“...I signed up for a seven weeks”
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Ida Tarbell
Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer, and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was a pioneer of investigative journalism.
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culture · American writer, journalist, biographer and lecturer (1857–1944) · journalist · writer · biographer · historian · investigative journalist · also Ida Tarbell, Ida Minerva Tarbell, Ida M. Tarbell, Tarbell
Born 5 November 1857 · Died 6 January 1944 · Q271712
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2026· 7 entries
“That title was like a red rag to many of my militant friends. The idea that woman had a business assigned by nature and society which was of more importance than public life disturbed them; even if it was so, they did not want it emphasized”
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“Was it not the duty of those who were called muckrakers to rake up the good earth as well as the noxious?”
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“Things happened: the roof leaked; the grass must be cut if I was to have a comfortable sward to sit on; water in the house was imperative. And what I had not reckoned with came from all the corners of my land: incessant calls—fields calling to be rid of underbrush and weeds and turned to their proper work; a garden spot calling for a chance to show what it could do; apple trees begging to be trimmed and sprayed. I had bought an abandoned farm, and it cried loud to go about its business.”
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“like a boy on roller skates.”
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“Three things worth knowing and believing: that women have invented a large number of useful articles; that these patents are not confined to”
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“s staff, and also the first American Episcopalian bishop. Tarbell had three younger siblings: Walter, Franklin, Jr., and Sarah. Franklin, Jr. died of scarlet fever at a young age and Sarah, also afflicted, would remain physically weakened throughout her life. Walter became an oilman like his father, while Sarah was an artist. Ida Tarbell”
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2002· 1 entry
The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Tarbell as part of a series of four stamps honoring women journalists
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2000· 2 entries
Awarded National Women's Hall of Fame (2000).
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Tarbell was inducted posthumously into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York
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1993· 2 entries
The Ida Tarbell House in Easton, Connecticut was declared a National Historic Landmark
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That Tarbell helped invent modern journalism
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1944· 2 entries
Died 1944-01-06.
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“There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.”
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1924· 1 entry
To dispel the myth that suffrage had failed
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1919· 1 entry
Representing the Pen and Brush Club of Gramercy Park, New York City, and served on a committee looking into hours of labor along with Robert Brookings
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1918· 1 entry
And Tarbell traveled once again to Paris, France
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1915· 1 entry
When American Magazine named John Siddall as editor
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1913· 1 entry
Tarbell was also a member of the Colony Club and the Cosmopolitan Club
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1912· 1 entry
Which infuriated her readers and activists
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1909· 1 entry
Tarbell wrote more about women and traditional roles
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1906· 3 entries
Tarbell moved to Connecticut and purchased a 40-acre farm in Redding Ridge, Connecticut which she named Twin Oaks
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To oversee the railroads, the 1910 Mann-Elkins Act which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power over oil rates, and the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914
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Her household expanded to include a number of family members
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1901· 1 entry
And began a meticulous investigation with the help of an assistant (John Siddall) into how the industry began, Rockefeller's early interest in oil, and the Standard Oil trust
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1893· 1 entry
Would provide a blueprint for women journalists and writers
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1892· 1 entry
To offer her the editor position at the new magazine
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1889· 1 entry
And Tarbell and her friends enjoyed the art produced by Impressionists including Degas, Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh
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1886· 1 entry
And her duties included proofreading, answering reader questions, providing proper pronunciation of certain words, translating foreign phrases, identifying characters, and defining words
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1880· 1 entry
Studied at Allegheny College (1876–1880).
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1876· 1 entry
Where she was the only woman in her class of 41
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1869· 1 entry
The family moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania
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1860· 2 entries
“No industry of man in its early days has ever been more destructive of beauty, order, decency, than the production of petroleum.”
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Ida's father moved the family to Rouseville, Pennsylvania
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1857· 2 entries
To Esther Ann (née McCullough), a teacher, and Franklin Summer Tarbell, a teacher and a joiner and later an oilman
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Born 1857-11-05.
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