September 21, 2020 Thank you, Barbara Schock, for sharing your extraordinary gift of these vignettes of Galesburg & 19th century American history.
Ida Tarbell, Writer By Barbara Schock
Ida Tarbell was a pioneer in the field of investigative
reporting. She had a sixty-four year career writing for newspapers and magazines
as well as books on a variety of subjects. Early in her career she wrote a
biography of Abraham Lincoln which uncovered new information about his early
life. She was born November 5, 1857, in Erie County, Pennsylvania.
Her parents were Franklin S. and Esther McCullough Tarbell. Her father was a
carpenter. The Pennsylvania oil rush began the same year as Ida’s birth. Her
father made wooden tanks for the storage of the oil pouring from the ground. The family moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1869 and
the bright young girl saw all the mess and competition created by the discovery
of oil. She saw the “rich field for tricksters, swindlers, exploiters of vice in
every known form,” as she later wrote. She graduated from Allegheny College in 1880 and began
teaching biology and other subjects at Poland Union Seminary in Poland, Ohio.
She also became interested in the Chautauqua Movement and began to write
articles for various publications associated with it. She also began to speak on
the Chautauqua circuit and continued doing so for many years. In 1881 she moved
to Paris and supported herself by writing articles for various newspapers in the
United States. She free-lanced some articles for McClure’s Magazine and was
offered an editorship by S.S. McClure. She returned to the US in 1894. Her first
series of articles for McClure’s was about Napoleon. They helped increase to
circulation of the magazine. In 1894 she accepted a position as Desk Editor at the
magazine and moved to New York. By 1900 there was pressure to expose and correct
some of the practices of the Robber Barons who had manipulated the economy for
their own benefit. Standard Oil operated by John D. Rockefeller was one of the
most prominent companies using unfair methods of business to take over other
companies or to drive them to bankruptcy. Miss Tarbell had the basic knowledge
to begin investigating the legal and illegal activities of the company. She
checked court records, interviewed people in the oil business and used her own
knowledge to write nineteen articles which ran in McClure’s from 1903 through
1904. The series was later published as a
book, THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY. It was probably the most influential book
on business that was ever published. A number of laws were enacted to correct
the abuses and the Federal Trade Commission was created by Congress as a result
of the information in the book. Carl Sandburg was a friend and admirer of Ida Tarbell. He
wrote that her books were “sources of history, bristling with merciless and
tragic facts of an era,” according to his opinion. When Sandburg’s two-volume biography of Lincoln was
published, he sent a copy to her. She had helped him with the page proofs. Miss
Tarbell wrote in her thank you note “I am hugging your book to my heart...I feel
as if the thing was made for me, personally.”
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