Ida Tarbell
November 5, 1857 – January 6 1994
BY: Dominic Hephner
VOCATION: investigative journalist ( muckraker) , teacher, and editor of
several magazines.
EDUCATION: Allegheny college class of 1880 majored in biology.
HOMETOWN: Amity township Pennsylvania. Where new oilfields where being
erected. They lived in a log cabin.
FAMILY: She was the daughter of Esther Ann and Franklin Summer Tarbell he
was a teacher and joiner he made wooden oil barrels . Her fathers business
with the oil companies and the fields close to home probably led to her
interest in the oil industry.
CAREER:
Out of college she was a teacher at Poland Union Seminary in Poland
Ohio. She taught geology, botany, geometry, and trigonometry. After two
years she decided teaching wasn’t for her and she turned to writing.
She returned to Pennsylvania and begun to write for the Chautauqua
and by 1886 she was the editor.
In 1890 she moved to Paris, France to write a biography on Madame
Roland she had owned a famous saloon during the French revolution.
While in Paris she wrote for and edited McClure's Magazine part of her
writing included a series on Napoleon Bonaparte. Her most famous series she
did for McClure's nearly doubled the circulation it was about Abraham Lincoln
she was praised as one of the greatest historical writer of the time for her
ability to uncover details about there personal lives.
In 1902 her defining moment came she wrote the 19 part series on
The history of standard oil that would change the world.
The History of Standard Oil
NOVEMBER 1902- OCTOBER 1904
For two years she researched hundreds of documents and interviews and
through this she created The History of standard Oil in which she
acknowledged Rockefeller as a business mastermind but condemned his cut
throat tactics in monopolizing the oil industry.
CONTRIBUTION: This work brought the problems of the industry to the public
lime light and helped influence the courts ruling on standard oil. On May 15,
1911, the US Supreme Court upheld the lower court judgment and declared
the Standard Oil group to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the
Sherman Antitrust Act, Section II. It ordered Standard to break up into 34
independent companies with different boards of directors.
Bibliography
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperienc
e/features/biography/rockefellers-tarbell/
• http://tarbell.allegheny.edu/biobib.html
• Some Wikipedia too