New Ideals in Business. An Account of Their Practice and Their Effects upon Men and Profits

The fact that Ida Tarbell's father was a small oilman driven out of business by the Rockefeller oil monopoly must have strengthened the young muckraker's resolve to crack the oil trust. Tarbell, a journalist and regular contributor to McClure's Magazine and American Magazine, succeeded in her task with the two volume History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), a stunning exposé of the oil trust. She also penned a critically acclaimed biography on Abraham Lincoln, and found time on the side to write her own autobiography, All in the Day's Work (1939).