We are given to ignoring not only the past of our solutions, their status when we took them over, but the variety of relationships they must meet, sa… - Ida Tarbell
" "We are given to ignoring not only the past of our solutions, their status when we took them over, but the variety of relationships they must meet, satisfy. They must sink or swim in a stream where a multitude of human experiences, prejudices, ambitions, ideals meet and clash, throw one another back, mingle, make that all-powerful current which is public opinion the trend which swallows, digests, or rejects what we give it. It is our indifference to or ignorance of the multiplicity of human elements in the society we seek to benefit that is responsible for the sinking outright of many of our fine plans. There are certain exhibits of the eighty years I have lived which particularly impress me. Perhaps the first of these is the cyclical character of man's nature and activities. If I separate my eighty years-1857 to 1937-into four generations, examine them, compare my findings, I find startling similarities in essentials. Take the effort to create, distribute, and use wealth. How alike are the ups and downs that have marked that effort!
About Ida Tarbell
Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and pioneered investigative journalism.
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Additional quotes by 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.
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It was not long before I found I was being taken for something more serious than a mere journalist. Conservative Standard Oil sympathizers regarded me as a spy and not infrequently denounced me as an enemy to society. Independent oilmen and radical editors, who were in the majority, called me a prophet.