Ida Tarbell

About

Her series of exposés on the Standard Oil company led to the Supreme Court decision of breaking up the company.

Before Fame

One of the only women in her Allegeny College graduating class, she took on a me-against-the-world spirit to McClure's magazine, where she started investigating big business.

Trivia

She dug into volumes of Rockefeller business records, news reports and court testimony to uncover the unfair methods they used in their ascent.

Family Life

Her birth to an oil family among the derricks of northwest Pennsylvania and helped her to make sense of the Rockefellers' business dealings.

Associated With

President Theodore Roosevelt would later frown on her generation's brand of investigative reporting known as muckraking.