[On dishonest business methods:] ... frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other's weaknesses! - an excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another's shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another's pockets.

Ida Tarbell

Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization.

Ida Tarbell

wall cutting organization

Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, 'It's business.' That is, 'it's business' has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.

Ida Tarbell

business special people

I decided to write the book to open the eyes of the people of how corrupt John D. Rockefeller company was and the unfair ways he used to be successful. I wanted the people to know the truth about the Standard Oil Company.

Ida Tarbell

eye writing book

Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists - with it all things are possible.

Ida Tarbell

future keys imagination

There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair. Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.

Ida Tarbell

business running men

we were raising our standard of living at the expense of our standard of character.

Ida Tarbell

consumerism standards character

Now, if the Standard Oil Company were the only concern in the country guilty of the practices which have given it monopolistic power, this story never would have been written. Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices. The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.

Ida Tarbell

business men country

[John D. Rockefeller] didn't care about anyone he did anything just to be rich and be the only company standing without any competition. He destroyed anyone else.

Ida Tarbell

john-d-rockefeller competition care

In walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make. He can choose the fair and open path, the path which sound ethics, sound democracy, and the common law prescribe, or choose the secret way by which he can get the better of his fellow man.

Ida Tarbell

evil law men

I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer, a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain. One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.

Ida Tarbell

strong real mistake

The only reason I am glad I am a woman is because I will not have to marry one.

Ida Tarbell

reason glad

The quest of the truth had been born in me - the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man's quests.

Ida Tarbell

essentials truth men

The theory that the man who raises corn does a more important piece of work than the woman who makes it into bread is absurd. The inference is that the men alone render useful service. But neither man nor woman eats these things until the woman has prepared it.

Ida Tarbell

equality important men

You cannot settle a new country without suffering, exposure, and danger. Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States.

Ida Tarbell

cheerful suffering country

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Ida Tarbell

truth leadership peace

My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing. I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws.

Ida Tarbell

discipline self law

Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.

Ida Tarbell

sports war peace

A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it.

Ida Tarbell

disturbance rebellion long

It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world - a more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered.

Ida Tarbell

equality women justice

Buy cheap and sell high is a rule of business, and when you control enough money and enough banks you can always manage that a stock you want shall be temporarily cheap. No value is destroyed for you - only for the original owner.

Ida Tarbell

money business want