It's hard to imagine that
there was a time when Americans didn't know what to do with oil -- or that it was just 150 years ago. But when oil was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, one oil-based product was "advertised as a cure for coughs, colds, and rheumatism." A
Pittsburgh entrepreneur sold Rock-Oil, 'grease
that could be burned to provide light."
Refining technologies
advanced quickly, though, and the rest his history. As writer Steve Weinberg tells it:
When the Civil War ended, thousands of soldiers made their way to the oil region, lured by rumors of lucrative employment and get-rich opportunities. War profits had made numerous oil-field entrepreneurs wealthy, and merchants such as Cleveland's [John D.] Rockefeller had grown flush with cash. ... Many of the veterans had lived elsewhere before the war but felt no desire to return to their family farms. They arrived in the unfamiliar oil region wearing tattered military uniforms, with all their possessions in a knapsack except for the rifle slung over a shoulder.At the time, one journalist marveled
that, from his train window, "the derricks seemed like a thick metal
forest."
Watching this great human and economic drama unfold from her hometown not far away was a young
girl named Ida M. Tarbell.
Writing for McClure's magazine three decades later, Tarbell would expose the unethical practices
of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company -- and forever influence the way America does business.
In Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, newly released in paperback (W.W. Norton & Company, 304 pages, $17.95), Weinberg reminds us why it still matters.
Tarbell invented investigative journalism. Her writing on Standard oil and Rockefeller, Weinberg notes, "spawned reform efforts within the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, the White House, and governor's mansions. It led to precedent-shattering court rulings as well as populist movements outside government institutions."
It's the kind of journalism this country desperately needs right now, too. And though the newspaper industry's current troubles mean fewer journalists asking hard questions, Weinberg reminds us that it wasn't easy back then, either:
Investigative reporting did not come naturally to S.S. McClure or otherWeinberg, who teaches journalism at themagazine publishers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nobody
had even invented a term for the concept. But however they verbalized
the concept of ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse to afflict the
comfortable and comfort the afflicted, publishers understood
intuitively that complications might arise. It would be expensive to
conduct that sort of journalism because of travel costs. It would quite
likely attract lawsuits that would be costly to defend, and the
finished pieces would require extensive, skilled editing. But as
magazine and newspaper publishers began to understand their power,
indeed their responsibility, to explain an increasingly complex, often
unfair, and sometimes corrupt society, in-depth journalism began to
bloom despite the hazards.
University of Missouri in Columbia, understands those hazards. He spent several years as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors,
the MU-based non-profit dedicated to helping journos dig deeper, see
hidden truths and tell better stories. He literally wrote the book on
investigative reporting; it's called The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide to Documents and Techniques.
Taking on the Trust is a dual biography of Tarbell, who never set out to be a journalist, and Rockefeller, a young man obsessed with God and money. As
Weinberg notes, Tarbell lived half her life in the 19th Century and
half in the 20th. "The two halves of Tarbell's
life," he writes, "each lived in a different century, would mirror the profound
shifts that the nation itself experienced."
Wrapping up such a book in under 300 pages is a noteworthy accomplishment on its own. Weinberg keeps things moving, but knows when to slow down and provide a detail that reminds us how little some things have changed. In the presidential election of 1876, for example, the country was deeply divided over social issues (the status of former slaves and the former Confederates states). The "nasty" campaign between Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes "did nothing to heal wounds":
The election results caused further tension: Tilden won the popular vote and apparently a majority of the Electoral College votes, but Hayes ended up occupying the White House after a specially created commission sorted out the validity of competing ballots from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. The Democrats and the press labeled this "the stolen election."
The battle between Tarbell and Rockefeller, meanwhile, was one for the ages -- and one for, as Weinberg defines it, "the soul of capitalism." Tarbell wrote a biography of Rockefeller that forced his company needed a PR firm, "one of the first employed by any U.S. corporation," Weinberg reports. Rockefeller rarely spoke directly about Tarbell, but late in life told another journalist, "like some women, she distorts facts, states as facts what she must know is untrue, and utterly disregards reason."
Tarbell's body of work proves otherwise. If Rockefeller would have simply played fair, he wouldn't have suffered at her pen. "Tarbell admired the capitalist system, but only if those participating in it agreed to act honorably or otherwise allow a referee to enforce a level playing field," Weinberg writes.
Although he's writing about journalism a century ago, Weinberg's book holds a lesson for today's newspaper industry as it struggles for its own soul. If Tarbell is the hero of this book, McClure, her publisher, is a close second:
McClure had studied the magazine business carefully; he knew that hiring full-time staff writers and giving them bylines went against the tested practice of relying on poorly paid, often anonymous freelance journalists and academics. Always a visionary, McClure never let protocols stop him. He believed that full-time, salaried writers and editors would produce more accurate, compelling and entertaining material than a flock of stringers.All of which remains true, regardless of whether the news is delivered in print or online; sadly, Weinberg devotes little time to explaining the eventual demise of McClure's -- but that's probably another story, and the one Weinberg has written is plenty.
Comments (0)