Ida Tarbell was a contrarian extraordinaire who was the first great woman journalist in the United States. She was a Diva of Investigative Journalism. She was loved and hated, respected and scoffed at for her ideas and opinions.
Ida Tarbell was born in a log cabin in 1857. In her earliest days her family was poor, moving several times in order to attempt to become prosperous. This finally happened when the oil industry was born in 1860. Her family became prosperous not only in support of the oil industry, her father bought real estate and eventually moved the family to a more “suitable” environment: Titusville, Pennsylvania.
She was one of the first women to attend Allegheny College. She actively made the choice to be educated so she could work. At that time, she wanted to be a biologist. After graduation, she taught school briefly but felt she was a failure so she returned home. While nursing herself back to productivity, a visiting Methodist Pastor asked her to help with his magazine.
That temporary job led to Ida Tarbell changing the face of journalism as well as changing business practices due to her writing. She didn’t intend to become a “muckraker” - a term coined by then President Teddy Roosevelt – she wanted to write historical studies. She was editor of McClure’s magazine and in the position she had writing carte blanche.
She is in the Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. I recognized her name but I didn’t know why I recognized it. I couldn’t even say she was a writer until I started doing research. I associated her surname with a real estate company, so writer – especially famed for her time writer – wasn’t what I expected to find when I clicked through to her biography as I did research for my Women Writers in Literary History series.
She was invited to participate in important political causes: women in the suffrage movement begged her to come alongside them, she denied their request. Henry Ford gave her a passionately delivered invitation to be a part of the Celebrity Rich anti-World War I project, The Peace Ship, in 1914. Ida, naturally, said no thank you. She even went so far to turn down an offer from then President Woodrow Wilson’s offer in 1916. He wanted to make her the first woman on the Tariff Commission. The President believed she had researched and written more and made a greater contribution concerning tariffs than any man he knew.
She did, however, serve for thirty years as president of The Pen and Brush, a group of women authors and artists. She became a lecturer at an age most people retired following her tenure at American Magazine.
She didn’t want to be distracted by her primary cause by forming allegiances with any political groups. She wanted, first and foremost, to expose fraud in big business and political mayhem.
Why did this brilliant writing career start? Ida said herself many years later, she had never considered being a writer. She took the job with the newspaper only because she needed the money. She went from financially needy to Diva of Investigative Journalism.
Not bad at all.
© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 24, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.
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