Tough Tarbell Trivia

[Steve]

Herbert Baxter Adams

[RJNorton]

Charles A. Beard?

[Rob Wick]

Steve got it. It was Herbert Baxter Adams. I'm leaving for work now, so I'll expand on this later today. Congrats!

Best
Rob

[Rob Wick]

Just wanted to follow up on my question. My next article is tentatively titled "Iderem and Sholly: Ida M. Tarbell, Carl Sandburg and Popular Lincoln Biography." "Iderem" is a play on Ida M., and was given to Tarbell by William Allen White. "Sholly" is what Sandburg's father used to call his son, whose birth name was Charles Sandburg. One of the things I'm studying is how academic historians treated them both. Given that Tarbell and Adams, along with Tarbell and other college professors, were friends (there are a small number of letters from Tarbell to Adams in his papers at Johns Hopkins University, which is where I found the quote, while I've only found one letter from Adams to Tarbell in her papers. It appears that Adams didn't make carbons of his letters, so most of his letters are in the papers of those to whom he wrote), I'm trying to discover how much influence those academic historians were on Tarbell.

Especially after the Wilma Minor affair, Sandburg tightened up his work and became more amenable to the suggestions of those outsiders who treated him with respect. Right now, though, I'm working on the Tarbell section.

Best
Rob

[Rob Wick]

I doubt this will be very difficult. Of course Tarbell wrote several articles about Lincoln, but she also did many more non-Lincoln articles. What two states did she write about?

Best
Rob

[L Verge]

I doubt this will be very difficult. Of course Tarbell wrote several articles about Lincoln, but she also did many more non-Lincoln articles. What two states did she write about?

Best
Rob

I know absolutely nothing about Ms. Tarbell except that she was a muckraker journalist. One of the biggest mucks in the U.S. during her period was the City of Chicago, so I'll guess that Illinois was one of her targets?

[Rob Wick]

That's a logical guess, Laurie, but that's not what I'm looking for.

Best
Rob

[Steve]

Tarbell wrote about Indiana and Kentucky in her articles about Lincoln's childhood. Excluding that, she wrote a two-part series on Kansas and the Standard Oil Company in McClure's magazine.

Tarbell also wrote an article in McCall's magazine in 1926 about Florida.

[Rob Wick]

Florida is correct (although it was a three-part series with a fourth follow up), but Kansas isn't the other state I'm looking for. The article was written long after she left McClure's.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

New Jersey?

[Rob Wick]

Sorry Roger, but it isn't New Jersey.

I think I need to clarify something. Theoretically, Tarbell could have written an article dealing with a particular subject in most of the United States. The articles I'm looking for were specifically written about the state, with the state's name in the title. For example, the McCall's series was titled, "Florida--And Then What?" and the follow-up was, "Is Florida a Failure?" So while the article mentioned by Steve was set in Kansas, the main subject was Standard Oil.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Texas - the Lone Star State?

[Rob Wick]

Good guess, Roger, but it isn't Texas.

Clue: The article appeared in The Delineator.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Arizona?

[Rob Wick]

You got it Roger. The second state was Arizona. Tarbell wrote an article on the possibility that Arizona could secede from the Union because of the construction of the Hoover Dam. In addition to appearing in The Delineator, the article was also syndicated and appeared in various newspapers throughout the country.

Roger, we have a special prize for you and Steve. You each get six months of The Delineator for free. If you don't want that, you can either get the Pictorial Review or Collier's.

Best
Rob