Ida Tarbell and the Fall of the Standard Oil Trust

Ida Tarbell was the American journalist who documented how Standard Oil eliminated its rivals. She was 43 when she decided to investigate Rockefeller's company, and she did not come to the subject by chance: she had grown up in the oil region, and her father's business had been hurt by the same company's methods.

1857-1872A Childhood in the Oil Region

Tarbell was born on 5 November 1857 at Hatch Hollow in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Franklin, was a carpenter and teacher, and her mother, Esther, had also taught. The financial panic of her birth year wiped out the family's savings, and Franklin gave up a plan to farm in Iowa and came home about eighteen months later.^[2]

What changed the family's life was the oil found nearby in 1859. After Edwin Drake's well at Titusville, money and people poured into the area. Franklin, a carpenter, saw the part of the trade that suited him: building wooden tanks for oil. In 1860 he moved the family to Rouseville on Oil Creek, and later went into producing oil himself.^[2][4] Ida grew up among wells, fires and mud. When the Rouseville boom faded, the family moved to Titusville in 1869.

When Ida was 14, in early 1872, came the event that shook her father's business. A group of refiners and the railroads had made a secret deal through a scheme called the South Improvement Company. Members would get rebates on their own freight and a share of what rivals paid. One of the men behind it was John D. Rockefeller. About 3,000 people gathered at the Titusville opera house, producers stopped selling crude, and the Pennsylvania legislature revoked the charter. The scheme collapsed, but in those same weeks Rockefeller bought most of his Cleveland rivals.^[2][3]

Franklin Tarbell chose to stay independent, and his business never fully recovered. Years later a partner's suicide also left him in debt.^[2] Standard Oil was a topic among Ida's family and neighbours long before it was a story for her.

1876-1891The Only Girl in the Class and First Jobs

She finished high school at the top of her class and entered Allegheny College in 1876, the only girl among 41 students. She studied biology and graduated in 1880. Few professions were open to women, and teaching was the obvious path. In August 1880 she became preceptress at Poland Union Seminary in Ohio, and left about two years later.^[2]

That led her into journalism. Theodore Flood published The Chautauquan, the magazine of the Chautauqua education movement, and Tarbell went to work for him. Within a few years she was running the editorial side, and from 1886 she wrote under her own name. Her 1887 piece "Women as Inventors" led to a falling out with Flood, and she chose to make a living by writing.^[2]

1891-1899Paris, McClure and Lincoln

In 1891, at 34, she went to Paris on her savings. She wanted to write a biography of Madame Roland, a woman of the French Revolution, and paid her way by selling pieces to American magazines. In July 1892 she read that Titusville had been destroyed by flood and fire, and learned from a one-word telegram that her family was safe.^[2]

That same year the publisher Samuel S. McClure called on her in Paris. He liked her writing and offered her an editor's job on his new McClure's Magazine. She declined at first in order to finish her book, but began writing for him. In 1894 McClure asked her for a series on Napoleon. It lifted circulation, and she returned to New York and joined the staff. For the Lincoln series that followed, she interviewed people who had known him, turned up more than 300 documents and had her sources check what she wrote. Circulation passed 250,000.^[1][2] This series set the method she would use next: sources first, then writing.

1900-1901Why Standard Oil

At the turn of the century, trusts topped the American agenda. Big companies were merging and readers wanted to know how. McClure's editors decided to explain the subject through one example. Steel and sugar were discussed, but oil was chosen, for two reasons. Standard Oil was the first and largest modern trust, and Tarbell knew that world from the inside.^[2]

She went to see McClure in Europe and got his approval. Together they settled the form: the magazine would tell the story like the Napoleon series, as a biography with a beginning and an end. When her father heard about it he tried to talk her out of it, fearing the company would ruin the magazine.^[1][2]

1901-1902The Research

Tarbell handed her desk work to Lincoln Steffens and started work with her assistant, John Siddall. Their method was simple. The company had spent thirty years facing lawsuits, legislative inquiries and complaints, so much of what it had done was already on public record. The two went through court transcripts, legislative reports and old newspapers one by one.^[1][4]

An unexpected door opened as well. Standard Oil approached the writer Mark Twain to find out what the magazine was preparing. Twain was a close friend of the company's vice president, Henry H. Rogers. McClure told Twain to ask Tarbell, and Twain asked her whether she would meet Rogers. Rogers came from the oil region and had once been a neighbour of the Tarbells. She agreed, while making clear that she alone would judge what she wrote. The meetings began in early 1902 and lasted about two years. Rogers answered her questions and defended the company.^[1][2]

Railroad records ended the relationship. A young clerk at a Standard Oil facility passed Tarbell secret reports in which railroad staff told the company about rivals' shipments. The papers were supposed to be burned every month. The magazine ran them in an instalment called "Cutting to Kill". At their next meeting Rogers asked where she had found them. It was their last meeting.^[1]

1902-1904The Series and the Book

The series began in McClure's in November 1902 and ran for 19 instalments until October 1904. Its tone was calm. Railroad rebates, refineries bought out and small firms closed were set down with dates and figures, and readers' anger came from that composure. The two-volume book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, appeared in 1904 and sold well.^[2][4]

The series ran for 19 instalments, from November 1902 to October 1904.

Rockefeller made no public reply. He told those around him that he had rescued Cleveland's firms from failure, and to him she was "Miss Tarbarrel". The Oil City Derrick, a paper friendly to the company, greeted the book with the headline "hysterical woman".^[1][3] Tarbell saw him up close only once. On a Sunday in 1903 she went to his church in Cleveland and watched the 64-year-old throughout the service. Her "John D. Rockefeller: A Character Study", published in July and August 1905, was a harsh portrait that left the series' calm behind and went as far as his looks.^[1]

1905-1911Roosevelt and the Court

The publication moved politics too. In February 1905 Congress told the Bureau of Corporations to examine oil prices, and its reports backed up what Tarbell had written. President Theodore Roosevelt made use of such writing at first, then tired of it, and in an April 1906 speech called these journalists "muckrakers". Tarbell never liked the name.^[2]

The federal government sued Standard Oil in 1906. On 15 May 1911 the US Supreme Court ordered the company broken up. The case ran on its own evidence, but the text that did most to prepare the public for that ruling was Tarbell's.^[1][2]

1906-1944Later Years

In June 1906 she left McClure's with John S. Phillips. Together they bought The American Magazine, where she worked until 1915. The same year she bought a farm in Connecticut, where she settled in old age.^[2][5]

Her later years show someone harder to label. The fearless critic of the trusts kept her distance from the campaign for women's votes, and her 1912 piece "Making a Man of Herself" drew the anger of the women's movement. During the First World War President Wilson called her to the women's committee, and she attended two presidential conferences, in 1919 and 1921. In the 1920s she wrote biographies of the businessmen Elbert Gary and Owen D. Young.^[2]

She published her memoir, All in the Day's Work. She died of pneumonia in Bridgeport on 6 January 1944, aged 86. In 1999 New York University ranked her book fifth among the hundred best works of 20th-century American journalism.^[2][5]

Frequently asked questions

Who was Ida Tarbell?

Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) was the American investigative journalist known for The History of the Standard Oil Company.

Why did Ida Tarbell investigate Standard Oil?

McClure's wanted to explain the trusts through one company. Tarbell had grown up in the oil region and her father's business had suffered from the South Improvement scheme, so the subject went to her.

Where did Ida Tarbell work?

She was preceptress at Poland Union Seminary, an editor at The Chautauquan, a writer and editor at McClure's Magazine, and finally a partner and editor at The American Magazine.

Sources

1. American Heritage. Gentlewoman and Robber Baron.
2. Wikipedia. Ida Tarbell.
3. Daniel Yergin. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, chapter 2, 1991.
4. Encyclopedia.com. Tarbell, Ida (1857-1944).
5. ConnecticutHistory.org. Ida Tarbell, the Woman Who Took On Standard Oil.