But if the practices were not universal, if there was a steady, though slow, progress, ought not the public to recognize it? Was it not the duty of t… - Ida Tarbell

I soon discovered that, if we were not afraid, I must work in a field where numbers of men and women were afraid, believed in the all-seeing eye and the all-powerful reach of the ruler of the oil industry. They believed that anybody going ahead openly with a project in any way objectionable to the Standard Oil Company would meet with direct or indirect attack.

I took on self-support at the start that I might be free to find answers to questions which puzzled me. After long floundering I blundered into man's old struggle for the betterment of his life. My point of attack has always been that of a journalist after the fact, rarely that of a reformer, the advocate of a cause or a system.

I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer, a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain. One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.