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| (Above) A portrait of Ida Tarbell. source: ESL Notepad, blog. |
Ida Tarbell was born in 1857 in the heart of oil region in
Northwestern Pennsylvania and later established a lasting career as a muckraking journalist.
Tarbell's most noteworthy pieces of journalism was produced after she took on
the oldest, and largest, oil company in the United States, Standard Oil. Standard Oil provided 90 percent of the oil to all business and home in the United States (Streitmatter, 97). Tarbell's investigative work was published in 1902 in McClure's Magazine. In a series of 18 installments, Tarbell exposed some of the ruthless and
competitive actions taken by Standard Oil, behind the scenes, (Streitmatter, 99). In one of Tarbell's installments,
she said:
"The great human tragedies of the Oil Regions lie in the individual compromises which followed the public settlement of 1880. For then it was the man after man, from hopelessness, from disgust, from ambition, from love of money, gave up the fight for principle which he had waged for seven years, (Public Broadcasting Service, "A Journalistic Masterpiece)"
Her work altered public sentiment, and later attracted a large
audience, which resulted in policy change, including the Hepburn Act. The Supreme
Court also ruled Standard Oil violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the company
was then forced to divide into 38 smaller companies throughout the U.S. (Streitmatter).
Ida's investigation landed in the public sphere because it
was riveting to read, and applied to all in the U.S. benefiting from the
use of oil. Her work made an impressive impact on a large company dominating the industry.
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| (above) A snapshot of the front page of Ida's first 18-series installment regarding the Standard Oil Company. source: The Power of the Front Cover, blog |
