When I entered Allegheny College in the fall of 1876 I made my first contact with the past. I had been born and reared a pioneer; I knew only the beg… - Ida Tarbell

When a woman enters the office of a great daily she is painfully conscious that she is a woman — just a woman. She cannot at first grasp the idea that the great daily is a wonderful and almost perfect machine that makes what she terms cruel demands.
That daily paper is a wonderful creation, and all who serve it become a part of the machinery, and not individuals. It takes a woman some time to realize this.
She goes into the office, receives her first assignment, does her best on it and next morning finds that not a word of it is used. She takes her next assignment, and perhaps two of the ten inches she wrote is used. Finally, she goes to the busy man with the glasses at the night desk and asks why. She is coldly informed that her first articles were “rot.” She thinks it is brutal and hard and does not understand why the men ignore the fact that she is a woman.

The deluge of monopolistic trusts which had followed the close of the Spanish-American War and the "return of prosperity" was disturbing and confusing people. It was contrary to their philosophy, their belief that, given free opportunity, free competition, there would always be brains and energy enough to prevent even the ablest leader monopolizing an industry. What was interfering with the free play of the forces in which they trusted? They had been depending on the Federal Antitrust Law passed ten years before. Was it quite useless? It looked that way.

If there were leaders in practically every industry who regarded it not only as sound ethics but as sound economics to improve the lot of the worker, ought not the public to be familiarized with this belief?