Sunshine for Women WHM 2002, ToC | Home

from Brooke Bailey, The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Writers and Journalists (part of the 20th Century Women Series) [Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1994]

As the series name suggests, most of the women listed in the book were born in the last quarter of the 19th century or the 20th century. Tarbell is one of the few women born earlier who is mentioned in this book.

      "Muckrakers" was the name that Theodore Roosevelt gave journalists of the early part of the 20th century who exposed abuses in American business and government. Ida Tarbell, one of the original muckrakers, was able to help shut down the Standard Oil Company monopoly that had hampered her father's efforts in the oil industry in Pennsylvania. Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, irked by her stinging éxpose, dubbed her "Miss Tarbarrel."

      Ida Tarbell was born in a log cabin on a farm in Erie County, Pennsylvania. She was still very young when the family moved to Rouseville to take advantage of Pennsylvania's budding oil industry. Her father was the first to set up a shop that produced the wooden tanks the oil business needed. In school, Ida became fascinated by her science classes. She majored in biology at Allegheny College, but on her graduation in 1880 -- the only woman in a class of forty -- found little to challenge her and was forced to support herself by teaching.

      After two disappointing years at Ohio Poland Union Seminary, Tarbell came home to Pennsylvania and took a low-level position at the monthly Chataquan, a teaching supplement for home study courses. By 1886 she had her own by-line and was the Chataquan's managing editor. In 1891, however, she had grown restless. She left Pennsylvania to do graduate work in French Revolution-era women's history. In Paris, Tarbell wrote articles for American papers and magazines to pay for her living expenses. Her series on Napoleon for McClure's Syndicate gained both Tarbell and McClure's wide acclaim. The series was published as a book in 1895, and was a commercial success. A similar series on Abraham Lincoln was also successfully published as a book in 1900.

      Around the time the Lincoln series was wrapping up, Tarbell began to do some research for a series on Standard Oil, the company which had created a virtual monopoly in the Pennsylvania oil industry. When she was still a student, her father had suffered losses because of Standard Oil's dubious business dealings. Partly motivated by her memories, she uncovered a long-standing arrangement between Standard Oil and the local railroads that gave Standard Oil enormous breaks on freight prices. Other refiners, hamstrung by high freight costs, couldn't compete with Standard and were driven out of business.

      The sixteen-part series ran from 1901 until 1904, when it was published as a book. It attracted quite a bit of attention as a rather sensational indictment of the trust-ridden national oil industry (not just Standard Oil). It also brought attention to the court case against Standard Oil, which ended with a Supreme Court decision that set a new antitrust precedent. Goaded partly by the public reaction to Tarbell's and other journalists' muckraking, Congress passed a Congressional bill that established a Department of Commerce and a Bureau of Corporations.

      The principal members of the staff of McClure's reorganized in 1906 to take over The American Magazine. Tarbell continued to attack trusts by showing that the United States tariff system often benefited companies to the detriment of employees and consumers. Her 1901 book The Tariff in Our Time gained her the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who in 1916 asked her to serve on the Federal Tariff Commission. She declined in order to continue writing.

      After 1915, a large part of Tarbell's schedule included the lecture circuit. She became interested in the peace effort, serving on many committees. She continued to write and to teach biography, and she published on a wide range of topics into her eighties, including a 1926 interview with Benito Mussolini and an autobiography, All In the Day's Work, in 1939. She died at eighty-six on her farm in Connecticut.

To find out more

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

Kachersberger, Robert C., Ed., More Than a Muckraker: Ida Tarbell's Life in Journalism. Knoxville, Tn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1994

Schlipp, Madelan Golden and Murphy, Sharon M., Great Women of the Press, Carbondale, Il.: Southern University Press, 1983

For More Information

      The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida. M. Tarbell

Return to Women's History Month 2002 Table of Contents

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net