A. Ida Tarbell was born November 5th 1857 in Erie county, Pennsylvania.Erie County was on the western Frontier of the state, which was the biggest oil field in the country. Her father was a small business oil company driven out of business by Rockefeller standard oil. Tarbell attended Titusville high school, led her class, and got a bachelor degree of arts from Allegheny College in 1880 where she was the only women who graduated in that class. She was just beginning to prove how she could make it in a mans world. She began in the workforce as a teacher, a more traditional women’s career, but then switched professions to writing and editing a magazine for the methodist church. After that she took an interest in Madame Roland of France, who …show more content…
Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous Muckrakers. Muckrakers are reform minded journalists who concentrate social downfalls and political or corporate corruption. IN this case Tarbell decide to go after the large and powerful standard oil company. Rockefeller, who was the leader standard oil used the rapidly changing economic landscape to help his company rise to become a monopolistic trust. Tarbell wrote that these monopolistic trusts was "disturbing and confusing people." A Probable cause for Ida Tarbell to look into the standard oil monopoly over any other was that it was a personal issue to her because Rockefeller, the leader of standard oil, had edged her father out of the prospering business when she was a young girl. “Things were going well in father 's business,” she would write years later. “There was ease such as we had never known; luxuries we had never heard of. ...Then suddenly (our) gay, prosperous town received a blow between the eyes.” The year was 1872 when the blow between the eyes occurred. The south improvement scheme, a hidden agreement between the railroads and refiners led by John Rockefeller, hit the Pennsylvania Oil Region like a tidal wave. This was the way the standard oil cut her father and many other small time oil companies out, creating their powerful monopoly. Tarbell seeked to destroy the standard oil company because of it’s illicit activities. Rockefeller constantly was making illegal deals with railroads, which allowed him to lower the price of his oil, which caused more people to buy the cheaper oil. Since americans wanted the cheapest oil the competitors of standard oil either had to lower the price of their oil causing the small companies to gain no profit, forcing them out of business. Tarbell saw what was happening and recognized how illegal it was to make these under the table deals, which caused middle class small business owners to go jobless. Tarbell’s goal was to stop the use of extortion by giant corporate
Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Vanderbilt all had something in common, they were all “Robber Barons,” whose actions would eventually lead to the corruption, greed, and economic problems of Corporate America today. During the late 19th century, these men did all they could to monopolize the railroad, petroleum, banking, and steel industries, profiting massively and gaining a lot personally, but not doing a whole lot for the common wealth. Many of the schemes and techniques that are used today to rob people of what is rightfully theirs, such as pensions, stocks, and even their jobs, were invented and used often by these four men.
Fifth Edition Vol 2, New York: Longman, 1999. Hidey, Ralph W. and Muriel E. "History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), Vol. 1" Pioneering in Big Business" " Taking Sides Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History" eds.
With this power came leniency for the men and Tweed began to use this power to gain personal wealth. Tweed accomplished this when he made business for the city. For example, “Tweed allowed the contractors to overcharge the city for their work as long as the suppliers ‘kicked back’ a portion of their illicit profits to him” (Anbinder, 2010), as well as Hall, Sweeny, and Connolly. Tweed and these men were nicknamed the Tweed ring, known for their illicit acts against the city (Hirsch, 1945, p.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a unique and vital character in American history. She played an imperative role in the equality and advancement of not just African-American women, but women in general. Although she was born a free women in Maryland she had an unparalleled knack for describing and capturing the evils and horrors of slavery. She wrote a plethora of novels, short stories and poems. In her early years she taught in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, after leaving teaching she left teaching to lecture for the Maine Anti-slavery society along with other anti-slavery organizations. She also worked to help fugitive slaves escape to Canada through the Underground Railroad. Frances E. W. Harper was an impeccable writer and human being, she made unmatched contributions to history through her works as an equal rights activist and beautifully captures the identity of
Engel, Mary Ella. “The Appalachian “Granny”: Testing the Boundaries of Female Power in Late-19th-Century Appalachian Georgia.” Appalachian Journal 37.3/4 (2010): 210-225 Literary Reference Center. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Rockefeller was a Robber Baron for the simple reason that he was greedy and selfish. He has treated his workers horribly and did use his money for others. He used aggressive tactics to get to where he was.
Some, like Roosevelt viewed methods of muckrakers such as Ida Tarbell, Ray S. Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair as these types of people. Others saw these muckraking methods as perfectly acceptable for fighting against the industrial powerhouses. Either way, these muckrakers worked hard to arouse sentiment in the hearts of the public (Reiger 1).
...interpretations of their assumption of millions of dollars. Due to their appropriation of godlike fortunes, and numerous contributions to American society, they simultaneously displayed qualities of both aforementioned labels. Therefore, whether it be Vanderbilt’s greed, Rockefeller’s philanthropy, or Carnegie’s social Darwinist world view, such men were, quite unarguably, concurrently forces of immense good and evil: building up the modern American economy, through monopolistic trusts and exploitative measures, all the while developing unprecedented affluence. Simply, the captains of late 19th century industry were neither wholly “robber barons” or “industrial statesmen”, but rather both, as they proved to be indifferent to their “lesser man” in their quests for profit, while also helping to organize industry and ultimately, greatly improve modern American society.
Ida Bell Wells, more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was born in Holly Springs Mississippi on the 16th of July in 1862. Ida was raised by her mother Lizzie Wells and her father James Wells. She was born into slavery as the oldest of eight children in the family. Both Ida’s parents were enslaved during the Civil War but after the war they became active in the Republican Party during the Reconstruction era. Ida’s father, James, was also involved in the Freedman’s Aid Society (www.biography.com). He also helped to start Shaw University. Shaw University was a university for the newly freed slaves to attend, it was also where Ida received the majority of her schooling. However, Ida received little schooling because she was forced to take care of her other siblings after her parents and one of her siblings passed away due to Yellow Fever. Ida became a teacher at the age of 16 as a way to make money for her and her siblings. Eventually Ida and all her sisters moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with their aunt, leaving all their brothers behind to continue working. In Memphis Ida began to stand up for the rights of African Americans and women.
The author expresses his grievances towards industrialized businesses during the Gilded Age and supports the American farmer. Therefore, the author references the “fakers” as fraud politicians who did not support the beliefs of the Populist Party. He then characterizes the “makers” as the independent business owners and farmers because they made lives for themselves without a strong dependency on these “dictatorship-like” businesses. The author primarily focuses on voicing his reproach for the “takers” of the Gilded Age, or the monopolistic business owners such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He negates these industrialists suppressing individualism while showing little regard for the well being of lower class Americans. In other words, the author believes that Carnegie and Rockefeller’s monopolistic industries offered an unspoken ultimatum for Americans: either submit to our control or we will c...
Mary Cassatt had a wonderful childhood filled with travel and a good education. Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born in Allegheny Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh on May 22, 1885 (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2). She was one of seven children, two of which did not make it past infancy (Creative Commons License 3). Her childhood was spent moving throughout Germany and France, (Creative Commons License 4) until her family moved back to Pennsylvania, then continued moving eastward to Lancaster and then to Philadelphia (Creative Commons License 3), where Cassatt started school at age six (Creative Commons License 3). Then continued her schooling at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in
Grace Abbott was born November 17, 1878 in Grand Island, Nebraska. Grace was one of four children of Othman A. and Elizabeth Abbott. There’s was a home environment that stressed religious independence, education, and general equality. Grace grew up observing her father, a Civil War veteran in court arguing as a lawyer. Her father would later become the first Lt. Governor of Nebraska. Elizabeth, her mother, taught her of the social injustices brought on the Native Americans of the Great Plains. In addition, Grace was taught about the women’s suffrage movement, which her mother was an early leader of in Nebraska. During Grace’s childhood she was exposed to the likes of Pulitzer Prize author Willa Cather who lived down the street from the Abbott’s, and Susan B. Anthony the prominent civil rights leader whom introduced wom...
middle of paper ... ... On Rockefeller’s march to the top of the oil industry, he stomped upon the lives of many hard working American’s. The smaller oil operations had no chance of competing with Standard Oil due to all the tactics they employed to keep their prices low. This ravished small town families and had a similar effect as to what Wal-Mart does to family run shops nowadays.
Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father, James Wells, was a carpenter and her mother was a cook. After the Civil War her parents became politically active. Her father was known as “race'; man, a term given to African Americans involved in the leadership of the community. He was a local businessman, a mason, and a member of the Board of Trustees of Shaw University. Both parents provided Ida with strong role models. They worked hard and held places of respect in the community as forward-looking people. James and Elizabeth (mother) Wells instilled their daughter a keen sense of duty to God, family, and community.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, business began to centralize, leading to the rise of monopolies and trusts. Falling prices, along with the need for better efficiency in industry, led to the rise of companies, the Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil company being a significant one. The rise of these monopolies and trusts concerned many farmers, for they felt that the disappearance of competition would lead to abnormaly unreasonable price raises that would hurt consumers and ultimately themselves. James B. Weaver, the Populist party's presidential candidate in the 1892 election, summed up the feelings of the many American Farmers of the period in his work, A Call to Action: An Interpretation of the Great Uprising [Document F]. His interpretations of the feelings of farmers during that time were head on, but the truth is that the facts refute many of Weaver's charges against the monopolies. While it is true that many used questionable methods to achieve their monopoly, there were also other businessmen out there that were not aiming to crush out the competition. In fact, John D. Rockefeller, head of Standard Oil and a very influential and powerful man of that time, competed ardently to not crush out his competitors but to persuade then to join Standard Oil and share the business so all could profit.