Forgotten Women: Ida Tarbell forced Congress to create the Department of Commerce | Mickey Z.

Photo: USPS

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

July xx, 2020

“There were writers of the early twentieth century who spoke for socialism or criticized the capitalist system harshly -- not obscure pamphleteers, but among the most famous of American literary figures, whose books were read by millions.” (Howard Zinn)

One of the writers Zinn refers to was Ms. Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944), part of the original “muckrakers” (a term -- not exactly of endearment -- coined by the despicable Teddy Roosevelt). 

Born in Pennsylvania but frustrated in her journalistic efforts in America, Tarbell left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne. It was there she began writing articles for American newspapers and magazines. Her popular and successful series on Napoleon for McClure’s was quickly followed by another on Abraham Lincoln. Both were later published as books while Tarbell took full advantage of her notoriety to focus on the Standard Oil/Rockefeller monopoly.

Motivated in part by Standard Oil causing her father to lose business when she was younger, Tarbell dug deep to uncover, among other dubious practices, a covert arrangement by which the oil giant received enormous price breaks from local railroads. Her nineteen-part series ran from 1901 until 1904 and was also published as a book called The History of the Standard Oil Company.

A reviewer stated: “It is difficult to write about Miss Tarbell's remarkable achievement without using language approaching the edge of hyperbole. So careful is she in her facts, so sane in her judgments, that she seems to have reached the high-water mark of industrial history.”

The fallout from the Standard Oil series and book directly resulted in a new antitrust precedent being handed down by the United States Supreme Court against the entire oil industry along with Congress establishing a Department of Commerce and a Bureau of Corporations. Standard Oil was broken up into 34 smaller companies in 1911. While John D. Rockefeller (of course) found a way to profit off the anti-trust findings, the amazing Ida Tarbell did set the standard for the next century of investigative journalism.

Other muckrakers from Tarbell’s era 

These included Lincoln Steffens, author of Tweed Days in St. Louis, a novel about municipal corruption; Jacob Riis, who exposed life in New York’s slums in his book, How the Other Half Lives; and perhaps the most notorious muckraker of all, Upton Sinclair.

“Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, published in 1906, brought the conditions in the meatpacking plants of Chicago to the shocked attention of the whole country, and stimulated demand for laws regulating the meat industry,” wrote Zinn. “But also, through the story of an immigrant laborer, Jurgis Rudkus, it spoke of socialism, of how beautiful life might be if people cooperatively owned and worked and shared the riches of the earth. The Jungle was first published in the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason; it was then read by millions as a book, and was translated into seventeen languages.”

So, in the face of unprecedented fear, division, and uncertainty, where are today’s effective muckrakers?

Mickey Z. can be found on Instagram here. He is also the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on the streets of New York City. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and make a donation right now. And please spread the word!