Ida M. Tarbell's Corporate Bibliography

Date Published: July 4, 2021
Date Modified: June 30, 2024

A Slide showing Ida M. Tarbell standing and the covers of three of her corporate books,

Ida M. Tarbell's History of Standard Oil exposed to the public one of the most powerful and exploitative monopolies in American history. President Roosevelt branded her and her associates with the unique identifying moniker of muckraker because he believed they were only concerned with “debasing” and “the vile.” Although she did not like being classified a muckraker, she is recognized as one of first and most visible of the profession. Miss Tarbell wrote biographies on Elbert H. Gary, the first chief executive of U.S. Steel, and Owen D. Young, chairman of the board of General Electric.

Listed below are reviews of these works and others.

Ida M. Tarbell's Publications on Industrialists and Corporate America

1902: "The History of Standard Oil" in McClure's Magazine
1914: "New Ideals in Business"
1925: "The Life of Elbert H. Gary: The Story of Steel"
1932: "Owen D. Young: A New Type of Industrial Leader"

"The History of Standard Oil"

Image of McClure's Magazine from November 1902 with Ida M. Tarbell's

McClure's Magazine announced in October 1902 "Miss Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company." The first in the series would start in November 1902 with "Chapter 1—The Birth of an Industry."

It was intended to be a series of articles with a one-year lifetime that continued for two years because of reader interest.

Sidebar with Burton J. Hendrick's acknowledgement of the importance of Ida M. Tarbell's

Although many thought that her previous successes with "The Life of Napoleon" and "The Life of Lincoln" could not be surpassed, her history of the Standard Oil Company would take on a life of its own. The country that had been exposed through her writing to the best of America's leadership in Abraham Lincoln was now to discover one of its worst in John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Her description of her subject would send chills down the backs of all those that wanted a fair and just America:

"Brought face to face with Mr. Rockefeller unexpectedly, and not knowing him, the writer's immediate thought was ...

" 'This is the oldest man in the world - a living mummy.' Mr. Rockefeller is a big man, not over tall but large with powerful shoulders and a neck like that of a bull. The head is wide and deep and disproportionately high, with curious bumps made more conspicuous by the tightly drawn, dry, naked skin. The interest of the big face lies in the eyes and mouth.

" 'Eyes more useful for a man of Mr. Rockefeller's practices could hardly be conceived. They are small and intent and steady, and they are as expressionless as a wall. They see every thing and reveal nothing. It is not a shifty eye - not a cruel or leering one. It is something vastly more to be feared - a blank eye, looking through and through things, and telling nothing of what they found on the way.' "

Stephen King could not have written it any better.

Ida Tarbell's pen woke up a nation.

"New Ideals in Business"

Picture of front cover of Ida M. Tarbell's,

Select this image to read a full review of this book.

Miss Tarbell in this book documents the businesses that were ahead of their time. The "new ideals" in this book suggest that assisting workers is not really "new" but a century old, and it is the sharing, caring and cooperation between shareholders (referred to as capital), employees, customers and society that built the United States of America.

Picture of homes that Firestone Tire Company built for its employees.

This book is a consolidation of articles that Ida wrote for The American Magazine. I wish they would have published the book with the pictures that were included in the magazine. The articles are much more powerful with the supporting imagery.

Although I have read that Firestone Tire Company, U.S. Steel Corporation, Endicott-Johnson Company and IBM built homes for their workers, it is amazing to see it documented in pictures.

One begins to wonder if Miss Tarbell wasn't right, that maybe we are too negative about business. Maybe we have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak when we encounter chief executives that will not accept responsibility for the conduct of their companies. The extremes of maximizing shareholder value (shareholder-first and -foremost, or me-first and -only) isn't what drove some of the greatest corporations of America of the 20th Century. Why have we gotten history so wrong? Here is the final paragraph from the book that summarizes Miss Tarbell's findings quite succinctly.

"He [the employer] is seeing a significance and a possibility in humanizing his relations that he formerly did not dream. He is developing the inspiring consciousness that it is possible for him to be not a mere manufacturer of things for personal profit, but as well a maker of men and women for society's profit."

"The Life of Elbert H. Gary: The Story of Steel"

Select this image to read a full review of this book.

Judge Gary said that Ida Tarbell was the preferred person to write his biography. She turned it down (similar to the Beldens initially refusing to write Watson's biography). She said why in her own words.

"One is judged largely by the company one keeps. Judge Gary belonged to an industrial world (U.S. Steel Corporation) where the predatory, the brutal, the illegal, the reckless speculator constantly forced public attention.

Picture of Judge Elbert H. Gary at his desk.

"That there was another side to that world, a really honest and intelligent effort in the making to put an end to these practices, few knew or, knowing, acknowledged. ...

"I could not complain. I knew how it would be when I started. But I must confess that more than once, while I was carrying on my work, I shivered with distaste at the suspicion I knew I was bringing on myself. The only time in my professional life I feel I deserve to be called courageous was when I wrote the life of Judge Gary."

This is a book I highly recommend. It documents the life of one man of character who stood for right over might. The fact that Miss Tarbell had to fear for her reputation shows that even in the early 20th Century people preferred the sensational to the facts.

"Owen D. Young: A New Type of Industrial Leader"

Select this image to read a full review of this book.

Ida's prediction of being concerned for her reputation comes true after the printing of her book above about Judge Gary in 1925. She writes that her "favorite paper" ran an article about her with the title of "The Taming of Ida M. Tarbell."

Her frustrations with muckraking and all the negativity associated with the profession seemed to shine through in the Foreword of this book about Owen D. Young, Chairman of the Board of General Electric as she writes:

I have never been one who felt that the praise of him you believe to be a good man is a shame to a writer, any more than I have felt the condemnation of a man you believe evil is a particular virtue in a writer. A biographer's business is to set down as faithfully as he can what he finds and that I have tried to do in writing this sketch.

It is from this book, her book on Judge Gary and her writings of Abraham Lincoln that I pulled insights into the type of leader that IBM needs in the 21st Century to move forward. I found the characteristics clearly spelled out in Owen D. Young's summer school commencement address at St. Lawrence University.

This book is an amazing study of an amazing man, the Chairman of the Board of General Electric Corporation.

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