Ida Tarbell

Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857January 6, 1944) was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer, and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was a pioneer of investigative journalism.

Born in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the oil boom, Tarbell is best known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company. The book was first published as a series of articles in McClure's from 1902 to 1904. It has been called a "masterpiece of investigative journalism", by historian J. North Conway, as well as "the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States" by historian Daniel Yergin. The work contributed to the dissolution of the Standard Oil monopoly and helped usher in the Hepburn Act of 1906, the Mann-Elkins Act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

Tarbell also wrote several biographies over the course of her 64-year career. She wrote biographies on Madame Roland and Napoleon. Tarbell believed that "the Truth and motivations of powerful human beings could be discovered." That Truth, she became convinced, could be conveyed in such a way as "to precipitate meaningful social change." She wrote numerous books and works on Abraham Lincoln, including ones that focused on his early life and career. After her exposé on Standard Oil and character study of John D. Rockefeller, she wrote biographies of businessmen Elbert Henry Gary, chairman of U.S. Steel, and Owen D. Young, president of General Electric.

A prolific writer and lecturer, Tarbell was known for taking complex subjects — such as the oil industry, tariffs, labor practices — and breaking them down into informative and easily understood articles. Her articles drove circulation at McClure's Magazine and The American Magazine and many of her books were popular with the general American public. After a successful career as both writer and editor for McClure's Magazine, Tarbell left with several other editors to buy and publish The American Magazine. Tarbell also traveled to all of the then 48 states on the lecture circuit and spoke on subjects including the evils of war, world peace, American politics, trusts, tariffs, labor practices, and women's issues.

Tarbell took part in professional organizations and served on two Presidential committees. She helped form the Authors’ League (now the Author's Guild) and was President of the Pen and Brush Club for 30 years. During World War I, she served on President Woodrow Wilson's Women's Committee on the Council of National Defense. After the war, Tarbell served on President Warren G. Harding's 1921 Unemployment Conference.

Tarbell, who never married, is often considered a feminist by her actions, although she was critical of the women's suffrage movement.

Early life and education

Tarbell was born on a farm in Erie County, Pennsylvania, on November 5, 1857, to Esther Ann (née McCullough), a teacher, and Franklin Summer Tarbell, a teacher and a joiner and later an oilman. She was born in the log cabin home of her maternal grandfather, Walter Raleigh McCullough, a Scots-Irish pioneer, and his wife. Her father's distant immigrant ancestors had settled in New England in the 17th century. Tarbell was told by her grandmother that they were descended from Sir Walter Raleigh, a member of George Washington's staff, and also the first American Episcopalian bishop. Tarbell had three younger siblings: Walter, Franklin, Jr., and Sarah. Franklin, Jr. died of scarlet fever at a young age and Sarah, also afflicted, would remain physically weakened throughout her life. Walter became an oilman like his father, while Sarah was an artist.

thumb|left|A Pennsylvania oil field in 1862Ida Tarbell's early life in the oil fields of Pennsylvania would have an impact when she later wrote on the Standard Oil Company and on labor practices. The Panic of 1857 hit the Tarbell family hard as banks collapsed and the Tarbells lost their savings. Franklin Tarbell was away in Iowa building a family homestead when Ida was born. Franklin had to abandon the Iowan house and return to Pennsylvania. With no money, he walked across the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to return, and supported himself along the way by teaching in rural schools. When he returned, ragged from his 18-month journey, young Ida Tarbell was said to have told him, "Go away, bad man!"

The Tarbells' fortune would turn as the Pennsylvania oil rush began in 1859. They lived in the western region of Pennsylvania as new oil fields were being developed, utterly changing the regional economy. Oil, she would write in her autobiography, opened “a rich field for tricksters, swindlers, exploiters of vice in every known form.” Tarbell's father first used his trade to build wooden oil storage tanks. The family lived in a shack with a workshop for Franklin in an oil field with twenty-five oil wells. Oil was everywhere in the sand, pits, and puddles. Tarbell wrote of the experience, "No industry of man in its early days has ever been more destructive of beauty, order, decency, than the production of petroleum."

In 1860, Ida's father moved the family to Rouseville, Pennsylvania. Accidents that occurred in Rouseville impacted Ida Tarbell deeply. Town founder and neighbor Henry Rouse was drilling for oil when a flame hit natural gas coming from a pump. Rouse survived a few hours, which gave him just enough time to write his will and leave his million-dollar estate to the other settlers to build roads. In total, 18 men were killed, and the Tarbells' mother, Esther, cared for one of the burn victims in their home. In another incident, three women died in a kitchen explosion. Tarbell was not allowed to see the bodies, but she sneaked into the room where the women awaited burial. Tarbell suffered from nightmares for the rest of her life.

After the Rouseville boom was finished in 1869, the family moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania. Tarbell's father built a family house at 324 Main Street using lumber and fixtures from the defunct Bonta Hotel in Pithole, Pennsylvania.

Tarbell's father later became an oil producer and refiner in Venango County. Franklin's business, along with those of many other small businessmen, was adversely affected by the South Improvement Company scheme (circa 1872) between the railroads and more substantial oil interests where in less than four months during what was later known as "The Cleveland Conquest" or "The Cleveland Massacre," Standard Oil absorbed 22 of its 26 Cleveland competitors. Later, Tarbell would vividly recall this event in her writing, in which she accused the leaders of the Standard Oil Company of using unfair tactics to put her father and many small oil companies out of business. The South Improvement Company secretly worked with the railroads to raise the rates on oil shipment for independent oil men. The members of South Improvement Company received discounts and rebates to offset the rates and put the independents out of business. Franklin Tarbell participated against the South Improvement Company through marches and tipping over Standard Oil railroad tankers. The government of Pennsylvania eventually moved to disband the South Improvement Company.

The Tarbells were socially active, entertaining prohibitionists and women's suffragists. Her family subscribed to Harper's Weekly, Harper's Monthly, and the New York Tribune and it was there that Ida Tarbell followed the events of the Civil War. Tarbell would also sneak into the family worker's bunkhouse to read copies of the Police Gazette—a gruesome tabloid. Her family was Methodist and attended church twice a week. Esther Tarbell supported women's rights and entertained women such as Mary Livermore and Frances E. Willard.

thumb|right|Ruter Hall, Allegheny College

Ida Tarbell was intelligent—but also undisciplined in the classroom. According to reports by Tarbell herself, she paid little attention in class and was often truant until one teacher set her straight: "She told me the plain and ugly truth about myself that day, and as I sat there, looking her straight in the face, too proud to show any feeling, but shamed as I never had been before and never have been since." Tarbell was especially interested in the sciences, and she began comparing the landscape around her in Pennsylvania to what she was learning in school. "Here I was suddenly on a ground which meant something to me. From childhood, plants, insects, stones were what I saw when I went abroad, what I brought home to press, to put into bottles, to litter up the house... I had never realized that they were subjects for study... School suddenly became exciting."

Tarbell graduated at the head of her high school class in Titusville and went on to study biology at Allegheny College in 1876, where she was the only woman in her class of 41. Tarbell had an interest in evolutionary biology—at her childhood home she spent many hours with a microscope—and said of her interest in science, "The quest for the truth had been born in me... the most essential of man's quests." One of Tarbell's professors, Jeremiah Tingley, allowed her to use the college's microscope for study and Tarbell used it to study the Common Mudpuppy, a foot-long amphibian that used both gills and a lung and thought to be a missing link.

Tarbell displayed leadership at Allegheny. She was a founding member of the local sorority that became the Mu chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority in 1876. Tarbell also led the charge to place a sophomore stone on campus dedicated to learning and with the Latin phrase, Spes sibi quisque, which translates to "Everyone is his/her own hope". She was a member of the campus women's literary society, the Ossoli Society, named after writer Margaret Fuller Ossoli, and wrote for the society's publication, the Mosaic.

Tarbell graduated in 1880 with an A.B. degree and an M.A. degree in 1883. Tarbell later supported the university by serving on the board of trustees, to which she was first elected in 1912. She was the second woman to serve as a trustee and held the post for more than three decades.

Early career

thumb|left|Ida Minerva Tarbell, 1890Tarbell left school seeking to contribute to society but unsure of how to do so, she became a teacher. Tarbell began her career as headmistress at Poland Union Seminary in Poland, Ohio in August 1880. The school was both a high school and provided continuing education courses for local teachers. Tarbell taught classes in geology, botany, geometry, and trigonometry as well as languages: Greek, Latin, French, and German. After two years, she realized teaching was too much for her, and she returned home. She was exhausted by the workload and exasperated by the low wages which meant she had to borrow money from her parents.

Tarbell returned to Pennsylvania, where she met Theodore L. Flood, editor of The Chautauquan, a teaching supplement for home study courses at Chautauqua, New York. Tarbell's family was familiar with the movement which encouraged adult education and self-study. She was quick to accept Flood's offer to write for the publication. Initially, Tarbell worked two weeks at the Meadville, Pennsylvania headquarters and worked two weeks at home. This allowed her to continue her own study at home in biology using microscopes. She became managing editor in 1886, and her duties included proofreading, answering reader questions, providing proper pronunciation of certain words, translating foreign phrases, identifying characters, and defining words.

Tarbell began writing brief items for the magazine before working up to longer features as she established her writing style and voice. Her first article was 'The Arts and Industries of Cincinnati' and appeared in December 1886. According to Steve Weinberg in Taking on the Trust, this was when Tarbell established a style that would carry throughout her career: "Tarbell would imbue her articles, essays, and books with moral content, grounded in her unwavering rectitude. That rectitude, while sometimes suggesting inflexibility, drove her instincts for reform, a vital element in her future confrontation with Rockefeller."

Tarbell wrote two articles that showcased her conflicting views on the roles of women that would follow her through her life. Tarbell's article, "Women as Inventors," was published in the March 1887 issue of The Chautauquan. When an article written by Mary Lowe Dickinson claimed the number of women patent owners to be about 300—and that women would never become successful inventors—Tarbell's curiosity was sparked and she began her own investigation. Tarbell traveled to the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., and met with the head of the department, R. C. McGill. McGill had put together a list of close to 2,000 women. Tarbell wrote in the article, "Three things worth knowing and believing: that women have invented a large number of useful articles; that these patents are not confined to 'clothes and kitchen' devices as the skeptical masculine mind avers; that invention is a field in which woman has large possibilities." Tarbell later followed this article up with a showcase on women in journalism in April 1887. The article contained history, journalism practices, and advice including a warning that journalism was an open field for women, and yet women should refrain from shedding tears easily and appearing weak.

Tarbell balked at being a "hired gal" and decided to strike out on her own after a falling out with Theodore Flood. Tarbell decided to follow her father's philosophy that it was better to work for oneself than to be a hired hand. She began researching women from history including Germaine de Staël and Madame Roland for inspiration and as subject matter for her writing. The real reason for the fall-out with Flood remains a mystery, but one reason may have been the placement of his son's name on the Masthead above Tarbell's own. Another hinted that her family had reason to seek revenge on him.

Paris in the 1890s

Leaving the security of The Chautauquan, Tarbell moved to Paris in 1891 at age 34 to live and work. She shared an apartment on the Rue du Sommerard with three women friends from The Chautauquan. The apartment was within a few blocks of the Panthéon, Notre-Dame de Paris, and the Sorbonne. This was an exciting time in Paris. The Eiffel Tower had been finished recently in 1889, and Tarbell and her friends enjoyed the art produced by Impressionists including Degas, Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh. Tarbell described the color of the art as "the blues and greens fairly howl they are so bright and intense." Tarbell attended the Can-can at the Moulin Rouge and in a letter to her family she advised them to read Mark Twain's description of it in The Innocents Abroad as she didn't like to write about it.

Tarbell had an active social life in Paris. She and her flatmates hosted a language salon where both English and French speakers could come together and practice their non-native language skills. Her landlady, Madame Bonnet, held weekly dinners for the women and her other tenants. These tenants included young men from Egypt, and among them was Prince Said Toussoum, a cousin of the Egyptian ruler. Tarbell met and had a possible romance with Charles Downer Hazen, a future French historian and professor at Smith College.

thumb|The Pantheon in Paris, ca. 1890-1900

Tarbell set about making her career as a writer in Paris. She supported herself by writing for several American newspapers including the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the Cincinnati Times-Star, and the Chicago Tribune. Tarbell published the short story, France Adorée, in the December 1891 issue of Scribner's Magazine. All of this work, along with a tutorship, helped Tarbell as she worked on her first biography, a book on Madame Roland: the leader of an influential salon during the French Revolution. Tarbell already wanted to rescue women from the obscurity of history. Her research led her to an introduction to Leon Marillier, a descendant of Roland who provided access to Roland's letters and family papers. Marillier invited Tarbell to visit the Roland Country estate, Le Clos.

Tarbell continued her education in Paris and also learned investigative and research techniques used by French historians. Tarbell attended lectures at the Sorbonne—including those on the history of the French Revolution, 18th-century literature, and period painting. She learned from French historians how to present evidence in a clear, compelling style.

What Tarbell discovered about Madame Roland changed her own worldview. She began the biography with admiration for Roland but grew disillusioned as she researched and learned more. Tarbell determined that Roland, who followed her husband's lead, was not the independent thinker she had imagined and was complicit in creating an atmosphere where violence led to the Terror and her own execution. She wrote of Roland, "This woman had been one of the steadiest influences to violence, willing, even eager, to use this terrible revolutionary force, so bewildering and terrifying to me, to accomplish her ends, childishly believing herself and her friends strong enough to control it when they needed it no longer. The heaviest blow to my self-confidence so far was my loss of faith in revolution as a divine weapon. Not since I discovered the world not to have been made in six days...had I been so intellectually and spiritually upset."

It was during this time that Tarbell received bad news and then a shock. Franklin Tarbell's business partner had committed suicide, leaving Franklin in debt. Subsequently, a July 1892 newspaper announced that Tarbell's hometown of Titusville had been completely destroyed by flood and fire. Over 150 people died, and she feared her family was among them. Oil Creek had flooded and inflammable material on the water had ignited and exploded. Tarbell was relieved when she received a one-word cablegram that read: "Safe!" Her family and their home had been spared.

right|thumb|upright=1.3|McClure's Christmas 1903 cover

McClure's Magazine

Tarbell had published articles with the syndicate run by publisher Samuel McClure, and McClure had read a Tarbell article called The Paving of the Streets of Paris by Monsieur Alphand, which described how the French carried out large public works. Impressed, McClure told his partner John S. Philips, "This girl can write. We need to get her to do some work for our magazine". The magazine he was referring to was McClure's Magazine, a new venture that he and Philips were intending to launch to appeal to the average middle-class reader. Convinced that Tarbell was just the kind of writer that he wanted to work for him, he showed up at Tarbell's door in Paris while on a scheduled visit to France in 1892 to offer her the editor position at the new magazine.

Tarbell described McClure as a "will-of-the-wisp". He overstayed his visit, missed his train, and had to borrow $40 from Tarbell to travel on to Geneva. Tarbell assumed she would never see the money again which was for her vacation, but his offices wired over the money the next day. Tarbell initially turned him down so she could continue working on the Roland biography but McClure was determined. Next, the art director for McClure's, August Jaccaci, made a visit to Tarbell to show her the maiden issue of the magazine.

Instead of taking up the editor position at McClure's, Tarbell began writing freelance articles for the magazine. She wrote articles about women intellectuals and writers in Paris as well as scientists. She hoped articles such as "A Paris Press Woman" for the Boston Transcript in 1893 would provide a blueprint for women journalists and writers. She interviewed Louis Pasteur for an 1893 article, visiting with Pasteur and going through his family photographs for the magazine. She returned to Pasteur again to find out his views on the future. This piece turned into a regular report on "The Edge of the Future." Others interviewed for the report included Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Alexandre Dumas fils. Tarbell took on the role of the magazine's Paris representative. Tarbell was then offered the position of youth editor to replace Frances Hodgson Burnett. When her biography of Madame Roland was finished, Tarbell returned home and joined the staff of McClure's for a salary of $3,000 a year.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Tarbell returned from Paris in the summer of 1894,

Writing style and methodology

Tarbell was known for her strong work ethic in writing. Tarbell's early background in the sciences brought a touch of scientific inquiry to her investigations. Each statement she made was supported by facts so much so that her early works have been described as drowning in facts. Her method was also scholarly and driven by the demands of magazine deadlines. She could dictate as many as twenty letters a day from a "To Be Answered" pile on her desk.

Tarbell was extremely thorough when conducting research. At the time she began Lincoln's biography, he had been dead for only 30 years, and Tarbell traveled far and wide interviewing Lincoln's contemporaries. Her research uncovered more than 300 documents including unpublished speeches, letters, pictures and personal anecdotes. It was through the use of well-selected anecdotes in her biographies that Tarbell was able to breathe life into the subject and offer new perspectives. When writing a biography, Tarbell suggested that the writer should "start by wiping out of his mind all that he knows about the man, start as if you had never before heard of him. Everything then is fresh, new. Your mind, feeding on this fresh material, sees things in a new way". Tarbell's inclusion of anecdotes gave new perspectives to her subjects. Tarbell double-checked the Lincoln articles for accuracy by sending them out to those whose information she had included.

Tarbell's writing has been described by a biographer as fair and professional, (though some later observers have been less kind, accusing her of cherry picking data to support her conclusions) and her methods have been used widely to train other investigative journalists. When conducting and presenting the details about Standard Oil's business practices she wanted to present her materials as historical documentation and narrative. Tarbell's technique in researching corporations through government documents, lawsuits, and interviews managed to break through a secretive corporation and evasive CEO.

Tarbell liked to work from a desk covered in research materials. While working on The History of Standard Oil, Tarbell worked from home in her study with a break once a day to go to the McClure's office. At home in New York, she sat on a bentwood chair at a partners desk with messy heaps of paper. Tarbell would gather the books, transcripts, and clippings she needed, put them in order and write. When a chapter was finished and handed in, she reviewed the material again and rearranged its order for her next installment. On her Connecticut farm, Tarbell worked from a mahogany desk in a sunny library.

Representation in other media

Charles Klein's political play, The Lion and the Mouse (1905), opened soon after Tarbell's series on Standard Oil had been published in McClure's Magazine, and the plot was thought to be based on her campaign. (Its title is that of an Aesop's fable.) Its 686 continuous performances set a record for any American play in New York, and four road companies took the play on the road.

Drunk History Season 5 Episode 6 titled "Underdogs" features Shannon Woodward as Tarbell. Retelling by John Gabrus.

Selected works

Books

nominally by Charles Anderson Dana, was actually written by Ida Tarbell; it was "a biographical essay disguised as a memoir."

Selected articles

"The Arts and Industries of Cincinnati." Chautauquan, December 1886, 160–62.
"Women as Inventors." Chautauquan, March 1887, 355–57.
"Women in Journalism." Chautauquan, April 1887, 393–95.
"Pasteur at Home." McClure's Magazine, September 1893, 327–40.
"In the Streets of Paris." New England Magazine, November 1893, 259–64.
"The Identification of Criminals." McClure's Magazine, March 1894, 355–69.
"Napoleon Bonaparte." McClure's Magazine, November 1894 – April 1895.
"Abraham Lincoln." McClure's Magazine, November 1895 – November 1896.
"The History of the Standard Oil Company." McClure's Magazine, November 1902 – July 1903; December 1903 – October 1904.
"John D. Rockefeller: A Character Study." Parts 1 and 2. McClure's Magazine, July 1905, 227–49; August 1905, 386–97.
"Commercial Machiavellianism." McClure's Magazine, March 1906, 453–63.
"Tariff in Our Times." American Magazine, December 1906, January 1907, March–June 1907.
"Roosevelt vs. Rockefeller." American Magazine, December 1907 – February 1908.
"The American Woman." American Magazine, November 1909 – May 1910.
"The Uneasy Woman." American Magazine, January 1912.
"The Business of Being a Woman." American Magazine, March 1912, 563–68.
"Flying — A Dream Come True!" American Magazine, November 1913, 65–66.
"The Golden Rule in Business" American Magazine, October 1914 – September 1915.
"Florida — and Then What?" McCall's Magazine, May–August 1926.
"The Greatest Story in the World Today?" McCall's Magazine, November 1926 – February 1927.
"As Ida Tarbell Looks at Prohibition" Delineator, October 1930, 17.

References

Citations

Sources

External links

The Ida M. Tarbell Collection of Lincolniana at Allegheny College
Works by Ida Tarbell at Open Library
The Ida Tarbell Home Page
The Ida Tarbell Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections