USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -One result largely attributable to Tarbell’s work was a Supreme Court decision in 1911 that found Standard Oil in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court found that Standard was an illegal monopoly and ordered it broken into 34 separate companies.

Detailed explanation-2: -Tarbell grew up around the Pennsylvania oil industry, where her father suffered from, and protested, John D. Rockefeller’s business practices. Tarbell’s study of Standard Oil excoriated Rockefeller and his company and helped spur new legislation and litigation to regulate interstate commerce and counter monopoly.

Detailed explanation-3: -Ida M. Tarbell, pictured here in 1904, made it the focus of her journalistic career to expose Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s brutal business practices. Tarbell later claimed she was opposed to Standard Oil not simply because it was dominant but because of what she perceived to be unfair business practices.

Detailed explanation-4: -Standard Oil Company and Trust does not still exist. It was dissolved in 1911. However, some companies that were part of the trust persisted and, over time, merged with others and became part of such well-known companies as Exxon Mobil Corporation, BP PLC, and Chevron Corporation.

Detailed explanation-5: -Ida M. Tarbell’s name would become synonymous with the term muckraker after publication of her 19-part expose of the business practices of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company that had destroyed her father’s oil business, as well as many other small oil related companies in Pennsylvania’s oil region in the 1870s.