succeeds remarkably well in any particular line of business, they jump on him and cry him down”. (12, 106) Rockefeller called Ida a “poisonous woman” (8, 2) and began referring to her as “Miss Tar Barrel”.  Ida soon became sarcastically known as Rockefeller’s “lady friend”. (12, 106)
After Ida’s long experience with the Standard Oil Company and others involved with it, she shifted her focus to concentrate on feminist issues.  Despite her parent’s support of women’s suffrage (11, 795) and her own unintentional contributions to the feminist movement, Ida did not support women’s suffrage. (1, 202-203)  She wrote a series called “The American Woman” which ran from November 1909 to May 1910, which showed that the “status of women had been advanced by the American Revolution and Civil War but had been eroded with industrialization”. (11, 795)  Ida believed that there was an “immense moral force” in all women and that suffrage would “dissipate that force”. (795) She also held negative feelings toward marriage, which she blamed on her mother, which may explain why she never married. (1, 202-203)  Many of her later works, such as The Business of Being a Woman and Making a Man of Herself, would display her personal opinion that a woman’s place at home was “more important than a public life” (11, 795) and would cause conflict amongst feminists and suffragettes such as Jane Addams and Helen Keller. (1, 202-203)  The feminists who were offended by Ida’s works claimed that there was “some limitation to Ida Tarbell’s mind” and that she was “getting too old to understand the changing world and the role of women”. (202-203)  However, they were not completely justified in their accusations against Ida, nor was Ida completely against all aspects of feminism.  The one thing that Ida did credit to women was that they made excellent inventors, and she had always disliked the common belief that “men had invented the world”.  She believed that women had large possibilities in the field of invention, and were not limited to “clothes and kitchen”. (5, 129)
After a falling out with McClure, the magazine broke up in 1906 and Ida and her colleagues purchased the former Leslie’s Weekly Magazine (1, 181) and formed the Phillips Publishing Company and the American Magazine. (11, 795)  The goal of the new American Magazine was to be “interesting and important in a public way, but…the most stirring and delightful monthly book of fiction, humor, sentiment and joyous reading that is anywhere published”. (1, 181)  Ida’s first piece for the new magazine was a history of the protective tariff during the period of the Civil War, called “The Tariff of Our Time” which was published in 1911.  Ida viewed tariffs as another form of trusts, sacrificing the interests of those under the influence of the protective tariff. (11, 795)
Ida was also very interested in the various techniques in industry used in factories across America.  So, from 1912 to 1915, Ida visited American factories to observe their systems and employee welfare.  She approved of the methods of Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford and as a result of all her observations, she published “New Ideas in Business” in 1916.  She also wrote biographies of important, impressive businessmen, such as Elbert H. Gary of the U.S. Steel and Owen D. Young of General Electric. (11, 795)
The American Magazine was sold in 1915, at which point Ida began lecturing for the Coit-Alber Lecture Bureau, which was a part of the Chautauquan movement.  The Chautauquan movement was an organization providing lectures and other sources of information for people across America who could not obtain the education elsewhere.  She lectured on subjects of unemployment, American business and its future, scientific management methods, disarmament and the League of Nations. (11, 796)  Ida had to start earning money to pay off various expenses, so she began touring the country with the Chautauquan group to give lectures to people. (1, 217-218)  Ida also worked as a free-lance journalist during this time, writing for Women’s Home Companion and published “The Ways of Women” in 1915. (11, 796)
In 1916, Ida received recognition from the federal government when President Woodrow Wilson offered her a position on the new Federal Tariff Commission, but she declined, preferring to continue to work on her journalism. (11, 795)  
    During World War I, Ida was asked to accompany Henry Ford’s Peace Ship to advocate peace in Europe, but she declined because she did not agree with their methods.  Both Jane Addams and S.S. McClure took part in it, but Ida knew that America would end up getting involved, despite efforts to maintain the peace. (1, 215-216)
    During and after the war, Ida served on committees such as the Women’s Committee of the Council for National Defense and was a correspondent for the Red Cross Magazine. (11, 796)  In 1919, after the war, Ida was a delegate to President Wilson’s Industrial Conference and was also sent to the Versailles Treaty. (796)  Furthermore, Ida covered the Naval Disarmament Conference in Washington D.C. and reported for the Red Cross her findings of mass destruction and devastation in Europe after the war. (1, 222)  
    After her overseas work reporting on peace negotiations, Ida came back home and wrote free-lance for McCall’s Magazine.  She wrote two articles for them; one about Florida land expansion and the other on fascist leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini. (1, 237-238)  Ida traveled to Italy in 1926 to interview Mussolini and was actually impressed with his work, excluding the dictatorial aspects of his government. (11, 796)  At this point, Ida also took the time to update her series on oil trusts. (1, 237-238)
    Ida’s health had begun to deteriorate as early as 1916 when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and then, more seriously, Parkinson’s Disease.  The doctors had believed Ida to be overworked and far underweight, but since there was no cure for Parkinson’s Disease, she was told not to worry about it. (1, 218-219)  In 1937, Ida turned eighty years old, whereupon she was showered with adoration and recognition of her life’s work from many people. (253)  In 1939, she published her autobiography, All in a Day’s Work (11, 796) after which she started a book she lightheartedly called Life After Eighty. (1, 253)  However, Ida became weaker and her conditions worsened.  Due to heart problems, she could no longer physically write, but this could not stop her from doing what she loved, as she taught herself how to type.  Towards the end of her life, Ida had aids and nurses helping her, and also her sister Sarah caring for her. (254)  Around Christmas in 1943, Ida fell into a coma (255).  Having never finished her final book, Ida Tarbell died on January 6, 1944 in Bridgeport, Connecticut (2, 560) of pneumonia at the age of eighty-six. (11, 796)  She was buried in the Tarbell family plot in Titus, Pennsylvania in Woodlawn Cemetery. (796)
    Ida Tarbell was a hard-working, dedicated journalist who contributed an amazing talent to the field, and led the way for others succeeding her.  She loved a challenge and never backed down from a task.  She enjoyed working long and hard on an assignment, overcoming all obstacles that stood in her way.  She was a firm believer of working on something you cared about, resulting in a dignified and satisfying piece of work. (5, 203)  Standing tall at six feet, she commanded respect from all with her grave, quiet authority. (12, 101)  Ida’s lifetime of accomplishments was commemorated in many ways in recent years.  In 1999, The History of the Standard Oil Company was named number five amongst the top one hundred works of twentieth century journalism.  Ida was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in a ceremony held in Seneca Falls on October 7, 2000.  Lastly, the U.S. postal service honored four women journalists in a collection of stamps, including Ida Tarbell. (7, 1)  These accolades were well earned by and well deserved for Ida Tarbell, whose devotion and contributions to journalism are celebrated every day by those following in her footsteps today.  


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