The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-01-11
BY HERBERT BREWSTER.

Raising impotent little fists to the
face of Fate, the child cries. "Wait
until L am big and, see what will
dol" But when he attains manhood
he unclenches his fists and forgets the
VOWS of childhood in the struggle to
realize new born ambitions. Old
wrongs and old hopes are forgotten in
the present-day scramble for recogni-
ton.
To this rule. however, there are rare
exceptions. One of them is found to-
day in New York city, where a wom-
an already we'll known in the world
of literature is building on the am
billions of experiences of her childhood
a stronger claim to fame.
AS a child she lived in the oil region
of Pennsylvania and witnessed the
magnificent development of that sec
ton, which followed the discovery of
the precious fluid. The early con-
flicts between the individual and the
corporation were impressed upon her
tender. childish mind. Her girlish
brain pictured the rights and wrongs
of the contest as she saw it only
through the eyes of those she loved.
Some day, she would shout it from the
house tops-some day when she was
tall and big and strong, so that people
would listen instead of making I'M
pleasant remarks about children who
should be seen and not heard
And now, looking into the past with
eyes grown steady through years of
experience, with a mind broadened by
research and travel, with a heart
grown tender and womanly through
| daily contact with the great work-a-
day world, she has taken up the work
of which she dreamed in her pinafore
days.
The woman is Ida NJ. Tarbell, and
her work is THE History of the Stand
ard Oil Company"
Miss TarbeIls story of Her Task.
Miss TarbelPs story of how she has
persevered in her task is interesting
I've been thinking about it for
years." she said recently. ut never
struck me that it was masculine, un-
less by that is meant that it is a pref
ty big undertaking for a woman L
suppose | looked at the matter a little
differently. l passed my girlhoood in
the oil regions of Pennsylvania, being
born at Titusville, in the very center
d L
familiar with the remarkable energy
and resourcefulness of the region in
the first days of the development of
the oil business. The memory of the
vitality of the country in that time
makes my blood Jingle to-day when [
recall it, There was a buoyancy and
hopefulnesS which was unequalled
by anything l have ever see1f any
where. OF course, this was engender-
q 10 ~crn1x lxr4
perlty and the almost endless hopes of
future prosperity which the men, who
had developed the country, possessed.
1 was a girl of fourteen when COM
oinatlon first struck the oil industry
1t came in an ugly FORM that is,
through a company, the South I'm
provement Company, which based its
nope of success on special privileges
granted by the railroads. This COM
pany was overthrown after furious
light on the. part of the oil men, a fight
in which my own father and almost
every man l remember in my child
hood home, took part. The effect of
that fight was to impress upon the
mind, especially of those as young as
l, that rebates were wrong. l grew
up with a conviction that it was as
wrong to take a rebate as it was to
tell a lie, and that any person that did
this was aiding in fixing a monstrous
iniquity on the country. AS the re-
volt against the South Improvement
Company was really a moral uprising,
it made it's impression on the young
just as any moral uprising does.
THE Standard Oil Company came
later to be regarded as the upholder
of this system and it was hated ac-
cordingly. / can remember when, to
my mind, it seemed as great a mark
of disgrace to have gone over to the
STANDARD, as ran the expression in the
oil region for those who sold to the