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!
I was born in the year of a major panic. The depression which followed
it was smothered in war. That war over, quickly there followed in 1866 a
serious depression—world-wide. In 1873 came a major panic. When this
first period came to an end in 1877 the country was still deep in the
clutch of the unhappy depression which followed that panic.
Each of my three successive generations beginning in 1877, 1897, 1917,
has featured a “major” panic followed by five to seven years of
depression. Then has come a brilliant short-lived recovery ending in
what we euphoniously call today a recession.
My fifth generation, just opening, promises well to duplicate its
predecessor. If I live ten years longer I no doubt shall see another
major panic, and one still more difficult for the productive individual
or group to handle because the practice of following the provident ant’s
example and storing up in the good time reserves to meet the bad has
been made a political offense.
Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior
inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of
power and possession, launch selfish schemes—Carnegies, Rockefellers,
Goulds. If each of these strong men left something sinister behind, each
also contributed to higher living standards and hurried on the
nationalization of the country. The public without whom they could not
have lived a day saw in their greedy grandiose undertakings whatever was
for its benefit, and took it while ordering its government to control
whatever was sinister.
And while they built and served and exploited, other men endowed with
far greater idealism than practical sense planned new forms of
government, new laws, advertised panaceas, all guaranteed to produce
security and justice. Each generation has had its Henry George, its
Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the
way, could lead men to the good life.
In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision—war or
cooperation. If war has been the answer in the majority of cases, there
have always been those who have gone ahead building up a great mass of
evidence of what men inspired by good will, free from suspicion and
self-interest, can do in industry by patient cooperative experiments.
Side by side with these exhibits have gone magnificent governmental
attempts to correct abuses, to make man’s life in the Republic freer,
securer, more just, efforts to carry out the avowed purpose of the
government we started a hundred and fifty years ago. And these efforts
are alike in essentials—the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, the New
Freedom of Woodrow Wilson, the Square Deal of Theodore Roosevelt, the
fight for a larger freedom of opportunity of Grover Cleveland, the
struggle to wipe out slavery of Abraham Lincoln.
Again and again in these generations have we seen the great airship of
democracy lift from the ground, stagger, gather itself together, soar,
sail, while those who had chosen the pilot and loaded in his cargo
watched the flight with confidence and exultation. This time their dream
had come true.
But the ship has always come back, its journey unfinished, and doubters
have jeered at those who believed in it, cried out that it would never
fly, that freedom, equal opportunity were only foolish fancies; men,
they gloated, function only under strong single rulers. Dictatorship
alone makes efficient government—national power and glory. The state,
not the individual, is the end.
There is no denying that these repeated failures or half-successes have
made cynics of many who have had a hand in the flights, or at least been
sympathetic watchers.
It has been sickening to see hopes grow dim under the hammering of
reality, to see a generation lose its first grand fire and sink into
apathy, cynicism. One asks oneself if man has the staying power ever to
realize his ideals. One is inclined when this hour of futility comes to
agree with Arthur Balfour that human life is but a disreputable episode
on one of the minor planets. As far as I am concerned that smart and
cynical estimate never could stand a good night’s sleep.
If I find little satisfaction or hope in examining and comparing one by
one my four successive generations, I find considerable in looking at
them as a whole. When I do that, I see not a group of cycles rolling one
after another along a rocky and uneven road but a spiral—the group moves
upward. To be sure it is not a very steady spiral, but I am convinced
that is the real movement.
Could there be greater evidence that this is true than that the world as
a whole has today come to conscious grips over that most fundamental of
problems: Shall all men cooperate in an effort to make a free, peaceful,
orderly world, or shall we consent that strong men make a world to their
liking, forcing us to live in it? more than that, train us to carry it
on?
It is well that the issue should be clear, so clear that each of us must
be forced to choose.
Even more hopeful, if not so clear to many people, is the increasing
knowledge that we are getting of man as an individual and as a mass,
coming to us particularly from men of science. What we have yet to find
out, apparently, is what we can expect of man under this or that
circumstance, what words and what promises stir him, what persuades him
to cooperation or to revolt, why he follows a particular type of leader
at a particular time and how long he can be counted on. Once we know
better what we can get out of man under particular circumstances we can
plan our action with something like the certainty with which the
electrician plans his machine. He knows the nature of the current, what
it will do and not do. He puts no strain on it which experiment has
proved fatal.
When we reach that knowledge and control of human forces we shall know
why the League of Nations works so badly, why we have before us the
terrible and apparently uncheckable shambles of Spain and China, why an
intolerable outbreak of racial and religious prejudice should shame us
at this period of our history, why we must be prepared to meet the
savage outbreaks of men and peoples still contemptuous of contracts,
unamenable to ideals of honor, peace, and conciliation.
One consolation in any effort to socialize and democratize our plans of
life is that the mass of men want a simple world. In every country they
ask little more than security, preferably of their own making, freedom
to build in the way they like so far as possible. They will follow any
system or any leader that promises them that. Politicians would do a
better job for men if they wrote fewer constitutions, devised fewer
automatic cures, gave more attention to disciplining and training common
men and women the world over to honest labor, to cooperation with their
fellows, to sacrifice when necessary, keeping alive in them their
natural spark of freedom.
How are we going to do it? That is the gravest question we face. In 1921
I went to Washington to report Secretary Hughes’ Conference on the
Limitation of Armaments. It seemed to me that I had better do some
preliminary reading on the problems, so I went to a wise man at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for advice. He turned out to
be a philosopher.
“First,” said he, “read ‘Don Quixote’: he will tell you what they cannot
do. Then read Aesop’s Fables: that will tell you what they can do. But
above all read the King James Version of the Bible, which tells you that
peace on earth is promised only to men of good will.”
There you have it. If we want peace we must make men of common sense,
knowing what can be done and what cannot be done, also men of good will.
How are we to do that? I see no more promising path than each person
sticking to the work which comes his way. The nature of the work, its
seeming size and importance matter far less than its right relation to
the place where he finds himself. If the need at the moment is digging a
ditch or washing the dishes, that is the greatest thing in the world for
the moment. The time, the place, the need, the relation are what decide
the value of the act.
It is by following this natural path that new and broader roads open to
us, moments of illumination come. There is the only reliable hope of the
world. It takes in all of us but puts it up hard to each of us to fit
the day’s work into the place where we stand, not crowding into
another’s place: no imitation, no hurry, growth always, knowing that
light and power come only with growth, slow as it is.
Madame Curie so saw it. Asked what a woman’s contribution to a better
world should be, she replied that it began at home, then spread to those
immediately connected, her immediate friends, then the community in
which she lived; and if the work proved to meet a need of the world at
large it spread there. But the important thing was the beginning, and
that beginning, Madame Curie insisted, was in the home, the center of
small things.
Work backed by such a faith makes life endurable. I doubt if I could
have come into my eighties with anything like the confidence I feel in
the ultimate victory of freedom, the ultimate victory of man’s
self-respect, if I had not groped my way through work into some such
faith.
I know I should find this end of life less satisfactory if it were not a
working end, conditioned as it must be by certain concessions to years,
easements necessary if I am to keep vigor for my two or three hours a
day at my desk and, once accepted, becoming more and more enjoyable.
No one can imagine what a satisfaction it is to me to find that I need
not go to conferences and conventions and big dinners. That job belongs
to youth. It alone has the appetite, the digestion, the resilience for
the endless talk and late hours of those functions, also the confidence
that salvation is to be reached through them.
Still more satisfactory is the acceptance of the fact that I have not
the strength to run about on trains and give lectures. That, too, is the
job of young people, and the best I can hope for them in carrying it on
is that they will learn as much about people as I think I did. The
humility which that will engender will be all to their good.
A discovery which has given me joy, and which had something of the
incredible about it, is the durability of friendship born at any period
in one’s life. I have enlarged in this narrative only on professional
friendships, those that belong legitimately to my day’s work, but this
discovery does not cover them alone but all the range from childhood to
now.
Circumstances, time, separations, may have completely broken
communication. The break may have been caused by complete divergence of
opinion, differences as grave as those which caused the breaking up of
our old McClure crowd, as grave as the ghastly separations that war
brings; but you pick up at the day when the friendship was—not broken
but interrupted.
One of the most beautiful personal demonstrations I have had of this
unbreakable quality in friendship was a birthday party which S. S.
McClure gave Viola Roseboro, John Phillips, and myself when he was
seventy-eight, and I close to it. Miss Roseboro had stayed with Mr.
McClure when the rest of us left him. That had never made a rift in
anybody’s relations with her, and now we all sat down together as once
we had sat down in the old St. Denis, the old Astor, the old Holland
House—lunching places that marked the stages by which _McClure’s_ worked
itself successively into better quarters, went uptown. And we talked
only of the things of today, as we always had done. We sat enthralled as
in the old years while Mr. McClure enlarged on his latest enthusiasm,
marveling as always at the eternal youthfulness in the man, the failure
of life to quench him.
One of my great satisfactions has been a revival of curiosity. I lost it
in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Human affairs seemed to me to be headed
for collapse. War was not over, and men were taking it for granted it
was. The failure of the hopes of previous generations had taught us
nothing. The sense of disaster was strong in me. What I most feared was
that we were raising our standard of living at the expense of our
standard of character. If you believed as I did (and do) that permanent
human betterment must rest on a sound moral basis, then our house would
collapse sooner or later.
It was taking a longer view, looking at my fifty years as a whole, that
revived me. I thought I saw a spiral, was eager to prove it.
Once more I am curious. It is an armchair curiosity—no longer can I go
out and see for myself; but that has its advantages. It compels longer
reflection, intensifies the conviction that taking time, having
patience, doing one thing at a time are the essentials for solid
improvement, for finding answers. Perhaps, I tell myself, I may from an
armchair find better answers than I have yet found to those questions
which set me at my day’s work, the still unanswered questions of the
most fruitful life for women in civilization, the true nature of
revolutions, even the mystery of God. It is the last of the three which
disturbs me least. The greatest of mysteries, it has become for me the
greatest of realities.
INDEX
Adams, Dr. Herbert B., 76
Addams, Jane, 273, 279, 305, 309, 310, 312, 313, 322, 334, 349, 354
Agassiz, Louis, 41, 42
Alber, Louis, 300
Alden, Timothy, 37–39
Aldrich, Esther Tarbell (niece), 264, 265, 359
Allegheny College, 34–47, 58, 64, 89, 142
American Federation of Labor, 82, 371
_American Magazine, The_, 255, 259, 261, 265–267, 270, 274, 276, 281,
282, 288, 292, 293, 297–300, 306, 307, 327, 350, 353, 359, 365, 399
Anderson, Mary, 55, 323, 349
Anderson, Maxwell, 307
Anthony, Susan B., 31–33, 40, 327
Archbold, John D., 220, 221, 232
Baker, Ray Stannard, 196, 197, 242, 258, 261, 266, 274, 279, 282, 292,
299, 350
Barton Lincolniana, 170, 171
Beecher-Tilton scandal, 33
Bell, Alexander Graham, 44, 147, 181–184
Bellamy, Edward, 83, 401
Bentley, William, 38, 39
Berkman, Alexander, 126
Blanc, Madame (Théodore Bentzon), 100, 101
Bliven, Bruce, 307
Bloomer, Amelia, 31
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 130, 146–153, 155, 156, 159, 161, 164, 205, 384
Bonnet, Madame, 90, 103–106, 110, 112, 114, 116–118
Bonta House, 19, 205
Borgeaud, Charles, 131, 145, 350
Boyden, Albert, 258, 261, 262, 266, 300
Bryan, William Jennings, 355, 356, 401
Bugbee, Dr. Lucius, 35, 43
Burlingame, Edward L., 98–100
Burroughs, John, 308
Catt, Carrie Chapman, 320–322, 326
Chautauqua Assembly, 65–72
Chautauqua Circuit, 300–305, 314, 329, 352–356, 388–397
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, 69–71, 81
_Chautauquan, The_, 64, 71–79, 81–83, 85–89, 94, 98, 179, 204, 211, 268
Cherry Run, 4, 5, 8, 10
Claflin, Tennessee, 32, 33
Claude, Monsieur, 97
Cleveland, Grover, 83, 149, 268–272, 402
Coppée, François, 122, 123
Corrigan, James, 237, 238
Craft, Amos Norton, 27, 28
Dana, Charles A., 174–177
Darmesteter, James, 131
Daudet, Alphonse, 122, 126, 127
Delamater, Wallace, 79, 80
Dieulafoy, Madame, 101, 102
Doremus, Dr. R. Ogden, 65, 66
Duffus, Robert L., 307
Dumas, Alexandre, 122
Duncan, Andrew J., 60, 61
Dunne, Finley Peter (Mr. Dooley), 259–261, 265, 300, 361
Edison, Thomas A., 64, 310
Ely, Dr. Richard T., 76
Emery, Fred Parker, 114
Emery, Lewis, Jr., 231–234, 236, 237, 252
Fairchild, David, 183
Finley, Dr. John H., 70, 76, 77, 171, 172
Fisk, Jim, 22
Flagler, Henry, 217–220
Fletcher, Henry P., 382
Flood, Dr. Theodore L., 64, 72–75, 87
Ford, Henry, 287–293, 296, 309–312
Gary, Judge Elbert H., 285, 364–374
Gautier, Judith, 102, 103
Gautier, Théophile, 102
George, Henry, 83, 401
Gifford, Walter S., 320, 325
Gilder, Jeannette L., 265
Gladden, Dr. Washington, 243
Gompers, Samuel, 285, 349, 371–373
Gould, Jay, 22, 25
Grayson, David, 197. _See also_ Baker, Ray Stannard
Grosvenor, Gilbert II., 183
Grumbine, Annette, 46
Hanna, Mark, 60, 61
Harding, Warren G., 375
Haskins, George, 44–45, 47
Hasse, Adelaide, 209
Hay, John, 162–164, 166, 169
Haymarket riot, 82
Hazen, Charles D., 114–116, 145, 330
Heinze, F. Augustus, 228, 229
Henderson, Josephine, 89
Henry, Mary, 89, 90, 98
Herr, Lucien, 132, 133, 145
Hess, Ida, 15
Hess, M. E., 15
“History of the Standard Oil Company, The,” 202, 206, 239–241, 244,
258, 361–364
Hoar, George Frisbie, 190–195
Hoch, E. W., 249
Hoggson, Ella, 265
Hoggson, Noble, 265
Holland Land Company, 37
Hoover, Herbert, 321, 375, 376
Howe, Frederic C., 309
Hubbard, Gardiner Green, 147, 149–152, 180–182, 185
Hubbard, Mrs. Gardiner Green, 149, 150, 180, 181, 190
Jaccaci, Auguste, 158, 159, 337, 340, 350, 352, 379
James, Henry, 45
Janssen, Pierre Jules César, 120
Jewett, Rutger B., 364, 365
Jordan, David Starr, 306, 307, 349, 354
Kellogg, Clara Louise, 34
Kennan, George, 302, 391
Langley, Samuel Pierpont, 183–185
Lapique, Louis, 145, 350
Lathrop, Julia C., 324
Lee, B. F., 49, 50, 53
Leigh, William R., 172
Lincoln, Abraham, 8, 11, 12, 59, 161, 175, 177–180, 186, 205, 282, 288,
357, 360, 384–386, 402
Lincoln, Robert Todd, 59, 165–170, 172
Livermore, Mary A., 32
Lloyd, Henry D., 204, 209, 210, 214, 231, 233, 240
Lynch, Thomas, 286, 287, 291, 292
Lyons, Mrs. Emily, 165–166, 168
_McClure’s Magazine_, 121, 124, 126, 141, 145, 147, 153, 154, 157–160,
177, 184, 186, 187, 190, 195–198, 202, 206, 211, 212, 225–227, 231,
240, 242, 254–259, 261, 262, 269, 282, 288, 297, 299, 353, 363, 364,
399, 406
McClure, S. S., 118–123, 141, 146–150, 151, 154–156, 158, 160–165, 168,
173, 175–177, 184, 188, 196, 199, 200, 202, 205, 206, 210–212, 215,
239, 254–258, 363, 406
McClure’s Syndicate, 100, 103, 118, 155, 175
McCoy, Adrian, 73
McCullough, Esther Ann (mother), 1–3, 5–13, 16, 17, 20–22, 31, 32, 34,
35, 63, 98, 116, 117, 144–146, 203, 357, 395
McCullough, Walter Raleigh (grandfather), 1, 3
McKinley, Abner, 60
McKinley, William, 58–62, 186, 187, 189, 207, 268
Mahaffy, Dr. J. P., 77, 78
Marillier, Madame Cécile, 132, 133, 135, 139, 141, 142, 145, 337, 339,
350
Marillier, Léon, 131, 132, 138
Marx, Karl, 135
Mead, David, 37
Meadville, Pa., 38, 64, 72, 74, 76, 79, 141, 262
Medill, Joseph, 173
Miles, General Nelson Appleton, 186–190
Miller, Hugh, 27, 28
Miller, Lewis, 64, 65, 67, 69
Montague, Gilbert Holland, 240, 241
Morse, John T., 167, 168
Mussolini, Benito, 368, 377, 378, 380–384, 395
Nestor, Agnes, 322, 323
Nicolay, John G., 162–166, 169
Norris, Kathleen, 266
Oil City, Pa., 11, 117
Oil Creek, 4, 8, 13, 14, 244
Pasteur, Louis, 120–122
Pasteur, Madame Louis, 120–122
Perry, J. Leslie, 175, 176
Petroleum Center, 14, 15
Phillips, John S., 103, 119, 141, 156–160, 165, 175, 197, 199, 202,
205, 210, 211, 215, 229, 239, 254, 257–260, 262, 266, 274, 281, 292,
297, 300, 336, 406
Pithole, 10, 19, 20, 204, 205
Poland Union Seminary, Poland, Ohio, 48–59, 62–65, 81, 85
Pure Oil Company, 204, 231
_Red Cross Magazine_, 325, 336, 350
Reed, Jack, 266, 267
Robinson, A. Mary F., 131, 140
Rockefeller, Frank, 237, 238
Rockefeller, John D., 25, 211, 214, 215, 217, 219, 220, 233–240, 243,
251, 362, 372
Rogers, Henry H., 10, 24, 25, 211–232, 234, 365
Roland, Madame, 85, 86, 93, 99, 100, 112, 124, 125, 130–132, 136–140,
143, 144, 146, 148, 153
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 67, 369, 402
Roosevelt, Theodore, 189, 190, 211, 229, 241, 242, 251, 252, 271, 272,
275–277, 306, 366, 367, 369, 402
Roseboro, Viola, 13, 197, 198, 406
Rouse, Henry, 8
Rouseville, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19, 21, 24, 135, 213
Sabin, Dr. Florence, 120
Schurz, Carl, 177, 178
Schwimmer, Madame Rosika, 309, 313
_Scribner’s Magazine_, 97, 98, 118, 124, 144, 145, 153
Seignobos, Charles, 132–136, 138, 145, 337, 349, 350
Shaw, Dr. Anna H., 318–322, 326–329, 336
Sherman Antitrust Law, 252
Shotwell, Dr. James T., 349
Siddall, John M., 211, 234–237, 258, 266, 299, 307, 308
Simon, Jules, 123
Sloane, William Milligan, 152
South Improvement Company, 23–25, 208, 214, 218–220, 227
Spofford, Ainsworth, 150, 151
Standard Oil Company, 10, 24, 25, 83, 202, 203, 206–212, 214–216,
218–223, 225, 226, 228–232, 234, 237–241, 243, 244, 249–253, 267,
268, 299, 362–364;
“History” of, _see_ “History”
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 31–33, 40, 327
Stanton, Theodore, 99
Steed, H. Wickham, 135, 136, 204, 350
Steffens, Lincoln, 198–202, 256, 258, 274, 282, 297, 298
Tarbell, Franklin Sumner (father), 1–6, 8, 10–22, 24, 25, 27, 31, 32,
34, 43, 46, 53, 63, 65, 88, 93–95, 98, 104, 116, 118, 144–146, 203,
207, 213, 218, 245
Tarbell, Franklin Sumner, Jr. (brother), 12
Tarbell, Sarah A. (sister), 12, 24, 63, 98, 121, 144, 145, 359
Tarbell, William Walter (brother), 5, 12, 14, 46, 98, 118, 121, 145,
203–205, 231, 345
Tariff Commission, 278, 279
Taylor, Frederick W., 292–295, 360
Tingley, Jeremiah, 41–44, 120
Titusville, Pa., 4, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27, 30–32, 46, 64, 65, 72, 79,
83, 89, 90, 97, 98, 117, 141, 146, 205, 218, 262
Tucker, G. Burr, 264
Tucker, Mrs. G. Burr, 264
Tupper, Clara Tarbell (niece), 359
Tupper, Tristram, 359
Twain, Mark, 67, 68, 157, 211–213, 265, 369
Vacuum Oil Company, 220, 221
Vanderbilt, Commodore, 25, 33
Vincent, Dr. John H., 65–72, 114–116, 145
Walker, Clara, 54, 55, 57, 61
Walker, Robert, 52, 57–62
Wallace, Lew, 71
Wallace, Susan E., 71
White, William Allen, 200, 259, 260, 282, 337, 338, 350
Whitney, Henry C., 173, 174
Wickersham, George W., 362, 366
Willard, Frances E., 32
Wilson, Woodrow, 167, 278, 279, 313–318, 320, 322, 328, 331, 346, 348,
350, 351, 356–358, 362, 371, 374–376, 386, 402
Winthrop, Judge James, 39
Woodhull, Victoria, 32, 33
Woolf, Virginia, 40
Young, Owen D., 386–388
Zola, Emile, 122, 123
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALL IN
THE DAY’S WORK
_An Autobiography_
_by_
_Ida M. Tarbell_
_author of “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” “The Life of
Abraham Lincoln,” etc._
“I don’t know how this book will come out,” Miss Tarbell explained to
reporters on her eightieth birthday. “I am putting down the things I
have seen, the men and women I have known in five stirring decades.
Always there have been exciting things going on, things that upset
me—wars, depressions, bloody rows.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.