USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -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-2: -Instantly popular with readers, “The History of the Standard Oil Company” grew to be a 19-part series, published between November 1902 and October 1904. Tarbell wrote a detailed exposé of Rockefeller’s unethical tactics, sympathetically portraying the plight of Pennsylvania’s independent oil workers.

Detailed explanation-3: -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-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.