MUCKRAKER

Born in an Oil Boom.

Ida Tar-bell was raised in northwest Penn-sylvania at a time when the discovery of oil was transforming the region into an industrial hub. While many people made for-tunes, including her father (who invented a storage system for oil), Ida remembered the terrible accidents, explosions, and fires that claimed many lives and the environmental devastation drilling caused. With her family's new wealth came access to books and magazines, and Ida grew up reading the popular magazines of the day. The only woman in her class at Allegheny College, she trained for a teaching career but soon grew bored with it. In 1882 she took a job with a monthly magazine The Chautauquan.

From Social Issues to Biography.

She wrote on the great reform movements of the 1880s and 1890s: temperance, antimonopoly crusades, housing reform, the eight-hour workday, and other labor issues connected with...