there were other forces working against the type of journalism in which we believed. We were classed as muckrakers, and the school had been so commer… - Ida Tarbell

Before I left The Chautauquan I had concluded that there was a trilogy of wrongs-all curable-responsible for our repeated depressions and our poorly distributed wealth: discrimination in transportation; tariffs save for revenue only; private ownership of natural resources.

Women, newspaper women, have to get over that habit of quitting — it's fatal. And she mustn’t cry — if she belong[s] to that class she will probably be asked to quit. Tears may be a forceful weapon in matrimony, but never in an editorial room.

I gave myself time around these factories. The observer who once in his life goes down for half a day into a mine or spends two or three hours walking through a steel mill, naturally revolts against the darkness, the clatter, the smoke, the danger. As a rule he misses the points of real hardship; he also misses the satisfactions. As my pilgrimage lengthened, I became more and more convinced that there is no trade which has not its devotee. "Once a miner, always a miner." "Once a sailor, always a sailor." One might go through the whole category.