TARBELL'S ARGUMENT & EFFECT

      Tarbell was part of the muckrakers, so named by Theodore Roosevelt because he accused them of raking up muck via their writings (Brinkley, 520). Muckrakers like Tarbell thought it was their duty to expose the injustice and scandal brought upon the people (Weinburg, 200). The first targets of the muckrakers were trusts, writing about the corruption of either specific businesses or on the powerful corporations as a whole (Brinkley, 520). Tarbell was a perfect candidate for this job because she had experienced what the powerful trusts can do to people and she had also gained background knowledge on the government and trusts during the 1888 Election, which involved Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison and Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland (Weinburg, 202).           The leaders of the trusts tended to vote for the Republican candidates and so the Democrats attempted to use this as their advantage (Weinburg, 202). However, Harrison still won the election, but reluctantly passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which essentially declared monopolies to be illegal (Weinburg, 202). Tarbell used this and her past experience of Rockefeller's harsh control over her family to write about the corrupt monopolies (Bio.com). Since Tarbell had experienced the effects that big companies had on families, she first decided to focus on the deadly beast Standard Oil (Bio.com). Her most influential work created was called The History of the Standard Oil Company, which addressed how the emergence of powerful corporations has reduced helpless families such as hers to the state they were in now (Weinburg, 201). 

      The effect the muckrakers had on the general public was enormous. Their works helped to "promote a growing outrage at social and economic injustice and thus committed many reformers to the pursuit of social justice" (Brinkley, 521). This anger helped to fuel the rise of the "Social Gospel", which was an effort to use faith as a tool in social reform (Brinkley, 521). This movement's main concern was to redeem the nation's cities from their corrupted state (Weinburg, 206). Social Gospel wasn't the main element in urban reform itself, but it did help bring a "more powerful moral commitment to redeem lives of even the least favored citizens" (Brinkley, 521). Therefore, Social Gospel helped people to find their morality and change from their corrupt ways while also encouraging other elements involved in urban reform. It was through her writing that Tarbell helped influence people's actions.