(Clarion Books, 288 pp.)
The life of pioneering journalist Ida M. Tarbell, whose exposés of the Standard Oil Trust led to important government regulations of big business, offers a window on America at the turn of the 20th century.
Here's an excerpt from "Ida M. Tarbell":
When Ida Tarbell “began looking for documentation of Standard Oil’s involvement in the SIC [South Improvement Company episode of railroad price fixing and kickbacks], the same people who had advised her to refrain from looking closely at the trust insisted that Standard Oil had destroyed all records of the episode. Ida refused to believe that. More sleuthing indicated that there were three extant copies of a pamphlet produced in 1873 called The Rise and Fall of the South Improvement Company, two in private collections. The owner refused to let her see them. Then a bibliographer at the New York Public Library told her that yes, heads of railroads had bought nearly every copy of the pamphlet and had destroyed them. But there was one left – in the library. Now Ida knew that when some piece of information was declared destroyed, it meant that she should keep looking for it.”
