USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In his 2008 book Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller, Steve Weinberg described the exposure of Standard Oil as “arguably the greatest work of investigative journalism ever written".

Detailed explanation-2: -Ida Tarbell remained an important figure in investigative journalism and continued to write about American business leaders and industrial life into the late 1930s, but her work that had the greatest impact was her exposé of Standard Oil.

Detailed explanation-3: -Her work was a sensation and the installments became a two-volume book entitled, The History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904. Tarbell meticulously documented the aggressive techniques Standard Oil employed to outmaneuver and, where necessary, roll over whoever got in its way.

Detailed explanation-4: -In her most famous work, The History of the Standard Oil Company (which oil historian Daniel Yergin called the “most important business book ever written”), Miss Tarbell revealed, after years of painstaking research, the illegal means used by John D. Rockefeller to monopolize the early oil industry.

Detailed explanation-5: -She became one of the most influential muckrakers of the Gilded Age, helping to usher in that age of political, economic and industrial reform known as the Progressive Era. “They had never played fair, ” Tarbell wrote of Standard Oil, “and that ruined their greatness for me.”