Ida Tarbell Research Paper

Ida Tarbell: Making a Difference in the World

From breaking the rules to mending them, Ida Tarbell has played a crucial role in making the world a better place for businesses, workers, and citizens. She always fought for what she believed in and wrote the truth about the world surrounding her. Ida would stop at nothing until she found the answers that she was looking for and wouldn’t let anyone get in her way. She was a fearless woman who didn’t let the rules of society hold her back. Ida was a great muckraker during the late 1870’s, and up until the beginning of World War II, in 1944. Although Ida Tarbell was a rebellious teenager who questioned the Bible, she grew up to become a great journalist who exposed the Standard Oil Company.

Ida was born to be a rebel, and this was very clear as a child. At just the age of 4, she had her very first rebellion (Paradis 12). Ida’s father was in the oil business and she grew up surrounded by oil fields (13). As she grew older, she wanted to explore the oil fields around her, but Ida’s mother wouldn’t allow it. After she was told no, Ida told her mother that she was leaving to go live with her grandmother and left. As Ida reached a landmark that looked like a mountain, she returned home because she didn’t know her way

Although she never wanted to be remembered as a muckraker, but as a historian, she helped to create equality throughout the oil business and rid the world of some evil. “...this woman, who personified the word “success” in her own generation, and who, if she were alive today, would stand at the forefront of journalism, was the same woman who asserted that women’s place was in the home and that they were incapable of greatness in a man’s world…” (Treckel). Ida never stopped fighting for what she believed in and always sought out the truth about everything. Who will be the next Ida M.