First im supposed to talk about the article The History of The Standard Oil Company. This was written by Ida M. Tarbell. The main reason it was written was to expose the oil industry. when this was written the standard oil company was being run by John D. Rockefeller. He was one of the richest men in the history of America. This led to many other stories that were considered muckraking to expose any other companies that were trying to form monopolies at the time.Ida M. Tarbell lived from November, 5th, 1857 to January 6th, 1944. She was an author, journalist, and a teacher. she was one of the well known muckrakers which was at this time know as investigative journalism. She is best know for her book, The History of The Standard oil company. This book was 654 pages long.Ida was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania. her father eventually became and oil producer and refiner. his and other small oil companies were greatly affected by the south improvement company scheme in 1872. Ida eventually decided it was because the standard oil company was using unfair tactics to put her father and other small oil companies out of business.Tarbell graduated at the top of her high school class and went to Allegheny College where she majored in Biology. when graduating in 1880 she was the only women in her class.After graduating she became a teacher in Poland, Ohio. She taught for two years and then decided she enjoyed writing more. she moved back to Pennsylvania and met Theodor Flood. She eventually became managing editor for him which meant she had to do a lot of proof reading and correcting. in 1890 she moved to Paris to do a Biography on Madame Roland. while in Paris she did articles for multiple magazines and eventually got the attention of a publisher Samuel McClure. She eventually made her way up to editor of this magazine.In 1900 she started researching the standard oil trust. her book the history of the standard oil company pointed out Rockefeller's different methods of getting rid of any competition. she said he never had run a race and started fair.He started with has plan to form a monopoly by securing favorable freight rates from railroad that were going from oil fields in Pennsylvania to his refineries that were in Cleveland. Then in the mid 1800's he got together with some other refineries and formed the South Improvement Company. There was a certain amount of money you had to pay per barrel to have it shipped and the smaller refineries who recieved it had to pay about $1.06 per barrel back which was about half of the cost to get it shipped. even the companies outside of the South improvement Company had to pay this. For struggling companies this would add up.Lincoln Steffens was born in San Fransisco on April 6th, 1866 and grew up in Sacramento, California. He graduated from the university of california and studied in France and Germany. the New York evening Post is where he began his journalistic career.His main topic was the shame of the cities. Mainly talked about different types of corruption in the different states of America. St. Louis had one of the worst governments. people were greedy and private. people wanted everything to themselves and would fight to get it.This was during the progressive era.No muckraking really went on before the progressive era.We dont really use the term muckrakers any more. its just investigative journalism. like news groups get in and dig around and expose some secrets and when big scams are found out they are put on tv. there is a large organization called the independent media center or the IMC. there is many of these groups in many different states. The group originated in Seattle. Many of these groups are run online so they can publish articles right onto the internet.Sources-1**https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3310293765?profile=original2**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_M._Tarbell3**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Standard_Oil_Company4**http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5733/5**http://www.trivia-library.com/b/ida-tarbell-john-d-rockefeller-and-standard-oil-exposed-part-1.htm
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