YEARS OF PREPARATORY WORK AND investigation preceded the publication of McClure’s landmark January 1903 issue. As early as the spring of 1899, when few middle-class journals would broach the subject, McClure was already endeavoring to determine how the increasingly vital, complex issue of trusts might engage a wide audience. The English journalist Alfred Maurice Low suggested to McClure that if a single trust were traced from its origin through its “gradual rise and growth,” an examination of whether malfeasance, wage curtailment, or price inflation had abetted its development would prove “full of intense human interest.” McClure enthusiastically agreed. “The great feature is Trusts,” he told John Phillips, and the magazine that treats this “great question” will inevitably develop “a good circulation.” While Phillips embraced McClure’s idea, he insisted the project not be assigned to Low, a reputed sensationalist; better to trust one of their own staff, one trained to rely on substantiated fact rather than overwrought rhetoric.
The McClure team initially considered targeting the sugar or beef trusts, but neither seemed conducive to an extended series. McClure soon struck another approach to the pernicious problem. Several years earlier, after a short story in a small magazine by Frank Norris had attracted his interest, McClure had brought the struggling young author from California to New York, providing him a steady salary to read manuscripts in the mornings, leaving the afternoons free for his own writing. Norris shared McClure’s conviction that writers held a responsibility to the public—not simply to entertain but to address contemporary problems such as corporate avarice and economic injustice. “The Pulpit, the Press, and the Novel,” Norris argued, “these indisputably are the great moulders of public opinion and public morals to-day.”
One morning, Norris appeared in McClure’s office with an idea for a sprawling trilogy chronicling the struggle between wheat growers and the railroad trust. The first book, to be called The Octopus, would center on an actual incident in the San Joaquin Valley, where scores of local farmers, dispossessed by the Southern Pacific Railroad, had engaged in a violent altercation with railroad agents that left seven people dead. Both McClure and Phillips were attracted by the young novelist’s idea, for in this protracted, harrowing fight against one railroad, the larger struggle of the people versus the trusts would play out. McClure pledged to pay Norris’s salary while he returned to the west coast to muster all research materials necessary to begin the novel.
The dramatic saga of The Octopus interweaves the stories of a dozen or more men and their families. Struggling to draw a good harvest from the arid land, these hardworking people are compromised and oppressed at every turn by the maddening, predatory policies of the railroad: ruinous increases in highly inflated shipping rates for wheat and hops are announced; arbitrary routing decisions require urgently needed agricultural equipment to travel non-stop past the town and then return at extra cost; greed and peculation make a mockery of the state commission board, supposedly designed to administer fair rates. Meanwhile, the implacable railroad rolls on, leaving behind “the destruction of once happy homes, the driving of men to crime and of women and girls to starvation and ruin.” As the lives of the novel’s central group of characters are shattered, a powerful fuse is lit against “the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.”
Published two years later, Norris’s novel garnered spectacular reviews. “The Octopus is a work so distinctly great that it justly entitles the author to rank among the very first American novelists,” claimed The Arena. “It is a work that will not only stimulate thought: it will quicken the conscience and awaken the moral sensibilities of the reader, exerting much the same influence over the mind as that exerted by Patrick Henry.” Although the widely acclaimed and prodigiously gifted Norris would never complete his trilogy—a ruptured appendix ended his life at the age of thirty-two—The Octopus was an unmitigated success for both McClure and its young author.
Indeed, Sam McClure seemed to be moving from one triumph to another. The circulation of the magazine had topped 400,000, the syndicate was turning a profit, and his talented staff of writers, editors, and contributors was considered among the country’s very best. But even this catalogue of accomplishments could not satiate his restless ambition for long. “The string of triumphs had to be prolonged,” his biographer observes, “for only so would McClure get what he most needed: a steady supply of affection, admiration, and flattery.”
Just when all his enterprises were proceeding successfully, McClure overreached, committing his company to purchase the prestigious publishing house Harper & Brothers. Negotiated in a burst of manic energy, the deal would bring five additional magazines under McClure’s management (including Harper’s Monthly and Harper’s Weekly), as well as a second syndicate service, a second book press, and a lecture bureau. Troubles mounted immediately: Frank Doubleday, angry at his marginalization, broke up the association of Doubleday & McClure. Additional responsibilities for McClure’s staff stole time and attention from the magazine at the heart of the empire. Most crucially, the capital needed to sustain the purchase was never properly in place. Reluctantly, and at enormous expense, McClure was forced to withdraw from the contract six months after it was signed.
The failed deal crushed McClure, precipitating a nervous breakdown in April 1900 that propelled him to Europe to undergo the celebrated “rest-cure” devised by an American physician, S. Weir Mitchell. Prescribed for a range of nervous disorders, the rest cure required that patients remain isolated for weeks or even months at a time, forbidden to read or write, rigidly adhering to a milk-only diet. Underlying this regimen was the assumption that “raw milk is a food the body easily turns into good blood,” which would restore positive energy when pumped through the body.
This extreme treatment was among the proliferating regimens developed in response to the stunning increase in nervous disorders diagnosed around the turn of the century. Commentators and clinicians cited a number of factors related to the stresses of modern civilization: the increased speed of communication facilitated by the telegraph and railroad; the “unmelodious” clamor of city life replacing the “rhythmical” sounds of nature; and the rise of the tabloid press that exploded “local horrors” into national news. These nervous diseases became an epidemic among “the ultracompetitive businessman and the socially active woman.”
While McClure had endured troubling mood swings for years, this depressive episode was the most disturbing, transforming even his love for his work into “the repulsion that a seasick man feels toward the food he most enjoys in health.” His manic drive had finally sapped him of his strength. “I had never thought of such a thing as economy of effort. When I had an idea, I pursued it; when I wanted anything, I went ahead and got it.” By crossing the ocean and committing himself to exclusive sanitarium in France and Switzerland, he hoped to recover the will and vitality that had sustained him since the penniless days of his youth.
Not surprisingly, the steady diet of milk and tedium did little to restore McClure. After six months in the famous spa towns of Aix-les-Bains and Divonne-les-Bains, he felt more enervated than when he left New York. “When I get rested I become very restless, but no place I plan to go interests me for many hours,” he admitted. “A walk of a few blocks tires me terribly. Riding in a cab tires me. I cannot see any of the beautiful things here,” he complained, lamenting that he had become “half hopeless & half comatose.” Although he tried to remain optimistic, observing that “perhaps my condition is normal & this is the way one gets over brain exhaustion,” he confessed to feeling doubtful about the state of his recovery. “I sometimes think that it is like taking off a leaky roof before putting on a new one, for a while the condition is worse than ever.”
In October, unable to tolerate the isolation, McClure persuaded a nurse to accompany him to Paris to secure the most recent edition of his magazine. Finding little of timely interest in its pages, he fired off a furious critique to Phillips, accusing him of attempting t
o destroy the magazine. No sooner was the letter posted than he tried to retrieve it. “I am simply heart-broken to have caused you such grief,” the contrite McClure told Phillips, assuring him, “You are the most wonderful friend & comrade a man ever had. Destroy the Paris letter. It was the expression of jangled nerves & a crazy brain. . . . In my mad scramble which in one way or another seems to have existed all my life, I have sacrificed much that is most important . . . I feel hopelessly sad to have caused you such terrible & useless pain. I really ought to have died some time ago . . . I wish you would remember the good things about me & forget all the bad.”
But in April 1901, exactly one year after leaving for Europe, McClure unaccountably returned to the office bursting with ideas for future articles. “The great issue,” he continued to believe, “was the phenomenon of the trusts.” He was now even more strongly convinced that “the way to handle the Trust question was, not by taking the matter up abstractly, but to take one Trust, and to give its history, its effects, and its tendencies.” If neither the sugar trust nor the beef trust would suffice, perhaps John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, “the Mother of Trusts,” would serve as the subject of their investigations. As “the creature largely of one man,” Standard Oil was perfectly suited to the biographical approach that had proved so successful with Napoleon and Lincoln. The story of the world’s wealthiest man would beguile the public into the more complicated exposition of his corporation and the hitherto esoteric question of the trusts. No one, McClure perceived, was better situated to engage that subject than Ida Tarbell, who “had lived for years in the heart of the oil region.”
Tarbell initially hesitated, though no subject so captured her imagination. As a child, she had witnessed the anguish the “big trust” had caused in its early development, and “the unfairness of the situation” had troubled her deeply. As a young woman, she had begun a novel focused on the period when “the bottom had dropped out” of the Allegheny oil region. She never completed the work, however, realizing that “there must be two sides to the question.” If she hoped to write a work of history rather than propaganda, she would now have to “comprehend the point of view of the other side.” She recognized the difficulties, even hazards, this undertaking would present, for Standard Oil officials were notoriously close-mouthed. Even in her hometown of Titusville, she found that men and women were unwilling to talk, fearing “the all-seeing eye and the all-powerful reach of the ruler of the oil industry.” In search of telling, intimate details like those at the core of her Lincoln series, she encountered only the same terse warning: “They will get you in the end.” Her own father tried to dissuade her. “Don’t do it, Ida,” he admonished; “they will ruin the magazine.” Finally she was tantalized by “the audacity of the thing”—just as when McClure had challenged her to complete the first installment of Napoleon’s life in one month’s time.
By early September 1901, Ida Tarbell had read everything from articles extolling the growth of trusts to Wealth Against Commonwealth, Henry Demarest Lloyd’s passionate diatribe against monopolies. Already she had outlined an extensive series that would detail the history of Standard Oil from its earliest days to the present. Phillips was enthusiastic, but only McClure, then in Switzerland, could approve a project of such magnitude. “Go over,” Phillips told Tarbell, “show the outline to Sam, get his decision.” McClure was thrilled to hear from Tarbell. “Come instantly,” he wrote back, suggesting that she stay for several weeks and travel with him to Lucerne and the Italian lakes; “I want a good time.” Hattie, too, welcomed Ida’s arrival, knowing her soothing influence upon McClure’s anxious temperament.
When Tarbell reached Lausanne, Switzerland, in early October, McClure was so overjoyed that he begged her to remain in Europe so they could spend the winter together in Greece. “You’ve never been there. We can discuss Standard Oil in Greece as well as here,” fancifully adding, “if it seems a good plan you can send for your documents and work in the Pantheon.” The image of the proper Miss Tarbell, seated at a desk cluttered with papers and documents in the middle of the ancient marble building, struck him as incongruous and hilarious.
Ida happily agreed to join Sam and Hattie. From their first meeting in Paris nearly a decade earlier, she had never stopped loving this brilliant, creative, hectic, exasperating man. In his expansive moods, no one was better company. While he could be irritable and demanding with others, he was invariably kind and loving toward Ida. “I lean on you as no other,” he confided to her. “In all great & noble qualities you are peerless to me.”
In mid-October, Sam, Hattie, and Ida set out together for Greece by way of the Italian lake region and the cities of Milan and Venice. As usual, the voluble McClure found interest in everything he saw, frequently jotting down notes for future articles. Before reaching Greece, he decided to stop at Salsomaggiore, an exclusive resort spa in northern Italy. There, enjoying relaxing treatments of mud and steam (and conversing with Cecil Rhodes, who had just returned from his exploits in South Africa), the editor and his writer came to an agreement on the shape of her project. So ebullient was McClure that he encouraged Ida to return to New York at once, postponing Greece for another time. Immediately, she set to work on what would become a twelve-part history of the Standard Oil Company—the magisterial series that would spur popular demand to dismantle the rapacious trusts and ensure her legacy as one of the most influential journalists of all time.
When McClure returned to the office a month later, he assembled the entire staff and bombarded them with suggestions for future articles. “It was always so when he came back from a trip,” Steffens recalled. His valise was stuffed with “clippings, papers, books, and letters,” ranging over the “world-stunning” subjects he wanted his staff to pursue. Some of these “history-making schemes” were brilliant, Steffens acknowledged, but “five out of seven” were foolish, requiring the staff to “unite and fight” against the “wild editor.” Only Ida Tarbell could sift through the ideas that tumbled from his mind with patience and respect. Time and again, she tactfully placated both Sam and the staffers, finding “a way to compromise and peace.” Unfortunately, Tarbell was in Titusville researching the early chapters of her story when McClure arrived this time, and the office meeting degenerated into a string of fiery confrontations.
Further fueling these tensions, McClure abruptly decided to switch Samuel Hopkins Adams from the syndicate to managing editor of the magazine; such staffing shifts had become a habit with McClure, but this change proved particularly unsettling. The move produced a violent protest from the art director, August Jaccaci, who charged that Adams was “absolutely incompetent to do this job.” The accusation ignited “an epic spat” between Jaccaci and McClure: “Fists were hammered down on desks. Unforgiveable words passed.” The manuscript reader Viola Roseboro left the room in tears. Mary Bisland, an editor on the syndicate, wrote a distressed letter to Tarbell, begging her to return before something terrible happened. Another tempest provoked yet another distressed letter to Tarbell. Her response provides insight into the peculiar dynamic at the heart of the revolutionary magazine and an acute and intimate assessment of its founder and animating force: “Things will come out all right,” Tarbell assured the staff. McClure “may stir up things and interfere with general comfort but he puts the health of life into the work at the same time.” More important, Tarbell urged them to remember that “the inimitable nature of McClure’s genius greatly outweighed the inconveniences resulting from his eccentricities.”
Never forget that it was he & nobody else who has created that place. You must learn to believe in him & use him if you are going to be happy there. He is a very extraordinary creature, you can’t put him into a machine and make him run smoothly with the other wheels and things. We don’t need him there. Able methodical people grow on every bush but genius comes once in a generation and if you ever get in its vicinity thank the Lord & stick. You probably will be laid up now and then in a sanatarium [sic] recovering from the
effort to follow him but that’s a small matter if you really get into touch finally with that wonderful brain.
Above all, don’t worry. What you are going through now we’ve all been through steadily ever since I came into the office. If there was nothing in all this but the annoyance and uncertainty & confusion—that is if there were no results—then we might rebel, but there are always results—vital ones. The big things which the magazine has done always come about through these upheavals. . . . The great schemes, the daring moves in that business have always been Mr. McC’s. They will continue to be. His one hundredth idea is a stroke of genius. Be on hand to grasp that one hundredth idea!
FOR IDA TARBELL, MCCLURE’S DIRECTIVE to approach the trust issue through a narrative history of Standard Oil proved that “one hundredth idea”—a true stroke of genius. Her investigations were fortuitously timed. In an era of heightened, yet unfocused, public concern over increasing corporate consolidation, the growth of the first great industrial monopoly provided a dramatic blueprint for comprehending how “a particular industry passes from the control of the many to that of the few.”
Tarbell began her customary search for primary sources, a task facilitated by the fact that numerous state and federal authorities had been investigating Standard Oil since its founding. Defendants’ testimony in court, she noted, exhibited “exactly the quality of the personal reminiscences of actors in great events, with the additional value that they were given on the witness stand; and it was fair, therefore, to suppose that they were more cautious and exact in statement than are many writers of memoirs.” Traveling to Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kansas, Tarbell patiently scoured so many thousands of pages of depositions and testimony that she almost lost her eyesight. She culled old files from defunct newspapers, transcribed single-spaced congressional reports, examined a large collection of pamphlets published during various controversies, and studied pages of statistics provided by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 48