by Steve Weinberg.

Norton. 256 pages. $25.95.

By DONALD D. BREED
Special to the Journal

“Muckraker” may have begun as a term of opprobrium, but it became a symbol of public-spirited journalism. Ida Minerva Tarbell was one of the first. Her exposé of how John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil into America’s most fearsome monopoly forever changed the image of that wealthiest of industrialists and philanthropists. And it led to the breakup of Standard Oil. `

Not until Woodward and Bernstein brought down Richard Nixon would investigative reporting have a greater impact.

Steve Weinberg has immersed himself in the histories of both Tarbell and Rockefeller to show how their lives intertwined well before she set out to uncover the trust’s secrets. He is a former investigative reporter who teaches the subject at the University of Missouri Journalism School, so I was surprised that he failed to make more of what would be today considered a disqualifying conflict of interest: Tarbell’s father was in the oil business; she grew up seeing Rockefeller as a threat to his livelihood.

Tarbell, whose accomplishments were all the more impressive because they took place in an era of discrimination against women, did not intend to be a journalist. Interested in science, she taught school for a while after college, but gave it up. She was unemployed and living with her parents when she took a job working for the magazine put out by a Chatauqua. Her first work was clerical, but she started writing articles and profiles.

She then went to Paris for three years with the idea of doing research, but while living frugally wrote freelance articles for publications including McClure’s, founded by Samuel Sidney McClure, who is a story in himself. Employing new techniques of uncovering facts, Tarbell wrote an acclaimed biography of Abraham Lincoln (with the help of an interview for which McClure paid, a no-no today).

When McClure decided to go after the trusts, Standard Oil was chosen as the subject and Tarbell as the writer. “Ida’s family connections to the oil business could have opened her to allegations of bias,” Weinberg writes mildly, “. . . but colleagues did not doubt her motives.” In any case, Tarbell was meticulous about accuracy (especially for that era) and did not report unconfirmed rumors. If she had not been so careful, the enterprise would have failed.

Later, she wrote a personal profile of Rockefeller that was much more subjective, suggesting that charities and universities should not accept his “tainted” money. Though it attracted much readership, that is not how she is remembered and revered. TAKING ON THE TRUST: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller,

ddbreed@cox.net