Wonder Woman of the Week: Ida Tarbell

The spotlight for this week is one of the most important journalists in US history. The biographer/muckraker doubled her career as that of an expert on the Abraham Lincoln presidency and the Standard Oil monopoly. Her work helped reveal the humanity of one man and the inhumanity of another- showing the contrast of the changing American nation during Reconstruction Era and its immediate Gilded Age aftermath.

Ida Tarbell was one of the most important characters of the Progressive Era- a period of US history following the end of Reconstruction where social activists began attempting to increase human rights for groups people seen as less than human- like African-Americans, prison inmates, people with mental disabilities, and women. Ida Tarbell grew up around prohibitionists (those seeking to make alcohol illegal) and suffragettes (those trying to earn women the right to vote).

Ida Tarbell's first self-defined assignment was detailing the lesser known and un-romanticised life of Abraham Lincoln. Tarbell travelled around the country looking for rare sources on Lincoln's life and published a 20 part biography on the president. She then toured the country giving lectures on her discoveries.

Ida Tarbell's next project targeted the most powerful man in the country. Tarbell scavenged her way across the United States looking for every piece of paper she could find in her investigation of Standard Oil and unlawful and inhumane business practices of its founder John D Rockefeller. Her work helped pave the way for antitrust laws and the unraveling of Rockefeller's fortune.

Tarbell had an issue with her label as a muckraker. She instead thought of herself as a historian wishing to publish works on the true history around fantasized historical figures. Her work on Lincoln depicted mostly the president's youth in the Midwest frontier and Standard Oil's exploitation of labor early in its foundation years. She also revolutionized history as a practice by traveling around the country looking for a wide range of sources that could agree on historical events without the same point of view- a practice now staple in modern day college history courses.