Weinberg - Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil

T he tome does not look especially impressive today. It rests on an out-of-the-way shelf, one of millions of volumes in a cavernous university research library. Its green cover is faded now, after decades of steady wear, occasional abuse, and, ultimately, lack of use. It is still mentioned in early-twentieth-century-America history courses on campuses. But few have read it from beginning to end, all 815 pages of dense type.

This is a shame. The book is arguably the greatest work of investigative journalism ever written. The History of the Standard Oil Company , published in 1904, is its unprepossessing title.

More than a century has passed since the painstaking research and writing that went into the book. Today, the years 1900 through 1905 feel like a bygone era. Yet during that tumultuous period, the book created a social maelstrom that built and destroyed reputations, altered public policy, and changed the face of the nation. This was the era of the great robber barons. Powerful men colluded to create even more powerful monopolies. By the dawn of Theodore Roosevelts presidency, however, there arose a cadre of devoted journalists and publishers intent on uncovering the perfidy of the economic juggernauts.

The confrontation embedded in this remarkable time, characterized by The History of the Standard Oil Company , pitted the unparalleled documentary skills of Americas most recognizable investigative journalist against the financial resources of the most rapacious, most powerful businessman in the nation. This investigative journalist, Ida Minerva Tarbell, worked as a staff writer for McClures Magazine . A woman of formidable intelligence and character, she labored at a time when men dominated the realm of journalism. The tycoon, John Davison Rockefeller, born into a broken family, had built an empire on black gold and had become the wealthiest individual of the Gilded Age. With impressive business savvy and upright character, Rockefeller served as the guiding force within Standard Oil Company, the nations most sprawling corporate trust, a term out of fashion today except as part of the word antitrust.

Tarbells book, which began as a magazine series, brought her fame and established a new form of journalism known as muckraking. She became a model for countless journalists, and despite the passage of more than a century, her work remains an example of how a lone journalist can uncover wrongdoing. Moreover, through her expos, Tarbell forever tarnished the peerless reputation of John D. Rockefeller. Charles R. Morris expresses the consensus among historians when he writes that Tarbells analysis has dominated the perception of the man and his rise ever since. Ideas about Rockefeller changed because Tarbell researched and wrote a great book. Allan Nevins, a Columbia University history professor, wrote a friendly biography of Rockefeller, but he nonetheless praised Tarbells expos. Rockefeller, who refrained from discussing Tarbell publicly, told an employee privately that much of what his own son knew about Standard Oil is his memory of what he has read in her book, with only here and there a statement of fact by me.

Reading Tarbells expos of the Standard Oil Company is a remarkable experience; in many ways it seems that it could have been composed only yesterday, not more than a century ago. The strangleholds that Sam Waltons Wal-Mart and Bill Gatess Microsoft demonstrate in their business realms are reminiscent of the sway held by Rockefellers Standard Oil.

Tarbells book played a significant role in my own career. In addition to practicing the craft of investigative journalism since 1969, I have studied it carefullyin large part because I served as a spokesman of sorts for that branch of journalism while serving as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). Based at the University of Missouri Journalism School, IRE serves thousands of members around the United States and increasingly around the world. The techniques Tarbell used to gather information about a secretive corporation and its evasive, powerful chief executive taught me that a talented, persistent journalist can penetrate any faade through close readings of government documents, lawsuits, and interviews with knowledgeable sources inside and outside the executive offices. Tarbells methods have allowed me to train investigative journalists around the world while directing IRE and ever since.

This book is a hybrid of biography and dramatic narrative. That dramatic narrative cannot be told effectively without studying Rockefellers life as well as Tarbells. Previous authors have chronicled the long lives of Tarbell (18571944) and Rockefeller (18391937). But none has devoted an entire book to their epic collision course.

Tarbells life has been written about much less frequently and in much less detail than Rockefellers. Only two books examine her life with some depthher factually accurate but selective autobiography, All in the Days Work , and Kathleen Bradys Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker . Brady told her readers, citing Tarbells journalist colleague Ray Stannard Baker, that anyone who attempted to write Ida Tarbells life would have the problem of writing about goodness. She commented, This proved to be true, but the real challenge was trying to explain an enigma. She quoted Tarbells own words: I have often found it difficult to explain myself to myself, and I do not often try. As Brady noted, She was seldom more forthcoming to anyone else, and those who knew her best have long been dead.

More recently, a few scholars have called attention to Tarbells writings. In 1994, Ellen F. Fitzpatrick edited the collection Muckraking: Three Landmark Articles , focusing on exposs by Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker published by McClures Magazine . In 1996, Robert C. Kochersberger, Jr., edited a book that reprinted a wide range of Tarbells published pieces, More Than a Muckraker: Ida Tarbells Lifetime in Journalism .

First in the class of numerous Rockefeller chronicles is Ron Chernows Titan , published in 1998. Chernows chapter on the Tarbell-Rockefeller confrontation is titled Avenging Angel, a reference to the investigative journalist. Some of the biographies published before Chernows contain useful facts, insights, and conclusions, but they include worrisome biases. For example, Allan Nevins at times seems like little more than an apologist for Rockefeller in his 1953 book Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist . The Nevins Papers at Columbia University, not so incidentally, contain considerable important raw material on Rockefeller the private individual, Rockefeller the corporate chieftain, and Tarbell too.