Ida Tarbell’s life and career are a testament tothe power of the written word. A prolific writer and journalist, Tarbell published articles, books and a novel across approximately 50 years. 

Her writing had a profound impact on her contemporary society and economics, alongside influencing the trajectory of journalism through to the current day. Her combination of traditional historical research with evocative writing is credited as pioneering early investigative journalism. 

Her writing brought her such recognition and acclaim, she earnt a seat at the table of American society, setting debates and defining the Progressive Era.

Tarbell was educated to be a scientist, studying Biology at Allegheny College. It seems highly likely that this scientific background was the root of her distinct, rigorous research efforts across her writing career, as Tarbell aimed to support her claims with as much detail and evidence as possible. Tarbell’s earliest writing was for her college’s literary society’s magazine, 

The Mosaic, but her professional career began with The Chautauquan. This Pennsylvania-based magazine was published by the Chautauqua School, an institution promoting wider adult education, which Tarbell was familiar with through her upbringing. (Her parents Esther and Frank subscribed to many magazines and were a part of discussion circles, hosting travelling thinkers including suffragettes.) 

Tarbell left her job as a teacher to take up the post, and became managing editor by 1886. As her first foray into journalism, Tarbell’s time at The Chautauquan was hugely influential on her career, seen best in one of her most famous Chautauquan pieces, “Women as Inventors.” Here we see early evidence of her investigative drive, as she travelled to a patent office to personally collect examples of women patent holders.

Following The Chautauquan, Tarbell moved to Paris, working as a correspondent for a number of American publications, while developing her knowledge of French journalistic and historical writing styles. Most notably, it was during her time in Paris that Tarbell embarked on her first biographical research and writing, looking into- the French revolutionary Madame Roland. Her biographical quest saw her rigorously research Roland, utilizing French historical techniques to consult as many primary sources as she could acquire. The process ultimately transformed her initial admiration for Roland into something more like disdain, but her passion for the style and form of biographical writing was set. Throughout her career, Tarbell wrote biographies on historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln and steel industrialist Elbert H. Gary.

Following her time in Paris, Tarbell took up a post at McClure’s magazine, were she embarked on some of her most influential investigative writing. Some of the longer-form investigative series she wrote for McClure’s included pieces on the U.S. military, as the country expanded through the Spanish-American war of 1898.

Tarbell also wrote her Lincoln biography for McClure’s, eventually amounting to 5 books. This biography demonstrated Tarbell’s honed style of history and investigative journalism, as her research led to her to question popular narratives about Lincoln, and present a more developed story of the President.

The most influential work Tarbell produced for McClure’s was, of course, The History of the Standard Oil Company. The series is notable not only for its much-discussed impact on American anti-trust laws, but also for representing Tarbell’s literary approach and style. 

The History of Standard Oil, arguably, shows traces of each stage in Tarbell’s career. It had the social drive of her Chautauquan pieces, combined with the great-man-style expose of Rockefeller, reminiscent of her biographies. Moreover, The History of Standard Oil reveals Tarbell’s awareness of what resonates with the reader. 

She employed interviews with those close to Rockefeller and Standard Oil, to bring the audience as near to the protagonist as possible, forcing them to confront the destructive and hostile business practices of the Oil Giant. Leaving McClure’s in 1906, Tarbell and a number of her colleagues acquired The American Magazine, where she would pivot her writing away from “Muckraking.” Tarbell had a complicated relationship with her “Muckraker” title, as she believed she wrote as much about the good in society as the bad. It was for The American Magazine that Tarbell wrote some of her most significant opinion-piece style of articles. 

This included “Making a Man of Herself” in which Tarbell opposed the suffrage moment, distancing her from many of her suffragette counterparts. Beyond suffrage, Tarbell also wrote opinion-pieces on topics such as wartime society and the economy. These opinion-pieces were often just as polarizing then as they are now, but point to Tarbell’s distinct, evocative and assertive writing style.

She, along with many other journalists of the Progressive Era and “Muckrakers,” are credited with establishing Finally, Tarbell also wrote her autobiography, All in a Day’s Work, offering her own narrative about her life. Much like her biographies on Lincoln, and expose of Rockefeller, Tarbell brings the reader in close, giving us a window into her thoughts and feelings about her career.  Following the publication of her autobiography, Tarbell did begin writing her next book, Life After Eighty but she would pass away in 1944 before its completion.

The development of Ida Tarbell’s career reveals a writer committed to research, who put as much weight into the facts and evidence she could present to her reader as the narrative. However, we also find a writer, and investigative journalist, who was not afraid to offer her own opinions despite their potential controversy. Moreover, Tarbell, if anything, shows us through her writing that she was strikingly confident, yet also willing to change her mind. This is best seen in her reversal on the suffrage movement; having first posed that female enfranchisement would be against the natural order, Tarbell would go on to write for Good Housekeeping that women had a duty to exercise their rights, and that the American government would be better for it.

Tarbell was a pioneer of investigative journalism. the core practices and values of the discipline that survive until today.