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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect push kid stop, you

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Speaker 1: got it. This episode is presented by ODU. Robert Smith.

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Speaker 2: My favorite history in the history of business is what

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Speaker 2: it's the Gilded Age, Yes, late eighteen hundreds in America.

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Speaker 2: Incredible period, profound transformation of life, new technologies, giant, giant

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Speaker 2: corporations like the world has never seen before. You got

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Speaker 2: monopolization in one sector after another. You got rich guys

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Speaker 2: getting richer than rich guys have ever gotten railroads, and

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Speaker 2: the US government was basically fine with all of it.

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Speaker 1: Just let it go.

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Speaker 2: That was the attitude until the early nineteen hundreds when

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Speaker 2: there was this really profound change when America kind of

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Speaker 2: all of a sudden, kind of not decided you know what,

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Speaker 2: there's like a little bit too much less a and

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Speaker 2: not an affair. And a key driver of this change

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Speaker 2: of mindset, the person who did as much as anybody

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Speaker 2: to make it happen was a journalist. Huzza, a writer.

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Speaker 2: Her name was Ida Tarbel. My name is Jacob Goldstein.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Smith. And you are listening to

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Speaker 1: Business History. It's a show about the history of business.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for asking.

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Speaker 2: This is the second in our series. It's a three

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Speaker 2: part series, A great number of parts for a series.

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Speaker 2: We're calling it American Genius.

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Speaker 1: I just want to sing a song every time I

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Speaker 1: hear American Genius. American Genius. What's our series about, Robert?

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Speaker 1: It's about writers who changed the way America thinks about

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Speaker 1: money and about business. Last week we talked about Ben Franklin,

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Speaker 1: who created a model and I think really a way

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Speaker 1: of living that set America on a course to capitalistic success.

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Speaker 2: This week we're talking about the backlash. By the time

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Speaker 2: Ida Tarbell came along, the capitalists had succeeded so wildly

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Speaker 2: that they threatened to destroy the very thing that that

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Speaker 2: made them great, the free market, the bedrock of capitalism.

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Speaker 2: And so Ida Tarbell as a journalist, showed America the

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Speaker 2: problems with corporate power in capitalism. And I really think

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Speaker 2: it's fair to say that she helped the country figure

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Speaker 2: out how to solve some of those problems. Ida Minerva Tarbell.

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Speaker 1: Her middle name is not Minerva. That's what Billy said.

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Speaker 1: I didn't double check it. Don't need to.

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Speaker 2: Had a big world changing project at the heart of

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Speaker 2: her career. It was a series of articles in the

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Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds about John d. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

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Speaker 1: At the time, John D.

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Speaker 2: Rockefeller was about to become the richest man in the world.

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Speaker 2: Standard Oil controlled something like ninety percent of oil refining.

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Speaker 1: In the United States. And so before we.

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Speaker 2: Get to Ida Tarbell and how she came to this project,

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Speaker 2: let's just like set the stage with a little bit

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Speaker 2: of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil eighteen sixty.

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Speaker 1: John D.

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Speaker 2: Rockefeller working as a merchant in Cleveland doesn't get any

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Speaker 2: more business history than that. And there is a boom

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Speaker 2: in this new thing called kerosene.

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Speaker 1: Better way to light oil lamps rather than whales, rather

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Speaker 1: than whale oil.

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Speaker 2: Yes, whale oil was expensive and dirty, and you had

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Speaker 2: to get the whales.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we hae the whales.

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Speaker 2: I don't think people cared about the whales at the time,

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Speaker 2: but whale oil was in fact very bad for whales.

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Speaker 2: We care about whales now. Kerosene was better, righter, cheaper

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Speaker 2: than never to tell the whales. So Rockefeller see is

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Speaker 2: this happening, and he gets into the petroleum business, specifically,

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Speaker 2: he gets into the oil refining business to turn petroleum

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Speaker 2: into kerosene. And Cleveland, where he was based, was a

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Speaker 2: good place to be in this business. I was close

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Speaker 2: to Pennsylvania where the big oil fields were at the time,

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Speaker 2: and the big rail lines went to Cleveland. And also

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Speaker 2: Cleveland was on Lake Erie. Of course we know, because

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Speaker 2: this is business history, that there was an Erie canal,

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Speaker 2: so you could ship a kerosene out from Cleveland out

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Speaker 2: to the East coast.

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Speaker 1: Into Europe and to New York. Yeah, and to New York.

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Speaker 1: John D.

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Speaker 2: Rockefeller was both a very clever and a very ruthless businessman.

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Speaker 2: Knew the clever part. First, he vertically integrated, for one thing,

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Speaker 2: built his own barrels instead of having to buy or

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Speaker 2: rent barrels. Saved a lot of money. Also, most of

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Speaker 2: his arrivals, the other refiners would refine oil into kerosene,

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Speaker 2: which was what everybody wanted.

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Speaker 1: But then you still had a lot of like sludge left. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just so people know, crude oil you can fractionally refine

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Speaker 1: all the different parts of the oil out of it.

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Speaker 1: So you had very pure kerosene what we call now

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Speaker 1: jet fuel, and then we had sludge and regular gasoline

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Speaker 1: all this stuff.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, there was no internal combustion

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Speaker 2: engine to speak of at this point, right, so there's

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Speaker 2: not a lot of demand for things other than kerosene.

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Speaker 2: But part of Rockefeller's cleverness was to see that he

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Speaker 2: could gain efficiencies by refining more of it. So his

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Speaker 2: rivals were dumping the sludge in the river or whatever,

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Speaker 2: and of course Rockvella didn't care about the river, but

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Speaker 2: he cared about saving money, and so he would refine

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Speaker 2: more of the sludge and for example, use it as

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Speaker 2: gasoline that he could fuel his plant with. And so

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Speaker 2: he's doing well. He's running this efficient business. And in

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Speaker 2: eighteen seventy Rockefeller and a few partners created standard oil

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Speaker 2: of Ohio. I guess American oil was taken standard. I

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Speaker 2: mean standard. It doesn't get any more standard than that.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: It was already the biggest refiner in the country at

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Speaker 2: this point, but it was a very fragmented market, and

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Speaker 2: it was a tough time to be in the oil

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Speaker 2: refining business because it actually wasn't that hard to build refinery.

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Speaker 2: Everybody was getting in on it. At Rockefeller's line was

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Speaker 2: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

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Speaker 1: Began to refine oil. Very useful for the candlestick maker.

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Speaker 2: It's true, it's right there. I guess maybe he's getting

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Speaker 2: into the lamp business. But Robert Smith, what happens when

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Speaker 2: suddenly everybody gets into a commodity business?

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Speaker 1: Are we going to do this at every the price falls, yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: the price falls.

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Speaker 2: There is a glut. The price falls by more than half.

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Speaker 2: Just wonderful if you're using kerosene to light your lamp

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Speaker 2: out on the prairie. But it's terrible if you're selling kerosene.

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Speaker 2: Rockefeller called it ruinous competition.

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Speaker 1: In other words, competitions, in other words, competition. You know,

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Speaker 1: we've sort of touched on this a little bit, but

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Speaker 1: you know what, capitalists hate competition. Capitalism hate market capitalism.

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Speaker 1: There's a funny thing about that that, like a market

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Speaker 1: capitalism makes things better for a lot of people. For

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Speaker 1: the people selling the stuff, they want to have a monopoly.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and that is attention maybe the tension at the

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Speaker 2: heart of this story and at the heart of this

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Speaker 2: backlash that we're going to get to and now we're

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Speaker 2: going to do the ruthless Rockefeller. He's got this problem

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Speaker 2: competition that he's going to solve.

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Speaker 1: Cheap, cheap kerosene. Come on, we can't let that have.

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Speaker 2: It's bad for America. Stick of the jobs. So his

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Speaker 2: first big move.

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Speaker 1: Is he makes a deal with the railroads.

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Speaker 2: Right, transport costs are a big part of this business,

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Speaker 2: and he's already the biggest player, and he says to

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Speaker 2: the railroads, Okay, give Standard oil a bulk discount because

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Speaker 2: we move so much oil and kerosene.

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Speaker 1: On your lines. Right.

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Speaker 2: Oh, and by the way, why don't you pay for

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Speaker 2: the discount you're giving us by charging extra to our

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Speaker 2: rivals to the other refineries. News of the deal leaks

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Speaker 2: out and then Rockefeller goes to his competitors is like, look,

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Speaker 2: you're screwed. Like here, here is this version of the pitch.

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Speaker 1: Give it to us. You can't compete with the Standard.

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Speaker 1: We have all the large refineries. Now if you refuse

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Speaker 1: to sell, it will end in your being crushed. Just facts, facts, facts.

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Speaker 2: And in eighteen seventy two, when this is happening, there

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Speaker 2: were twenty six different refineries in Cleveland. Rockavella goes out

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Speaker 2: with these facts and in a six week span he

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Speaker 2: buys up twenty two of them. They called it the

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Speaker 2: Cleveland massacre. And he did give good jobs to the

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Speaker 2: a lot of the executives at the companies he bought.

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Speaker 2: You know, in his mind he is being a sort

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Speaker 2: of efficient businessman.

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Speaker 1: It's not illegal at this time, or at least not enforced.

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Speaker 2: Probably not illegal, certainly not enforced, although importantly wildly unpopular.

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Speaker 2: This particular deal gets out in public, people go bananas,

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Speaker 2: and it gets canceled. This deal with the railroads doesn't

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Speaker 2: go through. But by the time it gets canceled, the

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Speaker 2: Cleveland Mascer has already happened. Rockeveller has done his roll up. Interestingly,

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Speaker 2: I To Tarbell is fourteen years old at this time,

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Speaker 2: and she didn't know it at the time, but Johnde

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Speaker 2: Rockefeller and Standard Oil were already affecting her. They were

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Speaker 2: already changing her life in a way she wouldn't fully

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Speaker 2: understand for decades. So let's talk about our protagonists now.

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Speaker 1: I to Tarbell give her a middle name. Jacob Ida Minerva.

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Speaker 2: Tarbell was born in a log cabin in rural Pennsylvania,

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Speaker 2: and she loved it. Robert Smith a little bit from

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Speaker 2: her autobiography.

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Speaker 1: No home in which I've ever lived has left me

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Speaker 1: with pleasanter memories of itself. There were turkeys and ducks

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Speaker 1: and chickens and lambs and colts and CAFs and kittens

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Speaker 1: and puppies. Never could I be without playmates. There were

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Speaker 1: trees and woods and flowers in the summer at a

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Speaker 1: great fireplace, with popcorn and maple candy in the winter.

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Speaker 1: I mean, wasn't really that good. I don't know.

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Speaker 2: Maybe she certainly remembered it very fondly. It sounds awesome,

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Speaker 2: that's sound awesome. It was her grandmother's cabin and her dad,

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Speaker 2: Franklin Tarbell, he was a carpenter, and he went off

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Speaker 2: to Iowa. The family was going to move to Iowa.

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Speaker 2: He was going to build a house, but there was

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Speaker 2: a financial panic Panic of eighteen fifty seven, not even

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Speaker 2: one of my top three nineteenth century panics, but things

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Speaker 2: were terrible in Iowa, and Franklin Tarbell wound up walking

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Speaker 2: back from Iowa to Pennsylvania.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's what you did, Yeah, I'm sure.

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Speaker 2: And he moved the family from this idyllic cabin to

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Speaker 2: the outskirts of a town.

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Speaker 1: Called pit Hoole, pit Hoole, Pennsylvania. Did it sound bad

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Speaker 1: at the time, because it sounds bad now. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: sound like a place that has kittens and puppies and

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Speaker 1: cabs and popcorn.

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Speaker 2: And do you know what it had you know what

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Speaker 2: it had had, As the name kind of suggests, oil

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Speaker 2: had oil, And eighteen fifty nine was the first oil

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Speaker 2: boom in America. Oil came out of the rocks in

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Speaker 2: this part of Pennsylvania, seeped up out of the rocks,

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Speaker 2: and people would like rub it on their bodies and whatever.

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Speaker 2: Before kerosene was a thing, But in eighteen fifty nine

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Speaker 2: people started to drill for it. They realized you could

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Speaker 2: drill for oil, and so you get this oil boom

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Speaker 2: town in Pitthole, in this town called Titusville, where it

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Speaker 2: ends up living. When she gets a little older, give

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Speaker 2: me a description here from her autobiography of what it.

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Speaker 1: Was like, not as romantic fountain wells, gushers spouders they

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Speaker 1: called them, from the great streams which rose straight into

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Speaker 1: the air one to two hundred feet to fall in

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Speaker 1: an oily green black spray over the surrounding landscape.

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Speaker 2: Pitthole is a little bit of a shit all. It

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Speaker 2: turns out it was dirty with oil. They dumped a

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Speaker 2: lot of it into the rivers. Rivers occasionally burst into flames.

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Speaker 2: It actually tells this one story of one day when

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Speaker 2: everybody's sitting around and somebody runs up and it's like oil.

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Speaker 1: There's a gusher. There's a fresh.

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Speaker 2: Strike on the edge of town, and so everybody runs

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Speaker 2: to see the gusher. And I guess a lot of

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Speaker 2: people are smoking, like I don't know, corn cob pipes

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Speaker 2: or little mini cigars or something. Smith, what's going to happen?

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Speaker 2: Read us from the autobiography.

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Speaker 1: The earth was rocked by a mighty explosion. A careless

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Speaker 1: light had ignited the gas, which had spread from the

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Speaker 1: flowing oil until it had enveloped everything in the vicinity.

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Speaker 1: Before my father reached the place, nineteen men, among them

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Speaker 1: his friend, the well owner, had been burned to death.

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Speaker 2: Quite the end of this little story. It's a few

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Speaker 2: hours later. Tarbells are back at their house and they

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Speaker 2: here's something outside. They realized that somebody's stumbling around in

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Speaker 2: the dark, so his parents go to check it out.

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Speaker 1: They saw before them a terrible sight, a man burned

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Speaker 1: and swollen beyond recognition, and yet alive. My mother took

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Speaker 1: him in for weeks. Thanks to her care. The man

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Speaker 1: lived so.

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Speaker 2: Pitt hole, not so idyllic in fact as one suspected.

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Speaker 1: But it is booming. It is booming.

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Speaker 2: You can say where the economy is good, and Franklin

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Speaker 2: tarbell I'd his dad prospered. Sure time is money, time

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Speaker 2: is money, and he is working. He starts out bilding barrels,

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Speaker 2: he's a carpenter, gets into the oil business himself, builds

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Speaker 2: a nice little house for the family in a town

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Speaker 2: called Titusville. And this is when Ida Tarbelle crosses pass

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Speaker 2: with John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. It's eighteen seventy two.

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Speaker 2: You're the Cleveland massacre, and the news of that Standard

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Speaker 2: Oil sweetheart deal with the railroad's leaks, and everybody in

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Speaker 2: Titusville suddenly sees, oh, there is this new force, this

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Speaker 2: new power in the market, in our industry, and they

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Speaker 2: freak out. You know, obviously, if there's only one buyer

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Speaker 2: for their oil, that's going to be very bad for them.

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Speaker 2: And Ida doesn't know all this at the time, but

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Speaker 2: she sees her father, she sees, you know, she's a teenager,

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Speaker 2: she sees her father completely transformed.

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Speaker 1: I remember a night when my father came home with

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Speaker 1: a grim look on his face and told how he,

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Speaker 1: with scores of other producers, had signed a pledge not

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Speaker 1: to sell to the Cleveland Ogre evelnd Ogre he no

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Speaker 1: longer told of the funny things he had seen and

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Speaker 1: heard during the day. He no longer sang to my

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Speaker 1: little sister on the arm of the chair, the verses

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Speaker 1: we had all been brought up on.

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Speaker 2: But it's important to say that standard oil didn't put

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Speaker 2: her dad out of business, like he did pretty well

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Speaker 2: for himself. He could still take Ida on trips to

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Speaker 2: big cities. He still buy her books, which she loved.

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Speaker 2: And when she graduated from high school, she was able

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Speaker 2: to go off to college, to Allegheny College. And you know,

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Speaker 2: not that many people period went to college in this era,

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Speaker 2: and much less a woman, much less a woman, much

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Speaker 2: less woman. She was, in fact, the only woman in

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Speaker 2: her class at college, and you know, it was hard

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Speaker 2: being the only woman. There's this day she talks about

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Speaker 2: where she goes to sit under a tree and somebody's like, no, no,

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Speaker 2: you only men can sit under that tree.

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Speaker 1: But she loved it.

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Speaker 2: She described this moment as a yeasty time, bubbly ferment,

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Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, And her dream was to become a biologist.

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Speaker 2: Like remember how much she loved the woods at her

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Speaker 2: gat on mother's cabin. But that was too much for

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Speaker 2: a woman at that time. Can't be a biologist. She

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Speaker 2: briefly became a school teacher. What is a job a

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Speaker 2: woman can do? That didn't really suit her, and she

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Speaker 2: wound up going to work for a magazine called The Chautauquan.

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Speaker 2: Started out just annotating articles, like kind of providing extra

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Speaker 2: little facts, got onto writing articles, became the managing editor,

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Speaker 2: but even that left her restless. She was this profoundly

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Speaker 2: ambitious intellectual journalist, curious about the world, wanted to do

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Speaker 2: more Seymour and so she thinks, maybe I'll go to Paris.

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Speaker 1: Ha Paris. Yeah, from Pittholl to Paris.

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Speaker 2: From Pittholl to Paris, very good. And you know Paris

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Speaker 2: this is like Bellip Hook Paris right late eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 2: It's the intellectual, cultural, scientific, arguably hub of the world.

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Speaker 2: She figures she can be a freelance writer, but you know,

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Speaker 2: she's an unmarried woman. It's eighteen ninety one. This is

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Speaker 2: like a wild thing for her to do in this

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Speaker 2: kind of culture context. So she touched her editor at

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Speaker 2: the magazine about it. Editors famously supportive, especially when a

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Speaker 2: reporter wants to go to Paris. I've tried this gambut before. Well,

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Speaker 2: did your editor say to you what hers said to her.

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Speaker 2: You're not a writer, you'll starve.

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Speaker 1: Similar.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Her father, to his credit, was more encouraging. He said,

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Speaker 2: if you think you can do it, try it.

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Speaker 1: So she did.

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Speaker 2: She moved to Paris. She researched a book on one

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Speaker 2: Madame Roland, an overlooked figure from the French Revolution. She

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Speaker 2: started freelancing for newspapers and magazines from from back home,

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Speaker 2: and you know, she got really into it. She worked

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Speaker 2: in a soup kitchen to report on how how the

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Speaker 2: poor people of Paris lived. She talks about essentially following

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Speaker 2: her curiosity, which roberts with your SiGe, as I said,

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Speaker 2: because it reminds me of your life as a as

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Speaker 2: a general assignment reporter on the streets of New York,

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Speaker 2: and this description, her description of what it was like

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Speaker 2: is it. It really reminded me of you.

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Speaker 1: I'm jealous already. There were a multitude of things I

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Speaker 1: thirsted to know, and if I could get my bread

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Speaker 1: and butter finding out what luck? What luck? She's living

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Speaker 1: the dream. It is the King's life to be a reporter.

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Speaker 2: So she writes an article about the guy who had

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Speaker 2: recently paved the streets of Paris. Oh, come on, you're

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Speaker 2: killing me here. What a great profile, What a great profile.

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Speaker 2: Apparently it was a great profile because it got published

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Speaker 2: in America and landed on the desk of an editor

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Speaker 2: who read it and loved it. There is a great article.

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Speaker 2: Who is this gal? Get her to me? That's essentially

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Speaker 2: what happened. Although he went himself to find her, I

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Speaker 2: thought it.

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Speaker 1: Was so good.

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Speaker 2: His name was Sam McClure. He was about to start

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Speaker 2: a magazine called McClure's. It's going to be very important

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Speaker 2: in our story. And not long after he reads her article,

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Speaker 2: he's in Paris on business and he manages to find

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Speaker 2: outa Tarbell who's living in this little apartment.

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Speaker 1: He goes up the eighty steps to the apartment. I've

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Speaker 1: rented that apartment in Paris. Yes.

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Speaker 2: He gets to the top of the stairs. He's out

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Speaker 2: of breath. He says, I can only stay ten minutes.

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Speaker 2: I got to catch a train. They wind up talking

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Speaker 2: for hours, and Ida is captivated by hims give us

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Speaker 2: this line from her Autobergh.

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Speaker 1: His utter simplicity, outrightness, his enthusiasm and confidence captivated me.

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Speaker 1: So they're talking. It's great, and then Sam jumps up

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Speaker 1: and says, I must go. Could you lend me forty dollars?

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Speaker 1: You're not joking here, yeah, no, this is literally what

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Speaker 1: he says.

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Speaker 2: And of course you're like, don't what, No, he's scamming

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Speaker 2: you what, No, don't do it.

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Speaker 1: But she does it.

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Speaker 2: This is like all the money she has saved up

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Speaker 2: since she's been in Paris. And she hands him the

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Speaker 2: money and he runs down the stairs, and as soon

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Speaker 2: as he's gone, like the spell is broken. Here she

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Speaker 2: gives her reflection at this moment.

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Speaker 1: I'll never see that money serves me right.

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Speaker 2: Fortunately for the history of America and our story, she

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Speaker 2: was wrong. McClure paid her back. She agreed to become

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Speaker 2: the first staff writer for his new magazine, McClure's, and

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Speaker 2: at that magazine she would do the work that would

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Speaker 2: change business in America.

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Speaker 3: Who we'll talk about that in just a minute, and.

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Speaker 2: We're back from the brick out of Tarbelle is going

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Speaker 2: to work for this new magazine, mclure's.

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Speaker 1: And McClure's is great.

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Speaker 2: I mean a it's an important institution in the history

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Speaker 2: of business in America. But it is also something that

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Speaker 2: I love, which is a place where a bunch of

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Speaker 2: talented people come together and do creative work. I find

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Speaker 2: stories like this exciting and inspiring.

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Speaker 1: Frankly, I love it. You like the Ernest Hemingway, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: ah sure, even the beats. I'll admit it. I got

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Speaker 1: a soft spot in my heart for the beats.

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Speaker 2: This is like a journalistic version of that. So the

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Speaker 2: magazine launches in eighteen ninety three, and this is a

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Speaker 2: moment when the big magazines, your Harper's, your Atlantic cost

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Speaker 2: thirty five cents an issue, which means they're too expensive

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Speaker 2: for the middle class.

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Speaker 1: They're like a kind of quasi luxury item.

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Speaker 2: They cost a lot to make because you have these

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Speaker 2: woodcut illustrations apparently that are very labor intensive. But there's

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Speaker 2: this new technology coming along that lets you, I guess,

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Speaker 2: do some kind of an engraving out of a photo.

380
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Speaker 2: And so McClure is like, oh, I can lower my

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Speaker 2: costs and I can sell a cheaper magazine, which is

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Speaker 2: important to him not just because he wants to sell

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Speaker 2: more at a lower price, but because he wants to

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Speaker 2: reach that overlooked middle class. He has this social ambition

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00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:05,320
Speaker 2: that the magazine is going to, you know, influence the

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Speaker 2: thinking of a broader swoth.

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Speaker 1: Of Americans that have read magazines to this boom, a

388
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Speaker 1: little similar to the Benjamin Franklin story. Yeah, it really is.

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Speaker 2: It really is, and in the way that you know,

390
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Speaker 2: Franklin is coming along at just the very beginning of

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Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution and at this moment when there's more

392
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Speaker 2: economic mobility than there's been. McClure and Ida Tarbell are

393
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:32,439
Speaker 2: coming along in the Second Industrial Revolution. Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, electricity, oil,

394
00:21:32,480 --> 00:21:34,639
Speaker 2: and the internal combustion engine are about to come along,

395
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Speaker 2: and they are transforming the world, transforming work, creating vast fortunes.

396
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:43,480
Speaker 2: Inequality is rising, and you're starting to see the early

397
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Speaker 2: part of the backlash to this from farmers and from

398
00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:52,480
Speaker 2: basically poor industrial workers who sort of see this accumulation

399
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:55,040
Speaker 2: of money and power and the way it is harming them.

400
00:21:55,600 --> 00:21:59,639
Speaker 2: But there is this vast middle class of small business

401
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:03,040
Speaker 2: owners and tradesmen and office clerks, really the Benjamin Franklin

402
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:06,479
Speaker 2: types who are still like not really tuned in. You know,

403
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:09,719
Speaker 2: they are aware that they're benefiting from these new technologies.

404
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:12,240
Speaker 2: They have electric lights if they're lucky, if not, they

405
00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:14,240
Speaker 2: have kerosene, which is way better than whale oil.

406
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Speaker 1: And this is McClure's audience, right.

407
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 2: He wants to tell them sort of the bigger story,

408
00:22:20,200 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 2: what is the big world historical arc that.

409
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Speaker 1: Is happening now.

410
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Speaker 2: And you know it's not like a lectury, pure political magazine.

411
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Speaker 2: He publishes Arthur Conan Doyle, you know, Sherlock Holmes stories.

412
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Speaker 2: He publishes Jack London, He publishes Mark Twain, covers science.

413
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:37,960
Speaker 2: In fact, Ida Tarbell starts out writing about science.

414
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 1: For him, interviews Louis Pasteur in France. Rad Yeah, to

415
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:42,280
Speaker 1: do that.

416
00:22:42,760 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 2: So Ida starts out doing that science writing. She moves

417
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:49,359
Speaker 2: back to the US and winds up writing these extremely

418
00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:54,240
Speaker 2: popular multi part series about the lives of Napoleon and Lincoln.

419
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Speaker 1: People will always they love. Oh, people read so many biographies.

420
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:01,200
Speaker 2: Some a publishing person once said, like, if you want

421
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:03,399
Speaker 2: to write a best selling book, it should be Lincoln's

422
00:23:03,840 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 2: Doctor's Dog. But really, the core of McClure's magazine is

423
00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:16,280
Speaker 2: this theme of money and power and corruption taking a

424
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 2: more and more important role in American life. And so

425
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:23,040
Speaker 2: there are articles about corrupt local governments, there are stories

426
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 2: about union thugs beating up non union workers. But clearly

427
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:32,479
Speaker 2: the biggest money and power story of this era is

428
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:36,360
Speaker 2: the story of the trusts, right, of these monopolistic roll

429
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 2: ups of different industries. You know, there's a beef trust,

430
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 2: and there's a sugar trust, and there's US Steel and

431
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:46,920
Speaker 2: General Electric, and of course there is Standard Oil. It's

432
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,720
Speaker 2: like a list of our episodes, yes, that we've done

433
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 2: and that are yet to come.

434
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: Yes.

435
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:55,560
Speaker 2: And so Ida Tarbell and Sam macclura are looking out.

436
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 1: At this world. She is the star writer.

437
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 2: This is the essential subject. And Ida Tarbell thinks, well,

438
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: maybe I should go back to my childhood, you know,

439
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:06,440
Speaker 2: maybe I should tell the story of John D.

440
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 1: Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

441
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:10,919
Speaker 2: As she's thinking about this, she goes and talks to

442
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 2: her father about this idea. He's still in the oil business,

443
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 2: but it has been a struggle for him. His partner

444
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:20,679
Speaker 2: several years earlier had actually gotten into some kind of

445
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 2: business trouble and killed himself, and i'd his dad inherited

446
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 2: the partner's debts and had to mortgage the family's house.

447
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: And so when Ida told.

448
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:34,120
Speaker 2: Her dad she was thinking of, you know, digging into

449
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 2: this story of what's really going on with John D.

450
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:41,359
Speaker 2: Rockefeller and Standard Oil, he said, don't do it. They'll

451
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 2: destroy the magazine. They won't let you publish, like they

452
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 2: are too big and too powerful.

453
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be a journalistic massacre instead of the Cleveland massacre.

454
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: She didn't listen.

455
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:54,160
Speaker 2: And in nineteen oh one, she set out to tell

456
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:56,919
Speaker 2: the story of John D. Rockefeller and the rise of

457
00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 2: Standard Oil. And she knew that she wanted to tell

458
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 2: it as a story, as a narrative, you know, the

459
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 2: narrative how this man and his company rose to power,

460
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 2: used power. And she knew that her narrative had to

461
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 2: be extremely solid, you know, based on unambiguous documentary evidence.

462
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 2: And she was an incredibly meticulous reporter. You know, she'd

463
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 2: wanted to be a scientist, and she started out sort

464
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:24,639
Speaker 2: of annotating article.

465
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 1: She was a very rigorous journalist.

466
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 2: So her first move is she knows that Standard Oil

467
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 2: had based government investigations for a long time. Nothing had

468
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 2: ever really come of them. The government hadn't done anything

469
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 2: to Standard Oil, but there were these investigations, and the

470
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,399
Speaker 2: investigators wrote reports. You know, you want to look like

471
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,440
Speaker 2: you're doing something without really doing something, ye write a report.

472
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 2: And she knew there was a report on that early

473
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 2: deal between Standard Oil and the railroads, the one that

474
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 2: you know, made her dad get so upset when she

475
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 2: was fourteen years old. She goes to look for this

476
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 2: report and she can't find a copy. Eventually somebody tells her, oh, yeah,

477
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,719
Speaker 2: that report. The railroad presidents paid a bounty. They'd pay

478
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 2: people like one hundred dollars to turn in copies of

479
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 2: her So.

480
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: People are taking them, taking them out of libraries, they're

481
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: fighting them at home, y just like take it. Yeah. Yeah,

482
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: there is a market for those reports, and a big

483
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: bonfire out back, and a big bonfire out back.

484
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:25,639
Speaker 2: She did manage to find one copy at the New

485
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 2: York Public Library show ray for the libraries. Yeah, and

486
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 2: so you know, she's working on this story, and she's

487
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 2: working for months and months before before an article even publishes.

488
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: Reay for magazines, and.

489
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 2: Of course Standard Oil, which knows everything about everybody at

490
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 2: this point, that is their whole game, finds out she's

491
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:43,399
Speaker 2: working on the story.

492
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 1: They hire a PR crisis firm.

493
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 2: They have a guy. There are no PR crisis firms yet,

494
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 2: but they have a guy. His name's Henry Rogers. He's

495
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 2: a vice president at the company, and he's friends with

496
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 2: Mark Twain. Actually, of course he is, of course he is,

497
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:00,040
Speaker 2: and Mark Twain has written for McClure's and so this guy,

498
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 2: Henry Rodgers, this Standard Oil exact, tells Mark Twain he

499
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 2: wants to talk tou to Tarbell about whatever she's working on.

500
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 2: And Mark Twain tells McLure and McClure tells he to Tarbell,

501
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 2: and so I to Tarbell, goes to see him Henry Rogers,

502
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 2: vice president of Standard Oil, at his mansion on.

503
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: East fifty seventh Street.

504
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,160
Speaker 2: What does she say in her autobiography about this moment?

505
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 1: I'd have said she was a bit scared. Was I

506
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: putting my head into the lion's mouth? She was not.

507
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: It went great.

508
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 2: Weirdly, they kind of loved each other. Henry is like,

509
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 2: how'd you get interested in oil? And I just like,

510
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:35,800
Speaker 2: I grew up in the oil country in Pennsylvania.

511
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: And Henry says, of course Tarbell's tank shops. I knew

512
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: your father.

513
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,359
Speaker 2: They figured out they were neighbors. He's like, I probably

514
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 2: saw you gathering flowers over your side of the ravine.

515
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: And Ida, here's what she said about him. She called

516
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 1: Henry as fine a pirate as ever flew his flag

517
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: in Wall Street. So wait, is Henry just like doing

518
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: the pr thing where he's like closing up to her.

519
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:06,720
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and I mean part of the PR thing

520
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 2: I think is this company has a story to tell.

521
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 2: The company has a side of the story. They believe

522
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 2: in what they are doing. It is not purely cynical.

523
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:17,919
Speaker 2: And so I think smart PR and I think Henry

524
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 2: was basically smart PR is, well, if this story's going

525
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:22,679
Speaker 2: to happen, let's tell our side of the story.

526
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:24,160
Speaker 1: And that is what Henry is going to do.

527
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 2: And in fact, Ida's going to go back to him

528
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 2: again and again, and Henry's going to keep talking to

529
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,679
Speaker 2: her for a long time. She spends about a year

530
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 2: before she publishes anything. She travels through Washington, Pennsylvania, Ohio.

531
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 2: She's reading court documents and government statistics, and she's talking

532
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 2: to everybody she can talk to. And there's one little

533
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 2: story that I think captures a lot about the depth

534
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 2: of her reporting, and it's this. There was an office

535
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 2: boy who worked at Standard Oil. He was a teenager

536
00:28:55,360 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 2: and his job included feeding documents into a furnace the

537
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 2: shredder of its day.

538
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: We have a document furnace out of the basement.

539
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 2: Sure, And one day I guess he has something he's

540
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 2: about to throw in the fire something.

541
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly, but.

542
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 2: He spots a familiar on one of these documents that's

543
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 2: about to go into the furnace. It was his old

544
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 2: Sunday school teacher, whose day job was being an independent

545
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 2: operator in the oil business.

546
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 1: Standard Oil does not like a independent operator. They really don't.

547
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 2: And so what the office boy sees on this document

548
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 2: that he's supposed to burn is that the local railroad

549
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 2: office was secretly sending information about this Sunday school teacher's

550
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 2: oil shipments to Standard Oil, and then Standard Oil was

551
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:50,479
Speaker 2: giving orders to the railroad office. Specifically, they sent a

552
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 2: letter about a shipment of this independent guy's oil that

553
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 2: said stop that shipment.

554
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: This is what Standard Oil is doing. So to be clear,

555
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,480
Speaker 1: Standard Oil is communicating with the railroads to interfere with

556
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: their competitor.

557
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: Yes, in an instance like this, they're probably bribing the

558
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: local railroad agent. Like there were a lot of ways

559
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:12,479
Speaker 2: that they worked with railroad.

560
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: That's an incentive structure that it is.

561
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 2: A very rational incentive structure. The kid, the office boy,

562
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 2: the burner of documents, thinks this doesn't seem entirely on

563
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 2: the level, and so instead of putting these particular documents

564
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 2: into the furnace. He gives them to his Sunday school

565
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 2: teacher on the sly, one presumes, and the Sunday school

566
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 2: teacher gives the documents to Ida Tarpel And I just

567
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 2: sees that as Standard Oil got bigger and bigger, took

568
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 2: control of more and more of the oil business, the

569
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 2: company came to have more and more power over the

570
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 2: railroads in small ways like this, right, bribing local the

571
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 2: railroad workers, but.

572
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: Also in big ways right.

573
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 2: Eventually Standard Oil got railroads to give it a discount

574
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 2: on shipping and also to charge its competitors extra and

575
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 2: kick that money back to Standard Oil. Wild wild and

576
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 2: and she brings this information to her her buddy, Henry Rogers,

577
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 2: vice president of Standard Oil. She says, like, what is

578
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 2: going on with these with these uh with these rebates

579
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 2: in the railroads?

580
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: What's he say? Oh, Ida, somebody would have taken them

581
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: if we had not. And then she's like, yeah, but

582
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: nobody else could have. Standard Oil is is the giant.

583
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: You set the rules, you dominate the business. Like if

584
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: you wanted to make the railroads give the same rates

585
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: to everybody, you could, you could make it so oil

586
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: companies are just competing on the merits, and Henry Rogers

587
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: says there was always somebody without scruples, and competition, however small,

588
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: that somebody might be, he might grow.

589
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 2: And this, for Ida is the essence of the worldview

590
00:31:58,000 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 2: of Standard Oil.

591
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: You need to smother competition in the cradle.

592
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 2: Yes, very good, very good. She she actually says in

593
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,719
Speaker 2: her autobiography. She says that there was this obsession of

594
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 2: the Standard Oil company, that danger lurked in small as

595
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 2: well as great things. That nothing, however trivial must live

596
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 2: outside of its.

597
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: Control, obsessive control, not just of the market of everything,

598
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 1: oh everything and everybody. So in nineteen oh two, she

599
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:32,400
Speaker 1: publishes her first article about Standard Oil in McClure's It'll

600
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: eventually turn into a nineteen part series. Wow wow, people

601
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 1: actually read in those days. They really did.

602
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:44,719
Speaker 2: As we'll say, the series will include everything we've been

603
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 2: talking about and more, Robert. It will include widows who

604
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 2: are forced to sell.

605
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: To Standard Oil at below market prices. Oh, investigative journalists,

606
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: love a widow, Love a widow.

607
00:32:56,640 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 2: It'll include the card catalog that Standard Oil kept to

608
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 2: monitor every little store.

609
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: That sold oil. Surveillance, surveillance.

610
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 2: It'll include the ways that Standard Oil harassed the stores

611
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 2: that sold other companies oil, and to be clear, it'll

612
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:15,719
Speaker 2: include a lot of the clever and efficient things that

613
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 2: Standard Oil did as well. There's actually an article called

614
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 2: the Legitimate Greatness of the Standard Oil Company, very fair

615
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 2: of her, very fair, at least somewhat fair.

616
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: And it is a hit. It is a massive hit.

617
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 2: The magazine is selling out faster than usual on the newsstand.

618
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 2: Subscriptions are growing, Newspapers are writing editorials about it.

619
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:39,960
Speaker 1: There's a play on Broadway that.

620
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 2: Opens called The Lion and the Mouse that is an

621
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 2: allegory of Eye to Tarbell and John D.

622
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: Rockefeller.

623
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:48,480
Speaker 2: And you know, it's this long series, so the.

624
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: Stories are coming. It's building. Sam McClair tells, e to Tarbell,

625
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: you are today the most famous woman in America.

626
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 2: In nineteen oh four, the series is published as a

627
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 2: book called The History of the Standard Oil Company. And

628
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 2: you can see the whole idea, you know, the whole

629
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 2: story in one place. And the basic picture is a

630
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 2: company run by a truly brilliant businessman who used every

631
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 2: new technology and efficiency gain he could to build his company,

632
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 2: and who also use threats and bribery and coercion to

633
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 2: drive his competitors out of business so he could gain

634
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 2: complete control of the oil industry in America.

635
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: Does one have to bring the other? Did Ida Tarbell

636
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: think that if you are going to master an industry,

637
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: you will inevitably cross the line?

638
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 2: I don't think she did think that. Like she was

639
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 2: not anti business. She wanted business to be a moral pursuit.

640
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 2: And there was a real kind of moral quality, think

641
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 2: of the children to her writing that I haven't talked

642
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 2: about here.

643
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:54,439
Speaker 1: But she thought that.

644
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:59,439
Speaker 2: This strangle the competitors in the cradle was a dishonorable

645
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:03,240
Speaker 2: part of what should be an honorable part of American life.

646
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 2: And so her book closes with a call to action,

647
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 2: And it's not anti business, but it's anti monopoly.

648
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: What are we going to do about? For it is

649
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: our business. We, the people of the United States, and

650
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: nobody else must cure whatever is wrong in the industrial situation.

651
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: Typivide by this narrative of the growth of the Standard

652
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: Oil Company.

653
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 2: So it's in nineteen oh four when the book comes out,

654
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:27,759
Speaker 2: presidential election year.

655
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: Nice timing, biopublicist.

656
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:33,799
Speaker 2: True, and one of the candidates had an idea for

657
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 2: what the people of the United States should do about

658
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 2: Standard Oil and monopoly power in America.

659
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:41,919
Speaker 1: I'll give you a clue.

660
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 2: It was not the Democratic nominee Alton B.

661
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 1: Parker. Ooh, who's the guy who was running against guessing

662
00:35:49,200 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: he got famous. You'll know. After the ad, Ladies and gentlemen,

663
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: we are back from the break.

664
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:21,720
Speaker 2: Please give a warm business history. Welcome to the twenty

665
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 2: sixth President of the United States.

666
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt.

667
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 2: Roosevelt was the other huge important figure in this American

668
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 2: pivot we've been talking about of the early nineteen hundreds,

669
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 2: in the backlash to the power of Standard Oil and

670
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 2: the other trusts. And Roosevelt had an extremely interesting relationship

671
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 2: with Ida Tarbell and the other investigative journalists of the era.

672
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:54,760
Speaker 2: And you know, if you know one thing about Theodre

673
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:57,319
Speaker 2: Roosevelt in the Journalist, you know about this speech he gave,

674
00:36:57,800 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 2: which happened to be at a moment when he was

675
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 2: frustrated with an article that attacked the US Senate. Roosevelt

676
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:06,240
Speaker 2: compared investigative journalists to a guy who was always looking

677
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 2: down and just raking.

678
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 1: The muck beneath his feet. He said, the muckwaker typifies

679
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 1: the man who in this life consistently refuses to see

680
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness,

681
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: only on that which is vile and debasing.

682
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 2: Of course, the journalists loved this, started proudly calling themselves

683
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 2: the muckrakers.

684
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: Sure happy to look through the muck for embarrassing things.

685
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 2: And there is this moment kind of in the similar vein,

686
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 2: when Ida Tarbell and another McClure's journalist meet with Roosevelt

687
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 2: at the White House and he tells them they're impractical.

688
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,319
Speaker 2: Ida wrote later that Theodore Roosevelt was afraid that we

689
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 2: were adding to the not inconsiderable revolutionary fervor abroad, driving

690
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 2: people into socialism.

691
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and remember Roosevelt was president because an anarchist assassinated

692
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: President mckindley. Of course he's worried about agitation. This was

693
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,879
Speaker 1: the age of anarchism, and so journalists, what are they

694
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:05,359
Speaker 1: but anarchists with pens strong take.

695
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 2: So this is the famous side of Roosevelt's relationship with

696
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 2: Tarbell and the other journalists of the era. But there

697
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:14,839
Speaker 2: was another side to it. There's a book that really

698
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: helped me think about this. It's by Doris Kerns.

699
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: Goodwin.

700
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 2: It's called the bully Pulpit. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft

701
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 2: and the Golden Age of journalism.

702
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: Another topic for biographies that Anyone Will buy.

703
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 2: Yes and Doris Kerns Goodwin talked about the way that

704
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 2: Theodore Roosevelt needed needed Ida Tarbell and her colleagues because

705
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 2: he wanted to take on the Trust. But when he

706
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 2: took office in nineteen oh one, the politics were not

707
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 2: really in his favor because of that divide I was

708
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 2: talking about earlier. You know, you had the farmers and

709
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 2: the radicals who were anti trust, who were fighting the trusts,

710
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 2: and then you had the moneyed in trusts JP Morgan,

711
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 2: who were profiting from the trusts. But then there was

712
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 2: this vast, basically indifferent middle class people who just didn't

713
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 2: care that much. And Roosevelt knew that in order to

714
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 2: really take to have Congress on his side, to take

715
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 2: real action against the trust, he needed to bring that

716
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:18,960
Speaker 2: middle class over onto his side.

717
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: And he needed I to Tarbell's nuance that business is

718
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: not bad, some monopolies are not bad, but you can

719
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 1: abuse the monopoly. This would be the thing that he

720
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 1: could hold onto.

721
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 2: Yes, And and in fact that is what happened, you know,

722
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 2: that is what her stories about Standard Oil showed America.

723
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 2: And you know, as I was saying, the magazine was

724
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 2: targeted at exactly that kind of tuned out middle class

725
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 2: that Roosevelt needed. And they read Ida Tarbell stories and

726
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:57,240
Speaker 2: they started thinking differently about monopoly power and the trust

727
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 2: and the meaning of business in America. And Roosevelt uses

728
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 2: that momentum to start changing things. In nineteen oh three,

729
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 2: he actually signs three three important bills into law, kind

730
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 2: of one after the other. One of them makes it

731
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 2: harder for roads to pay rebates rebates quote unquote like

732
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 2: those one Standard Oil has been getting. Another one is

733
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:21,279
Speaker 2: supposed to actually expedite antitrust prosecutions. And the third one,

734
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 2: maybe the biggest one, creates this Department of Commerce and

735
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:29,839
Speaker 2: Labor that has legal power to investigate companies, you know,

736
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 2: engaged in interstate commerce. But Standard Oil by this point

737
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 2: was so big and so powerful that these laws were

738
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:38,719
Speaker 2: not going to be enough. Robert, I know you love

739
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 2: an old timey political cartoon, and.

740
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: I love to read cartoons on the radio. Loved cartoons

741
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: on the radio.

742
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 2: So here is one published in the magazine Puck in

743
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 2: the year nineteen oh four, which is the year I

744
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,800
Speaker 2: had a Standard Oil book came out, and also the

745
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 2: year Theodore Roosevelt is running for election or reelection.

746
00:40:56,920 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to zoom in here, because if you remember,

747
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: political cartoons at the time had like a million things

748
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: going on in them. We feel there's a hilary complicated

749
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:07,880
Speaker 1: h So right in the middle is an octopus, and

750
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 1: the body of the octopus is an oil tank that

751
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 1: says standard Oils. So this is standard oil the octopus.

752
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:20,280
Speaker 1: And what does the octopus have its tentacles around? Well, Congress, Absolutely,

753
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: this looks like the State House over there. It looks

754
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: like it's crushing the middle class. Here, it's crushing rich

755
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:31,399
Speaker 1: guys and lots of people over here. And then over

756
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: in the corner is the White House, and the tentacle

757
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: of the standard Oil octopus is about to reach out

758
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: and crush the last remaining building that it has not crushed,

759
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 1: the White House itself.

760
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:50,399
Speaker 2: The cartoon was called next Oh.

761
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 1: Because the White House was Yes, I understand, you know,

762
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: they write the names on all the cartoons pretty clear

763
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 1: that it's pretty clear, no subtlety.

764
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 2: So Roosevelt is running this campaign on what he calls

765
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 2: the three c's conservation, consumer protection, and control of corporations.

766
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 1: Corporations.

767
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, last one is the one we care about today

768
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 2: or the last two.

769
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: I guess control of corporations.

770
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 2: And Roosevelt one, of course, And so now he can

771
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:27,280
Speaker 2: push his trust busting campaign further. In nineteen oh six,

772
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:33,040
Speaker 2: his Department of Justice sues Standard Oil under the Sherman

773
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 2: Ante Trust Act, which has been around for a long

774
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 2: time but largely unused, and the case lays out a

775
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 2: lot of what Ida Tarbell talked about in her stories

776
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 2: in her book. There's this actually incredible kind of paragraph

777
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 2: that lists the allegations against the company.

778
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: Rebates, preferences and other discriminatory practices, restraint and monopolization by

779
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 1: control of pipelines, and unfair practices against competing pipelines, contracts

780
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: with competitors, and restraintive trade, unfair methods of competition such

781
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 1: as local price cutting at the points where it's necessary

782
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: to suppress competition, and espionage of the business of competitors,

783
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: and the operation of bogus independent companies. But other than that,

784
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:15,799
Speaker 1: it's a fine company. It's a beautiful institution.

785
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 2: The case wound its way through the courts.

786
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 1: They say they wind, they.

787
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 2: Bounce around, went all the way, as we have to

788
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 2: say to the Supreme Court, and the government won the

789
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 2: United States of America one. Standard Oil was forced to

790
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 2: split into dozens of separate companies, and Rockefeller got the

791
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 2: news perfectly when he was playing golf on his personal

792
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 2: golf course. I don't know how they gave him the news,

793
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 2: but there's a story about what happened when he got

794
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:48,960
Speaker 2: the news.

795
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: He was playing golf.

796
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 2: I believe what the Catholic priest sounds like a joke,

797
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 2: but I think it's true. And he gets the news

798
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 2: and he says to the guy's playing golf with have

799
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 2: you any money? And the guy says, no, why, And

800
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 2: Rockefeller says, buy Standard Oil. He felt he was going

801
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 2: to be just fine, and he was right. He was

802
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 2: right because shareholders in Standard Oil got shares in all

803
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 2: of the newly formed thirty some companies that spun out

804
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 2: of it, which included Standard Oil of New Jersey. She

805
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,360
Speaker 2: became a little company called Exon and Standard Oil of

806
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 2: New York, which went on to become Mobile. So Rockefeller

807
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 2: lost in court, but he just kept getting richer.

808
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 1: But of course after that you could have lots of

809
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: scrappy oil companies come up and compete. Yeah.

810
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 2: I mean, look, Ida Tarbell's goal wasn't to make Rockefeller

811
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 2: go broke, right, It was to make the public understand

812
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 2: that companies like Standard Oil weren't competing on a level

813
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,319
Speaker 2: playing field. They weren't trying to win market share by

814
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:00,760
Speaker 2: selling a better product or selling at a lower price.

815
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: You know.

816
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 2: She wanted people to know that they were using their

817
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 2: power to force rivals out every way they could, and

818
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 2: that once they had that kind of monopoly power, there

819
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 2: was no market anymore. The market didn't work anymore, you know,

820
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:20,240
Speaker 2: because the core of a market, the being capitalism needs

821
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 2: is competition. And she succeeded at that. And by the way,

822
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 2: this is a person who, because she is a woman,

823
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 2: can't vote, can't hold most business jobs.

824
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: Who is doing this? She did.

825
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 2: Help people understand this. She helped create a new way

826
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:38,720
Speaker 2: of thinking about business in America.

827
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: Right. She helped to establish.

828
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,280
Speaker 2: This world that we live in now, where we understand

829
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 2: that monopolies are a failure mode of capitalism and that

830
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,919
Speaker 2: sometimes we need the government to intervene.

831
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: To save capitalism from itself.

832
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 2: We're two geniuses into our three part American Genius series,

833
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 2: Robert Smith, you're writing part three right now, what's coming

834
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:02,279
Speaker 2: next week?

835
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 1: You know what you have to do in a third

836
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: part of a series. You have to innovate. Yes, you

837
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: have to disrupt. And in fact, our third American Genius

838
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: is the man who combined those two things, disruption and

839
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: innovation into one theory. And we'll have it next week.

840
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Gabriel hunter Cheng, who was

841
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 2: engineered by Sarah Bruguier. Our video editor slash producer is

842
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 2: Matt Nielsen. Our showrunner and editor is Ryan Dilly.

843
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,399
Speaker 1: Who researched and wrote much of the show. Today, I'm

844
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein and I'm Robert Smith. Thanks for listening.