Ida Tarbell, One of History’s Best Investigative Reporters in the First Gilded Age
Took a microscope to monopolists and John D. Rockefeller's business practices
Ida M. Tarbell (1857 – 1944) was born in rural PA, near Erie, during the early oil boom. She became a teacher, writer, and investigative journalist, best known for her ground-breaking masterpiece history of the Standard Oil Company‘s monopolistic trust that fueled the Progressive Movement and led to the break-up of the trust. Her book on Standard Oil was “the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States” said historian Daniel Yergin. It greatly influenced President Teddy Roosevelt and helped launch his campaign to bust the trusts.
Great quotes from Ida Tarbell, among them:
“Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization.”
“Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, 'It's business.' That is, 'it's business' has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.”
“There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair. Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.”
“[John D. Rockefeller] didn't care about anyone he did anything just to be rich and be the only company standing without any competition. He destroyed anyone else.”
“Now, if the Standard Oil Company were the only concern in the country guilty of the practices which have given it monopolistic power, this story never would have been written. Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices. The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.”
More YouTube videos on Tarbell and the Muckrakers.
