IDA TARBELL_PORTRAIT OF A MUCKRAKER

by Kathleen Brady

  Tarbell was not the only one of the old McClure crowd to appreciate Mussolini’s forceful manner. Sam McClure also met him that year and wrote to his wife: “We had a beautiful talk … [Mussolini] is full of force & Charm and kindliness. It made my heart beat hard for a long time after I left him.”45

  Just thinking about Il Duce caused Steffens to wax bombastic: “God said, ‘I will have a political thunderstorm, big enough for all men to notice and not too big for them to comprehend, and through it I will shoot a blazing thunderbolt that will strike down all their foolish old principles, burn up their dead ideas, and separate the new light I am creating from the darkness men have made.’ And so He formed Mussolini out of a rib of Italy.”46

  Viola Roseboro was vacationing in Italy at that time and joined Ida in Rome and Siena. She described Ida’s reaction to the despot: “Mussolini certainly did put the comehither on the statesman lady … The rascal knew what he was doing … Ida was moved to great pleasure in the power combined with the winsomeness in the man as she found him. She found my distaste for his public self, his bombastic talk, his awesome poses, rather silly, not important enough to resent. She explained his Kaiser Wilhelmlike speeches by saying he was an Italian speaking to Italians; she who always hates with such an inborn hatred any loose tall talk.”

  Roseboro thought she knew why Ida was so tolerant of Mussolini’s excesses: “Here was one of the males who in other days and circumstances would have filled little young Ida’s dreams for a while … I heard her let go about that dimple (chuckling) several times. All those things that are at such a variance with the old work horse she calls herself and to the serious worker she is and is known for pleases me a lot.”47

  They reached Siena in time for its annual festival. The town was packed, but Roseboro managed to find them tiny rooms in a pensione with one far-off bathroom for twenty people. Roseboro described Tarbell’s delight: “Her chief excitement was when we found out that the horse drawing us was the animal we had seen the day before dressed up in the most gorgeous finery all over himself and leading the grand procession. That was truly a thrill. I mean for her. I was more dully stupid and grown up about it.”48

  Guided by a female archeologist, Ida toured Pompeii, including areas closed to the public. She found Vesuvius less thrilling than Colton’s Common School Geography had led her to expect, but enjoyed a wild ride over the mountains to see the Bay of Salerno and Ravello. The sight was so lovely she had to force herself to go to bed, then woke up at 4:30 A.M. to see the dawn.

  Her soul thrilled to the beauty she was seeing, but sometimes Ida ached with loneliness and exhaustion. She finished her second article by the middle of August, rested in Genoa, then went to Turin to begin the third. Each day she worked until five and then went for a walk. Weekly she wrote home, wistfully asking if her pepper plants had come up, if the “mess flower” bed had turned out all right, and if the corn was as tasty as she imagined. She would sometimes catch herself on the brink of buying a postcard for her mother—who had loved to see all the places Ida went.

  When she could think of nothing better to do with her free time, Tarbell joined the crowds going to the pictures. While working on the Standard series at the turn of the century, she had relaxed by going to the theater and hissing the villain. In the 1920s, she turned to movies. Turin offered Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Ida’s favorite, Rin Tin Tin. She caught the end of an improbable Western and cheered with the audience when the dog saved the day.

  Ida returned home at the beginning of November when her report, “The Greatest Story in the World Today,” began in McCall’s. The three-part series was generally favorable toward Mussolini, but cautioned that his autocratic methods required careful scrutiny. In the introduction to her third article, her editor revealed Tarbell’s thoughts about the Fascist leader: “‘The Despot with a Dimple’—such might have been Ida Tarbell’s description of the world-famous Mussolini after she had finally penetrated the labyrinths of Italian Officialdom and reached not a minotaur, but a very human personality with ‘one of the loveliest smiles she ever saw!’ The most noted of all America’s women journalists found Italy’s new dictator a man neither violent nor forbidding, and one who had reached his exalted position through actual ability and force of personality.”

  Twenty years before, Ida Tarbell had described John D. Rockefeller as a scaly amphibian, but now she seemed intrigued by animal magnetism. Tarbell had not intended to convey Mussolini’s Latin charm to her readers, but her comment was widely quoted. It obscured her more prudent remarks. Tarbell wrote that Mussolini’s political creed was not entirely convincing to an American disturbed by his private “army” and by censorship of the press, but that he had stirred the Italians, changed daily conditions, and converted thousands into the Fascist ranks.

  She saw that he had improved the productivity and efficiency of Italy and opined that in Mussolini, the Italians had found their Moses, and so he would remain: but he had raised expectations so high that he would ultimately have to disappoint. She predicted that like Napoleon he might well overreach himself. Several times she expressed doubt that he would be allowed to live out his natural life. There had been three assassination attempts while she was in Italy. She told friends that she hoped he would survive until McCall’s concluded her series.

  As it turned out, Mussolini held power until 1943, then lived in the protective custody of the Nazis for two more years. But even they could not protect him. He was finally captured and killed by Italian anti-Fascists in 1945.

  It was her work, not Mussolini himself, that Tarbell saw mutilated that year. McCall’s cut back her articles to accommodate a late-arriving seventy-five-thousand dollars worth of advertising. Twelve years later, when John D. Andrews, secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation, requested copies of her articles, she sent carbons of her originals and said of what was printed: “The cutting seemed to me to rather destroy the effort I had made to get something approaching a logical narrative. It was difficult for me …”49 Roseboro urged her to write a book on Italy, but she never got around to it.

  Instead she continued to write for magazines. Prohibition was the big topic now and Ida announced she was against it because it made law-breakers of everyone.

  She still wrote about Lincoln. The Atlantic Monthly claimed it had uncovered new Lincoln letters, including some to Ann Rutledge. Tarbell permitted herself to be convinced of their authenticity and lent her prestige to them. Within weeks they proved, to her embarrassment, to be bogus.

  Then, in the election year of 1928, she wrote on politics. Her old hero Herbert Hoover was nominated for president, but she was unwilling to help him. She noted that Hoover was, after all, a Republican. Perhaps Ida Tarbell thought she should shield him during the Teapot Dome uproar because she wanted the public to have an opportunity to vote for the man, even if she felt she could not support his party. In the end, she endorsed Alfred E. Smith because of the tariff. She claimed that “something over fifty years ago the Republican party decided to make common cause with one class of citizens, the manufacturers …”50 whereas Smith was for the common people. He was also a Roman Catholic facing a largely Protestant electorate.

  When Smith lost, her fury was so great that her latent antipathy for women burst forth: “I have always known that you could depend upon my sex for a full measure of prejudice and conservatism, but I did not think it could be so bad,”51 she wrote a correspondent.

  By now, Lindbergh had flown over the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Paris, young people thought of themselves as flaming youth, and Sigmund Freud’s theories shocked moralists, but Ida Tarbell was unmoved. She held to her beliefs, even those that seemed antiquated prejudices. Almost a decade of writing was still ahead of her, but her most demanding challenges, and the most valorous, was the financial support of her family and the battle against her own physical deterioration.

  Twelve

  At Rest

  Her body was willing enough to te
ll her she was getting old, but even if her legs had not begun to stiffen and her hand to tremble violently, the changed world around her would have testified to the passing of time. Headlines about John D. Rockefeller’s latest philanthropies had replaced those of years before that questioned how he made his money, and the new generation admired and respected him. On the lecture circuit, she saw villages on railroad lines fade while those along highways flourished. Finally, “Chautauquas” gave way to the increasing popularity of radio and brought an end to Ida’s days on the road.

  Letters from Ada McCormick continued to fill Ida’s mailbox, chastising her for her lack of response. Exasperated, Ida insisted she was far too busy earning her living to have time to attend to personal correspondence. At last, Ada found a way to be important. She offered Ida a loan to help ease her financial problems and sent presents—a necklace, an umbrella, and twenty handkerchiefs. Ida declined the loan and threatened to return future gifts. Sheets and towels appeared in response. Then Ida surrendered to pampering. In her thank-you note she said she was trying to feel “like a lady” in her fine linens, but she no longer knew how to feel grand: “So many ladies rubbed me the wrong way that I became a Barbarian, wearing homespun and ignorant of vanity. Now I’m off on the old lady-track again.”1

  Tarbell and McCormick did not meet again until October 1928 at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York. Ida approached the younger woman doubtfully, not sure she recognized her. Ada in turn was shocked by Ida’s appearance. Instead of the strong, ruddy woman she had first encountered in 1923, Ada saw a slight, frail, worn person who looked her years and seemed to need protection. The worshipful Ada took detailed notes on their conversations until Ida started laughing, and brushed away her questions on religion and truth. Nonetheless, Ada resolved she would be both daughter and Boswell to the great Tarbell. Realizing that Ida valued work above all else, Ada claimed that she would turn her own writing abilities toward producing Ida’s biography. Tarbell thought the whole idea ridiculous and asked what anyone could make of her life; but, perhaps as a way of repaying Ada for her presents, she answered eager questions. At this time McCormick began to pay Viola Roseboro five dollars for each letter she could provide about her old friend. Needing the money and loving to gossip, Roseboro complied.

  Blankets and nightgowns poured in from Ada. Ida protested—weakly—that cheap cotton flannel pajamas were more her style. She noted, “I’m afraid these stamps mean ‘Write Ada daily. Use us to send your message.’ Well, my dear, I’m afraid you’ll not get a daily message save by wireless.”2

  Next Ada proposed a joint savings account—Ida sent her five dollars. Then Ada wanted to hire Ida’s investment counselor, a man who had worked on the business ends of both McClure’s and The American. Ida told her to consult her husband and father instead.

  Despite Ida’s constant anxiety about money, the stock market crash of 1929 did not affect her unduly. She had some seventy thousand dollars invested in bonds and such stocks as American Telephone and Telegraph, DuPont, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Kennecott Copper, and International Harvester. On October 23, 1929, after stocks had slid downward for some time, she toted up the value of her securities and found she was ten percent poorer than she’d been sixteen days before. She wrote Sarah, “I’m glad I didn’t have margins to keep up.” On October 29, she read that terrified sellers dumped over sixteen million shares of stock on the market. Fortunes were lost around the country—her friends the Rices were financially pinched for the rest of their lives—but Tarbell was confident that if one could hold on and look to the future (she was now seventy-two) everything would turn out all right.3

  Tarbell was still inundated with assignments. She had agreed to write a book titled The Nationalizing of Business on the consolidation of big business for a series that Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., was compiling. Its due date had been September 1923. She did considerable, though intermittent, research on it at great expense to herself. Completion would have helped her financially—if for no other reason than it would have prevented her from spending her time and money on research materials for it—but she plodded on. She was willing to abuse her talents to make money, but not her ethics. She did not submit her work to the frustrated Schlesinger until 1936.

  In the meantime, she wrote a biography of Owen Young, chairman of the board of General Electric and co-author of a plan to readjust German reparation payments. It was published in 1932 and was greeted with the same skepticism that met her favorable biography of Gary. The closest she came to doing a third volume of her History of the Standard Oil Company was writing an introduction to The Birth of the Oil Industry by a young Allegheny College professor named Paul Giddens. Tarbell had committed herself to too many projects and felt gnawed by obligations. Steady royalties and investments should have allowed her to feel financially secure, but she did not know how long she would be able to work or how much Will and her own old age would cost her. Will’s children, who had insufficient incomes and many children to raise, also sought her help occasionally, especially during the Depression. She tried to make sure that, barring her own breakdown, money would continue to flow in.

  By 1931, Ada McCormick and her husband Fred had moved to Tucson where Ada arranged for Ida to lecture on the topic of biography at the University of Arizona. Ida accepted the invitation not so much because of the income, which she would have earned through magazine articles, but because she hoped Arizona’s February sun would warm her wintry bones. In addition, she wanted to see her nephew Scott who with her help had purchased a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico. The train trip west was difficult but fascinating. From her window she saw roads filled with caravans of the unemployed, the Okies of the Depression with their household goods loaded onto trailers, going from state to state seeking jobs. As she neared Tucson, she was stunned by forests of saguaro cacti in the shapes of candelabra, standing as high as fifty feet. In The Delineator of March 1932, she wrote that they seemed like creatures, not plants: “Each saguaro is an individual—an individual protected from the touch of its own kind as from the touch of all that moves by an armor of strong slender daggers of its own making, sharp as stilettos, and as dangerous.” The thought of such defense seemed a fitting prelude for her meeting with Ada McCormick.

  Ada attempted to manage Tarbell’s time and activities, but Ida stonily resisted manipulation. Their letters had been affectionate, but once they were together they fought. The tension drove Ida to smoke a cigarette. She told Ada: “One reason I came out here was that I thought after I was under the roof with you for five weeks that you would be more sensible about me. Over-fondness ruins a friendship because the other one can’t respond and feels a fraud to take something that he can’t pay back in kind.”4

  This and other protestations were recorded as McCormick’s biographical interviews continued. Ida had arrived so ill with flu that she had to stay in bed for most of the time that she was not lecturing. As she recuperated, Ada asked about her Paris days, taking down each answer verbatim, even those that trailed off in exhaustion. Then she handed them over to her secretary for typing.

  Ida requested that she have her own secretary. Patricia Paylore, twenty-one, had just earned a master’s degree and was to be Ida’s instrument for circumventing Ada’s will. Paylore told the author: “Miss Tarbell had me smuggle in two guest-sized cakes of Ivory soap under Ada’s watchful eye. She didn’t like the fancy soaps Ada used. Also, she had me take her laundry downtown because she didn’t want Mrs. McCormick’s maid to bother with it.”

  Ada frequently complained that Ida was more interested in Patricia and in her hairdresser—to whom Ida gave an extremely generous tip of fifty cents—than in Ada’s dinner guests. It was largely true. Patricia only worked for Ida a few weeks before she was felled by chicken pox, but in that time she confided that she was torn between staying at home as her mother desired or going out on her own. Before she left Tucson, Ida told Ada to let her and the girl have a private lunch. Of that meal, Paylore recalled: “Miss
Tarbell said to stick by my mother no matter what sacrifices had to be made and she told me to call upon her anytime I needed her.”5

  Ida shared one of her own traumas with the young girl. Paylore arrived one day to find Ida weeping—the New York World had shut down. The paper had featured Walter Lippmann, her favorite editorial writer, a man liberal in politics and conservative in morality. “How can I start the day without Walter Lippmann?” she cried, blowing her nose.

  Such private moments were few in number. Besides work, there were social demands on Tarbell. Tucson drew Easterners in winter time, among them Jane Addams who faithfully attended Tarbell’s lectures. Ada thought Addams and her friends were like schoolgirls, especially after the founder of Hull House impishly took a banana from a table arrangement, then put the peel back in the bowl where she had found it.

  That happened before Ida came home. When Ida arrived, vanity prevented her from being as unguarded as the others, who removed their hats to show how careless of convention they had become. Tarbell, who felt she needed a wave, primly kept hers in place.

  Ada saw great social possibilities in inviting them all to lunch. “I’m such a heart-to-heart person that I should think that would be much more fun,” she told Ida who retorted: “Well, neither Miss Addams nor I are. She’d take her hat and go home if one started any probing … She is interested in national issues and that is what we would talk about,” Ida insisted. Ada did admit that she did think her headstrong, inquisitive manner alarmed Miss Addams.

  Also in town were the John D. Rockefellers, Jr., whom Ida saw in the dining room of the Arizona Inn. When the Rockefellers left, Dr. Henry Osborn Taylor, a noted philosopher of history, came over and told Tarbell: “No matter who tells me you’re a bad woman, I tell them you’re not.” By now, Ida’s character was getting a low rating from Ada McCormick who was letting friends, including Viola Roseboro, know that Ida was not the guest she had hoped for. When Ida was ill, Ada had the cook serve them dinner on trays in Ida’s room and was forced to reschedule engagements she had planned for Ida. Such attentions—which Ida certainly would have preferred to forego—prompted Ada to think she had turned her house into a convalescent home; and when Ida was not suitably grateful, Ada sulked.