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In the late 19th century, Ida Tarbell was one the most famous muckrakers. She studied John D. Rockefeller's practice the "Standard Oil Company." She ended up publishing a book in 1904 called "The History of the Standard Oil Company." She objected to the term "muckraker" and she believed to be of historical importance.

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Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project - Stories about the people, traditions, innovations, and events that make up Connecticut's rich history.

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Muckraking journalism emerged at the end of the 19th century largely in response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, and Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous of the muckrakers. Born in 1857 in a log cabin in Hatch Hollow, Pennsylvania, Tarbell's first dream was to be a scientist. Science was a field largely closed to women, however, and she instead pursued teaching, a profession deemed more suitable for a woman.

In 1883 she met Dr. Thomas Flood, editor of the Chautauquan, a magazine published in nearby Meadville, Pennsylvania. Flood was about to retire his position and he asked Tarbell to assist him for a few months while he searched for a successor. She accepted and ended up working at the Chautauquan as a writer and editor for six years.

Writing became Tarbell's passion. One of her biographers, Kathleen Brady, wrote of Tarbell that "the sight of her work in type was like magic which dispelled forever dreams of botany." Keenly aware of social problems since her days as a teacher, Tarbell wrote about inequality and injustice and encouraged colleagues at the Chautauquan to do likewise.

In 1890, Tarbell moved to Paris. She had written a series of articles about women of the French Revolution and she went to France to research a projected biography of one of those women, Madame Marie-Jeanne Roland. She supported herself by writing articles about Parisian life for Scribner's Magazine and other American publications, including several owned by Samuel McClure.

Tarbell Exposes The Standard Oil Company

Tarbell never wrote the biography of Roland but she did write biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln-published shortly after her return to the United States in 1894. She also accepted an offer from McClure to work for his new venture, McClure's Magazine, where she undertook her most famous work, her expose of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Her study of Rockefeller's practices as he built Standard Oil into one of the world's largest business monopolies took many years to complete. McClure's Magazine published it in 19 installments.

Her work was a sensation and the installments became a two-volume book entitled, The History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904. Tarbell meticulously documented the aggressive techniques Standard Oil employed to outmaneuver and, where necessary, roll over whoever got in its way. A short while later, President Theodore Roosevelt used the phrase "muckraker" (from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress) in a speech in reference to Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and other journalists writing critically about the tremendous power of big business. Tarbell actually objected to the term, for she felt it belittled work she believed to be of historical importance.

One result largely attributable to Tarbell's work was a Supreme Court decision in 1911 that found Standard Oil in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court found that Standard was an illegal monopoly and ordered it broken into 34 separate companies. Bloodied, Rockefeller and Standard were hardly defeated. Rockefeller maintained huge holdings in all 34 companies and the breakup actually proved enormously profitable. He lived out the rest of his long life with his status as the world's wealthiest man unblemished.

Retiring to Easton

In 1906, not long after her rise to fame, Tarbell purchased a home in Easton, Connecticut. Easton was a farming town and she used the home and its 40-acre spread as a country getaway for the next 18 years while living primarily in New York City. She lectured widely and continued writing for important publications of the time, like the American Magazine, of which she was also co-editor. Among the events she covered were the negotiations in Versailles at the conclusion of World War One.

In 1924, Tarbell moved permanently to Easton. She was 67 but she kept writing, producing, among other works, an autobiography entitled, All in the Day's Work. She took ill with pneumonia in December 1943 and died in Bridgeport Hospital on January 6, 1944, at age 86.

The History of the Standard Oil Company remains a classic of investigative reporting, and Tarbell's legacy as a someone who took seriously the credo that journalists should "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" lives on. The house she lived in in Easton became a National Historic Landmark in 1993.
Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is an award-winning author who has written for many publications and websites over the last four decades. He is also the author of two books.

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Ida Tarbell: The Woman Who Took On Standard Oil - Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project

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Ida Tarbell became one of the most famous "muckraking" journalists in 19th century America, thanks largely to her investigation of the Standard Oil Company.

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In  his time he was a socialist and he was elected president for the barry trades and the labor council and he was a member of the national executive committee

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John Spargo was a socialist. He was elected president of the Barry Trades and Labor Council and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). On 27th...

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The 16 amendment is the power and

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William Taft graduated from Yale and moved back to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He became President Roosevelt's successor in 1907. He also formed the Progressive Party and defended the Payne-Aldrich Act. Then, he served as Professor of Law at Yale until he was Chief Justice of the United States before he died in 1930.

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William Howard Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and later became the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930), the only person to have served in both of these offices.

Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."

But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.

His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.

President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.

Taft disliked the campaign-"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.

Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt-the "mad messiah."

Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."

Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.

In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."

Learn more about William Howard Taft's spouse, Helen Herron Taft.

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William Howard Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and later became the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930), the only person to have served in both of these offices.