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Summary
Summary
Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell (1857-1944) confronted the company known simply as "The Trust." Through her peerless fact gathering and devastating prose, Tarbell, a muckraking reporter at McClure's magazine, pioneered the new practice of investigative journalism. Her shocking discoveries about Standard Oil and Rockefeller led, inexorably, to a dramatic confrontation during the opening decade of the twentieth century that culminated in the landmark 1911 Supreme Court antitrust decision breaking up the monopolies and forever altering the landscape of modern American industry. Based on extensive research in the Tarbell and Rockefeller archives, Taking on the Trust is a vivid and dramatic history of the Progressive Era with powerful resonance for the first decades of the twenty-first century.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Investigative journalist Weinberg (Armand Hammer: The Untold Story) briskly recounts the story of the rise of the Standard Oil monopoly in the late 19th century and muckraking reporter Ida Tarbell's role in bringing it down. The book is a study in opposites: John D. Rockefeller used his enormous wealth "to establish the staid, stable family life he had lacked as a youngster." Tarbell-raised in bourgeois stability, intellectually ravenous and interested in the women's movement from an early age -resisted women's traditional domestic role. Wishing to help address society's problems, Tarbell was lured into magazine writing, where she developed what Weinberg calls her trademark "tone of controlled outrage." In her articles on Standard, published just after the turn of the 20th century in McClure's and then in book form, she amassed evidence that Rockefeller engaged in "unfair competition" and argued forcefully that all Americans should be concerned with business ethics. Her reporting helped create the modern genre of investigative journalism, and the author's brief references to Wal-Mart and contemporary journalism suggest that he hopes this engaging account-a likely pick for journalism classes-can help inspire more reporters to follow in Tarbell's footsteps. 16 pages of illus. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Pointed contrasting portraits of the pioneering investigative journalist and the titan of industry. Weinberg (Journalism/Univ. of Missouri; Telling the Untold Story: How Investigative Reporters are Changing the Craft of Biography, 1992, etc.) recounts the connections that both figures had with the oil industry: Tarbell (1857-1944) grew up around the oil fields of Titusville, Pa., and witnessed the effects on her father's small business of the growing trust established by Rockefeller (1839-1937). The author contrasts their childhoods: Rockefeller's was unstable, his mother harsh, his father a conman and a bigamist; Tarbell had a traditional middle-class background. Weinberg shows Rockefeller struggling to get an education and Tarbell becoming a biology major at Allegheny College, the only female graduate in the class of 1880. He then follows Tarbell's subsequent career as editor and reporter for the Chautauquan, her years as a freelance journalist in Paris and her move to New York City to become an editor and investigative journalist for McClure's magazine. (Rockefeller mostly drops out of the narrative here.) After producing two circulation-boosting series on Napoleon and Lincoln, she tackled Standard Oil, writing a serialized expos of the trust's business practices that when published in book form became her most famous work, The History of the Standard Oil Company. The author details Tarbell's painstaking research into government documents, court records, newspaper files and church records, as well as her extensive interviews with Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers; extensive quotations reveal the eloquence and clarity of her prose. Tarbell's investigation, Weinberg reminds us, aroused public resentment against Rockefeller and Standard Oil that led to the government's legal actions against the petroleum trust and eventually to its breakup in 1911. Rockefeller remains a sketchy figure, but Tarbell emerges as a remarkably intelligent, diligent and principled woman with great independence of spirit. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
John D. Rockefeller never realized that his methods for transporting oil encroached on the life and fortunes of one Franklin Tarbell, a Pennsylvania barrel maker and the father of Ida Tarbell. But the tycoon certainly realized that the daughter, regarded by many as the best investigative reporter in the US, turned his life upside down when she began delving into the shady business practices of Standard Oil. A star writer for McClure's Magazine, for whom she wrote series on Napoleon and Lincoln, Tarbell viewed Rockefeller as a symbol of corruption and the very definition of gross abuse of wealth and power. Her serialized magazine articles on Rockefeller, later a best-selling book (The History of the Standard Oil Company, 1904), led to the 1911 Supreme Court decision that Standard Oil had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Weinberg (School of Journalism, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia) looks at all of this, focusing on the paths Rockefeller and Tarbell took and the consequences for both of them. Including a comprehensive bibliography, this book further illuminates Ron Chernow's outstanding Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (CH, Oct'98, 36-1063) and will be useful in collections supporting journalism and American history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. S. W. Whyte Montgomery County Community College
Library Journal Review
This is a fascinating and well-written account of the development of monopoly capitalism and the birth of investigative journalism. America's first oil boom, in northwestern Pennsylvania in the 1860s, set the stage for the collision course of McClure's magazine reporter Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil. Weinberg (journalism, Univ. of Missouri; The Reporter's Handbook) traces their separate paths up through Tarbell's expose of the operations of Rockefeller's company in a series of articles beginning in 1902. He describes his work here as a hybrid of biography and dramatic narrative, and he gives equal attention to both of his main characters. Drawing on investigative journalism techniques himself, he uses a wide range of primary sources to sketch Tarbell's and Rockefeller's personalities and their professional lives. Both had ties to the oil industry from an early age. Weinberg shows them as complex human beings-good, yet flawed. He illustrates how Rockefeller, in addition to being a ruthless capitalist, dedicated himself to his family and church, in contrast to his own wastrel father. Tarbell, however, has clearly been a role model for Weinberg, and she shines in his portrayal. This book tells a dramatic story in an engaging style and will be a good addition for both public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/07.]-Judy Solberg, Seattle Univ. Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. ix |
| 1 Ida Tarbell: A Childhood Portrait in Oil | p. 3 |
| 2 John D. Rockefeller: A Young Adult Portrait in Oil | p. 21 |
| 3 Civil War: Dodging Bullets as the Oil Flows | p. 38 |
| 4 Moving Up | p. 64 |
| 5 Lost, and Found | p. 84 |
| 6 Discovering the Power of the Printed Word | p. 101 |
| 7 Far from Home, Close to Home | p. 126 |
| 8 McClure's Magazine | p. 150 |
| 9 Napoleon | p. 168 |
| 10 Unearthing Skeletons | p. 177 |
| 11 The Expose Mentality | p. 190 |
| 12 Researching the Behemoth | p. 208 |
| 13 Exposed | p. 219 |
| 14 A Question of Character | p. 229 |
| 15 Aftermath of an Expose | p. 244 |
| 16 For the Rest of Their Lives | p. 259 |
| Bibliographic Essay and Select Bibliography | p. 275 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 289 |
| Index | p. 291 |