Ida Tarbell (1857 - 1944)

Thu Nov 05, 1857

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Ida Tarbell, born on this day in 1857, was an American investigative journalist and feminist. “The quest of the truth had been born in me - the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man’s quests.”

Born in Pennsylvania at the onset of the oil boom, Tarbell is possibly best known for her 1904 book, “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. Her expose on the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was called a “masterpiece of investigative journalism”, by historian J. North Conway, as well as “the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States” by historian Daniel Yergin.

The work would contribute to the dissolution of the Standard Oil monopoly and helped usher in multiple pieces of anti-trust reform, including the Clayton Antitrust Act and the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

“The quest of the truth had been born in me - the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man’s quests.”

- Ida Tarbell