Name:
Date:
Block:
IDA TARBELL AND JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S STANDARD OIL TRUST
Trusts were a way to limit competition amongst businesses in similar industries – this tends to be good
for businesses and bad for consumers who potentially end up paying more for products. Many
muckrakers, journalists/writers who wrote to expose problems they found in society, targeted the
abuses committed by trusts. Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous muckrakers for her book The
History of Standard Oil, which sought to expose the illegal doings of John D. Rockefeller and his
Standard Oil Company. Therefore, your homework will connect many different topics from this unit:
Trusts, Captains of Industry or Robber Barons, Muckrakers and the Progressive Era.
Below are excerpts from Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s writings.
1. Summarize each of their opinions on each issues, compare their ideas and decide and explain
who you think is more correct, more reliable.
2. You will work with a group to answer the following question: Should trusts be regulated by the
government or should individuals have the right to make whatever economic decisions they
want?
Ida Tarbell
John D. Rockefeller
on business tactics:
on business tactics:
There were at the time some twenty-six
refineries in [Cleveland], some of them very
large plants. All of them were feeling more or
less the discouraging effects of the last three
or four years of railroad discriminations in
favor of the Standard Oil Company. To the
owners [of the 26 refineries] Mr. Rockefeller
went one by one, and explained the South
Improvement Company. "You see," he told
them, "this scheme is bound to work. It
means absolute control by us of the oil
business. There is no chance for any one
outside. But we are going to give everybody
a chance to come in. You are to turn over
your refinery to my appraisers, and I will give
you Standard Oil Company stock or cash, as
you prefer, for the value we put upon it. I
advise you to take the stock. It will be for
your good." … It was useless to resist, he
told the hesitating: they would certainly be
crushed if they did not accept his offer, and
he pointed out in detail, and with gentleness,
how beneficent the scheme really was -preventing the Creek refiners from destroying
Cleveland, keeping up the price of refined oil,
destroying competition, and eliminating
speculation.
I do not remember just how many [refineries]
there were [in Cleveland] — say twenty-five
or thirty, more or less. Some of them were
very little. … More than seventy-five, and
probably more than eighty per cent -certainly a great number -- of the refiners at
Cleveland were already crushed by the
competition which had been steadily
increasing up to this time. … They didn’t
collapse. They had collapsed before. That’s
the reason they were so glad to combine
their interest if they so wished it… [They
were] mighty glad to get somebody to come
and find a way out. We were taking all the
risks, putting up our good money. They were
putting in their old junk. … When it was found
how much of stock or money would be given
in exchange for their plants we found no
difficulty in proceeding rapidly with the
negotiations, and nearly all came in… though
it is true that a few of the refiners decided to
remain out, and these were among the
smallest and least able to compete with us.
With these our relations continued, entirely
pleasantly, until at length, one by one, of their
own volition, they were pleased to embrace
the opportunity to join their interests with
ours, the result of which in every case was
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Date:
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most satisfactory to them.
What I did say [to them] was: "We here [in
Cleveland] are at a disadvantage. Something
should be done for our mutual protection. We
think this is a good scheme. Think it over. We
would be glad to consider it with you if you
are so inclined."
There was no compulsion, no pressure, no
‘crushing’. How could our company succeed
if its members had been forced to join it and
were working under the dash?
Summarize in your own words:
Summarize in your own words:
Who do you believe more? Why?
Extra Credit/Practice
For an extra 3 points on your homework, write an argumentative paragraph (including
outside info and evidence from the document) in response to this DBQ prompt:
Should trusts be regulated by the government or should individuals have the right to make whatever
economic decisions they want?
Name:
Date:
Block:
IDA TARBELL AND JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S STANDARD OIL TRUST
Trusts were a way to limit competition amongst businesses in similar industries – this tends to be good
for businesses and bad for consumers who potentially end up paying more for products. Many
muckrakers, journalists/writers who wrote to expose problems they found in society, targeted the
abuses committed by trusts. Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous muckrakers for her book The
History of Standard Oil, which sought to expose the illegal doings of John D. Rockefeller and his
Standard Oil Company. Therefore, your homework will connect many different topics from this unit:
Trusts, Captains of Industry or Robber Barons, Muckrakers and the Progressive Era.
Below are excerpts from Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s writings.
1. Summarize each of their opinions on each issues, compare their ideas and decide and explain
who you think is more correct, more reliable.
2. You will work with a group to answer the following question: Should trusts be regulated by the
government or should individuals have the right to make whatever economic decisions they
want?
Ida Tarbell
Standard Oil vs. the independents:
John D. Rockefeller
Standard Oil vs. the independents:
All over the country the refineries in the same
condition as Mr. Tack's firm sold or leased.
Those who felt the hard times and had any
hope of weathering them resisted at first.
With many of them the resistance was due
simply to their love for their business and
their unwillingness to share its control with
outsiders. The thing which a man has begun,
cared for, led to a healthy life, from which he
has begun to gather fruit, which he knows he
can make greater and richer, he loves as he
does his life. It is one of the fruits of his life.
He is jealous of it -- wishes the honor of it,
will not divide it with another. He can suffer
heavily by his own mistakes, learn from them,
correct them. He can fight opposition, bear all
-- so long as the work is his. There were
refiners in 1875 who loved their business in
this way. Why one should love an oil refinery
the outsider may not see; but to the man who
had begun with one still and had seen it grow
by his own energy and intelligence to ten,
who now sold 500 barrels a day where he
once sold five, the refinery was the dearest
spot on earth save his home. He walked with
pride among its evil-smelling places, watched
the processes with eagerness, experimented
with joy and recounted triumphantly every
improvement. To ask such a man to give up
What a Godsend it was to the many little
inefficient and unsuccessful refiners of Oil
Creek that a buyer was found for them when
for years they had been losing money! How
wrong for the "historian" to call it a crime that
these men were delivered from their sinking
ships. It was a great mercy and without
precedent, as has been hitherto stated.
Almost any other historian, it would seem,
would blush today to read injustice as it is
written in these very pages, where [Ms.
Tarbell] is made to speak of the crime, which
should have been characterized only as an
unprecedented magnanimous deliverance
such as had not hitherto been known in the
annals of business!
In all times past the weak man in the
competition dropped out and was lost sight
of. These men for years were importuned to
join hands with those who were stronger and
ready to pull them out from their
embarrassments and fit them in to be useful
in the administration of the Standard Oil
Company so far as they had integrity,
intelligence, enterprise and industry to
warrant the expectation that they could be
stones in the foundation of the great
structure, the likes of which the world had
never seen.
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his refinery was to ask him to give up the
thing which, after his family, meant most in
life to him.
To Mr. Rockefeller this feeling was a weak
sentiment. To place love of independent work
above love of profits was as
incomprehensible to him as a refusal to
accept a rebate because it was wrong!
Summarize:
Block:
[As for the producers], they were like a lot of
foolish children, and would not be controlled,
and would not observe the law referring to
supply and demand. And this was all there
was in the problem.
How many times we told them--over and over
again! --that if they would restrict production
they would be the gainers. But how
impossible it was for them to grasp that fact,
and how impossible it was for them to
summon sufficient integrity to carry out they
agreements they made, in order to keep it.
They knew it, but they wanted what certain of
the refiners wanted; that is, to keep their
bread and butter and eat it, too. This was
found impossible.
These people didn’t believe in themselves;
they didn’t believe in the Standard Oil Co,
they didn’t believe in anybody, away down,
and there was a screw loose in a great many
of them, and so the sane ones had a hard
problem.
Summarize:
Who do you believe more? Why?
Extra Credit/Practice
For an extra 3 points on your homework, write an argumentative paragraph (including
outside info and evidence from the document) in response to this DBQ prompt:
Should trusts be regulated by the government or should individuals have the right to make whatever
economic decisions they want?
Name:
Date:
Block:
IDA TARBELL AND JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S STANDARD OIL TRUST
Trusts were a way to limit competition amongst businesses in similar industries – this tends to be good
for businesses and bad for consumers who potentially end up paying more for products. Many
muckrakers, journalists/writers who wrote to expose problems they found in society, targeted the
abuses committed by trusts. Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous muckrakers for her book The
History of Standard Oil, which sought to expose the illegal doings of John D. Rockefeller and his
Standard Oil Company. Therefore, your homework will connect many different topics from this unit:
Trusts, Captains of Industry or Robber Barons, Muckrakers and the Progressive Era.
Below are excerpts from Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s writings.
1. Summarize each of their opinions on each issues, compare their ideas and decide and explain
who you think is more correct, more reliable.
2. You will work with a group to answer the following question: Should trusts be regulated by the
government or should individuals have the right to make whatever economic decisions they
want?
Ida Tarbell
John D. Rockefeller
Rockefeller’s legacy:
Rockefeller’s legacy:
The Standard Oil Co. has been one of the
greatest, if not the greatest, of upbuilders we
ever had in this country--or in any country. All
of which has inured to the benefit of the
towns and cities the country over; not only in
our country but the world over. And that is a
very pleasant reflection now as I look back. I
knew it at the time, though I realize it more
keenly now.
We had vision, saw the vast possibilities of
the oil industry, stood at the center of it, and
brought our knowledge and imagination and
business experience to bear in a dozen-twenty, thirty directions. There was no branch
of the business in which we did not make
money.
It will be said: "Here was a force that
reorganized business, and everything else
followed it--all business, even the
Government itself, which legislated against
it."
[John Rockefeller’s] importance lies not so
much in the fact that he is the richest
individual in the world, with the control of
property that entails; it lies in the fact that his
wealth, and the power springing from it,
appeal to the most universal and powerful
passion in this country -- the passion for
money. John D. Rockefeller, measured by
our national ambition, is the most successful
man in the world--the man who has got the
most of what men most want. …
Mr. Rockefeller is a hypocrite. This man has
for forty years lent all the power of his great
ability to perpetuating and elaborating a
system of illegal and unjust discrimination by
common carriers. He has done more than
any other person to fasten on this country the
most serious interference with free individual
development which it suffers, an interference
which, today, the whole country is struggling
vainly to strike off, which it is doubtful will be
cured, so deep-seated and so subtle is it,
except by revolutionary methods.
It does not pay. Our national life is on every
side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the
kind of influence he exercises.
Name:
Summarize:
Date:
Block:
Summarize:
Who do you believe more? Why?
Extra Credit/Practice
For an extra 3 points on your homework, write an argumentative paragraph (including
outside info and evidence from the document) in response to this DBQ prompt:
Should trusts be regulated by the government or should individuals have the right to make whatever
economic decisions they want?