Tough Tarbell Trivia

[Rob Wick]

Ok, I think I'll call this.

Tarbell had wanted, ever since the mid teens and early 1920s to update and write a third volume to her History of the Standard Oil Company. So much had changed since the government forced the breakup of Rockefeller's trust that Tarbell felt it was necessary to bring it up to date. She constantly thought and talked about it for many years, but never was able to get it accomplished.

Tarbell did work with a young history professor from Allegheny College named Paul Giddens on his book about the history of the Pennsylvania oil region, which Giddens published in 1938. Tarbell wrote the foreword to Giddens' book. One reviewer said that one could read Tarbell's contribution and then not have to read Giddens' book, which the author did not take as an insult.

In 1921 Tarbell even entertained the thought of working with S.S. McClure, who had nominal control of McClure's Magazine, but he would eventually lose control completely of the magazine in a few years, so nothing was done on that front.

In 1944 when Tarbell died, her sister Sarah gifted Tarbell's Standard Oil research material to Giddens, who used it to write his History of the Standard Oil (Indiana) Company. Giddens eventually became director of the Drake Well Museum, and he donated Tarbell's research material to them, resulting in the division of her papers between two archives.

Although Tarbell never really believed it, there were conspiracy theories that Rockefeller bought up as many copies of her books as he could find in an attempt to suppress them. Tarbell even asked her brother, William, to look at Philadelphia bookstores to see if Any copies were available. To this day, finding an original 1904 eidition of the two-volume history is very difficult, and if one can find it, very expensive. Of course, there are numerous reprints now available, but an original copy is hard to find.

The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine in 1956 printed "Ida Tarbell's Second Look at Standard Oil," which came from Tarbell's Drake papers. This was an early draft of one of the chapters that Tarbell intended to write. There are six boxes of research material that Tarbell collected before her 1944 death to help with her desire to bring the story up to date.

Best
Rob