All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography

by Ida M. Tarbell

As I frequently received inquiries as to where the books could be found or where a purchaser could be found for a set, I turned the correspondence over to my secretary, a canny woman, who established a trading relation with a dealer in old books; and the two of them were in a fair way to do a nice little business when their hopes were blasted by the appearance in a New York bookstore of an entirely new edition of the work—a cheap edition, selling for five or six dollars. My publishers made an immediate investigation and found that it had been printed in England, probably from German plates.

As the third volume was not ready, there was nothing for the publisher to do but reprint the two, which he very promptly did. On the appearance of the reprint the pirated edition disappeared from the market. This episode set me to work promptly at the third volume.

But I needed a financial backer if the work was to be put through promptly. I found it unexpectedly in the editor-in-chief for whom the first two volumes had been written—S. S. McClure. McClure’s Magazine, which had been suspended for a few years, had been revived, Mr. McClure in charge. He felt that bringing Standard Oil history up to date was a logical and might be an important feature for the periodical.

For me there was satisfaction in trying to revive the old editorial relations. I had always missed the gaiety and excitement Mr. McClure gave to work, and, too, I had always felt a little anxious about, what I suspected was happening to him in a group which, even if it was made up of the very best of the town—men and women of ability and loyalty, naturally eager to prove that they could make a McClure’s Magazine as good as ever had been made or better—could not, I was convinced, understand Mr. McClure, get out of him what he had to give like his old partner and friend John S. Phillips. So I was willing to give all I had to help in the revival of the old periodical.

I had my book well in hand, some twenty thousand words written, when the new McClure’s was suspended and the third volume on the Standard Oil Company was cast out before publication had begun.

Perhaps it was just as well, both for McClure’s and for me. Repeating yourself is a doubtful practice, particularly for editor and writer. I feel now there was no hope of my recapturing the former interest in the former way. The result would have smelt a bit musty. Indeed, though I hate to admit it, I think there has been a slight mustiness about all I have done in the nineteen years since I started “on my own”—that is, not on assignment—built as it has been on work done before the Great War.

Left with twenty thousand words on hand and no editor, I was obliged to make a quick turn in the interest of security and took on the first piece of work that offered. For one reason or another I have never been able to return to that third volume and it looks now as if it were a piece of work for my ninth decade since it failed to mature in the seventh and eighth!

If I failed to carry out my plan for tracing the maneuvers of the master monopoly after the Government had taken it apart in 1911 and after it adapted itself to the new and extraordinary situations forced by the Great War, I did trace what could be done in a corporation whose parts all had been built more or less on privilege, and which itself enjoyed high tariff protection, when a man took hold of it who believed that ordinary ethics did apply to business. This study was shaped around the life of Judge Elbert H. Gary.

It was no idea of mine, this life of Gary, and when it was proposed to me by that energetic and resourceful editor Rutger Jewett I promptly said, “No.” But Mr. Jewett was insistent. He had talked the matter over with Judge Gary, who had told him he would open his records and answer my questions if I would do the book.

That meant, I supposed, that he had confidence in my ability to be fair-minded, whatever my suspicions. His judgment was formed on my handling of certain efforts to improve and humanize the conditions of labor in the mills, factories, and towns of the United States Steel Corporation. The Corporation under his direction had been a pioneer in safety and sanitation work. It had developed a pension system, improved communities, improved its housing, built schools and hospitals where there was no community to take care of these needs. It was the broadest, soundest record that I had found in my gathering of material for the articles The American Magazine had published under the title of “The Golden Rule in Business.” I knew from my talks with Judge Gary that there was nothing going on in the Steel Corporation in which he was more deeply interested.