Ida Tarbell

Ida Tarbell - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Ida Tarbell

Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 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.

This profile of Ida Tarbell covers Early Life and Family Background, Early Career and Breakthrough, Paris in the 1890s, McClure's Magazine and Napoleon Bonaparte.

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 Family Background of Ida Tarbell

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.

Ida 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.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.