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HISTORY This Week

Monopoly Money

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.54.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

October 1, 1904. Show up at a newsstand this morning, and you'll see that the October issue of McClure's magazine has hit the shelves. Alongside it, newspapers advertise what’s inside: "Ida M. Tarbell renders her final judgment of Rockefeller's Trust." It’s the 19th and last installment in a series that has made people sit up and take notice of a powerful monopoly and the man behind it. How did a scrappy reporter take on the richest man in the country? And how, in the process, did she change corporate America and investigative journalism itself?


Special thanks to our guests, Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S. S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America; Kathleen Brady, author of Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker; and Steve Weinberg, author of Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

The History Channel, original podcast.

0:06.0

History this week, October 1st, 1904.

0:11.0

I'm Sally Helmer.

0:13.0

Show up at a newsstand this morning,

0:15.0

and you'll see that the October issue of McCours magazine

0:19.0

has hit the shelves.

0:21.0

Its bright orange cover features a tranquil landscape drawing.

0:26.0

Mountains, leafy trees, a lake.

0:28.0

There's some orange flowers in an elegant gray flower pot

0:31.0

and vines twisting up some columns.

0:34.0

If it weren't for the other newspapers

0:36.0

sitting alongside McCours on the shelves,

0:38.0

you might not know that inside this issue of the magazine

0:43.0

is one of the most explosive stories of the decade.

0:48.0

But those other papers give you a hint.

0:51.0

Standard oil attacked reads one from on headline.

0:55.0

That's a big deal.

0:57.0

Standard oil is one of the biggest,

0:59.0

most important corporations in the country.

1:01.0

If you open up a paper trying to learn more,

1:04.0

you might see an advertisement from McCours

1:06.0

with this statement in bold letters.

...

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