1 Ida Tarbell, “Kansas and the Standard Oil Company: A Narrative of To-Day,” McClure’s Magazine, Oct. 1905, 610, 613, 622. For the broader context of the oil war in Kansas, see Williams, Kyle, “Roosevelt’s Populism: The Kansas Oil War of 1905 and the Making of Corporate Capitalism,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19 (Jan. 2020): 96–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 On the Sherman Act and antitrust, see Sklar, Martin J., The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sawyer, Laura Phillips, American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the “New Competition,” 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)Google Scholar. On state and federal antitrust, see May, James, “Antitrust in the Formative Era: Political and Economic Theory in Constitutional and Antitrust Analysis, 1880–1918,” Ohio Law Journal 50, no. 1 (1989): 257–395 Google Scholar.

3 National Civic Federation, Proceedings of the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations under the Auspices of the National Civic Federation, Chicago, October 22–25, 1907 (New York: National Civic Federation, 1908), 144, 332, 333, 335, 450.

4 National Civic Federation, Proceedings, 450.

5 Theodore Roosevelt, “Special Message” (May 4, 1906), The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/sixth-annual-message-4 (accessed Oct. 12, 2021). This investigation was triggered by the oil war in Kansas and resulted in a report that became central evidence for the 1911 Supreme Court decision to break up the company. For the federal report, see United States Bureau of Corporations, Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Petroleum Industry (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1907).

6 Sawyer, American Fair Trade, 8. For recent works on anti-monopoly, see Scranton, Philip, Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800–1885 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; John, Richard R., Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Richard, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011)Google Scholar; Richard R. John, “Robber Barons Redux: Anti-Monopoly Reconsidered,” Enterprise & Society 13 (Mar. 2012): 1–38; Sawyer, American Fair Trade; Williams, “Roosevelt’s Populism.” See also Richard R. John and Kim Phillips-Fein, eds., Capital Gains: Business and Politics in Twentieth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). These histories rarely focus on consumers. Yet, as Richard John suggests, examining the “popular conception of big business” is crucial because it provided a “compelling rationale” for anti-monopoly reformers. John, “Robber Barons Redux,” 7, 34. For more traditional works on big business and anti-monopoly, see Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967)Google Scholar; Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Chandler, Alfred, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Sklar, Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism; Lamoreaux, Naomi, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freyer, Tony A., Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For an example, see Jacobs, Meg, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 39–41 Google Scholar. For consumer politics, see Cohen, Lizabeth, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003)Google Scholar; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics; Glickman, Lawrence B., Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For Standard Oil’s contribution to consumer interests, see Jeremiah W. Jenks, “Trusts and Industrial Combinations,” Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor 29 (July 1900): 661–831. See also Chandler, The Visible Hand, 324–25; Ralph and Muriel Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business 1882–1911: History of the Standard Oil Company (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955), 99–100, 140, 299; Aldrich, Mark, “The Rise and Decline of the Kerosene Kitchen: A Neglected Energy Transition in Rural America, 1870–1950,” Agricultural History 94 (Winter 2020): 29–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For skepticism of Standard Oil’s contribution to consumer benefits, especially in terms of consumer safety, see Wlasiuk, Jonathan, Refining Nature: Standard Oil and the Limits of Efficiency (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 On oil consumption before gasoline, see Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Davies, Angela (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Nye, David E., Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Christopher Jones, “The Carbon-Consuming Home: Residential Markets and Energy Transitions.” Enterprise & Society 12 (Dec. 2011): 790–823; Aldrich, “The Kerosene Kitchen”; Ruth Sandwell, “The Coal-Oil Lamp,” Agricultural History 92 (Spring 2018): 190–209. For broader histories of the early petroleum industry, see Harold Williamson and Arnold Daum, The American Petroleum Industry, Vol. 1: The Age of Illumination 1859–1899 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1959); Giddens, Paul, The Early Petroleum Industry (Chatham, MI: Porcupine Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011)Google Scholar; Black, Brian, Petrolia: The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Consumers are often considered the insiders of the “cheap energy regime.” For this concept, see Paul Sabin, Crude Politics: The California Oil Market, 1900–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). For more complicated views on oil consumers, see Clarke, Sally H., Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; McCarthy, Tom, Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

11 On economic volatility in the nineteenth century, see Levy, Jonathan, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

12 For the middle-class identity during the Progressive Era and its material contexts, see Moskowitz, Marina, Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For broader contexts of the American middle class, see Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (1954; New York: Vintage, 1960)Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luskey, Brian P., On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America. (New York: New York University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Zakim, Michael, Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hovenkamp, Herbert, Enterprise and American Law, 1836–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 323–30Google Scholar.

14 For the identity of independent oil producers and their anti-monopoly sentiment, see Dochuk, Darren, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (London: Hachette UK, 2019)Google Scholar.

15 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: Conclusion,” McClure’s Magazine, Oct. 1904, 671 (original emphasis).

16 See Andrews, Thomas G., Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Timothy, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2013)Google Scholar; Needham, Andrew, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Jones, Christopher F., Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Zallen, Jeremy, American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kahle, Trish, “The Graveyard Shift: Mining Democracy in an Age of Energy Crisis, 1963–1981” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2019)Google Scholar; Eaglin, Jennifer, Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wellum, Caleb, Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 171–85. For works that apply White’s framework to the site of consumption, see Kendra Smith-Howard, “Absorbing Waste, Displacing Labor: Family, Environment, and the Disposable Diaper in the 1970s,” Environmental History 26 (Apr. 2021): 207–30. For the broader intersection of environmental history and the history of capitalism, see Cronon, William, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992)Google Scholar; Elmore, Bartow J., Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)Google Scholar; Specht, Joshua, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

18 Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 63–116; Giddens, Early Petroleum Industry, 88–100.

19 Yergin, The Prize, 50–1; Jones, Routes of Power, 109–16. However, many candles were produced in households; see Zallen, American Lucifers; Sayer, Karen, “Finding Women in the History of Lighting: Candles in the English Home, 1815–1910,” in In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy, ed. Moore, Abigail Harrison and Sandwell, Ruth (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), 46–66 Google Scholar.

20 Sandwell, “Coal-Oil Lamp,” 193.

21 Nye, Consuming Power, 124. For its portability and compatibility with previous lighting habits, kerosene also had a big advantage; Sandwell, “Coal-Oil Lamp,” 193–94.

22 Beecher, Catharine, Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper and Healthkeeper (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 327 Google Scholar.

23 For risks regarding kerosene, see the first chapter of James McSwain, Petroleum and Public Safety: Risk Management in the Gulf South, 1901–2015 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018).

24 Wisconsin State Register (Portage, Wisconsin), Mar. 15, 1862. The number of kerosene commercials was twelve in a local newspaper in Poughkeepsie, New York. Poughkeepsie Eagle News, Apr. 5, 1862.

25 Aldrich calculates the economic incentives of adulteration. Aldrich, “Kerosene Kitchen,” 27.

26 On the public regulation and insuring institutions on petroleum fires, see the first chapter of McSwain, Petroleum and Public Safety. See also Giddens, Early Petroleum Industry, 93–95.

27 “Dangerous Kerosene,” American Chemist, Oct. 1870, 123.

28 Yergin, The Prize, 50.

29 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper, 107.

30 “Generating of Carbon Acid Gas by Yellow Low Test Kerosene Oil,” Buffalo Morning Express and Illustrated Buffalo Express (Buffalo, New York), Apr. 11, 1879, 4.

31 “Chemistry of a Pint of Kerosene,” Boston Journal of Chemistry, Dec. 1, 1867, 41. For example, see Daily Milwaukee News (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) Dec. 21, 1867; Daily Evening Express (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) Jan. 17, 1868; Western Reserve Chronicle (Warren, Ohio) Feb. 24, 1869.

32 Mary Converse, “Teaching Chemistry in Connection with Domestic Science,” Journal of Home Economics, Apr. 1909, 197.

33 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper, 328.

34 “Report of the Committee of the Franklin Institute,” 266.

35 Sandwell, “Coal-Oil Lamp,” 199.

36 Beecher, Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper, 328, 107.

37 For the role of users in the history of technology, see Kline, Ronald and Pinch, Trevor, “Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States,” Technology and Culture 37 (Oct. 1996): 763–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oudshoorn, Nelly and Pinch, Trevor, How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Corn, Joseph J., User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 “Potato Rot,” Prairie Farmer, July 3, 1878, 210. “Entomological—the Canker Worm Continued and Compared with the Codling Worm,” Prairie Farmer, Mar. 22, 1873, 89. Sometimes, these applications bordered on the superstitious. “J.M.U.,” a local farmer from Wayne, Wisconsin, reported his colleagues who tried to cure a fictitious brain disease of oxen called “horn-ail” by pouring kerosene oil on cows’ heads. Yet, many users found novel and practical ways to utilize kerosene through rational experiments. “Horn-Ail,” Prairie Farmer, June 8, 1867, 381.

39 “Mad Bees,” Prairie Farmer, May 3, 1879, 139; “Some Practical Suggestions for the Husbands and the Housewife,” Lake Geneva Herald (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin), Apr. 2, 1886, 7; Vermont Watchman and State Journal (Montpelier, Vermont) Oct. 28, 1885; “Domestic Economy,” Osage City Free Press (Osage City, Kansas) Aug. 22, 1889, 3.

40 “Kerosene in Laundry Work,” Napa Register (Napa, California) Jan. 25, 1884, 4.

41 “Washing Clothes with the Aid of Kerosene,” Vermont Watchman and State Journal (Montpelier, Vermont) Aug. 24, 1887, 3.

42 “Four Household Familiars: What May Be Done with Salt, Vinegar, Kerosene and Ammonia,” World (New York) Mar. 16, 1895, 5.

43 For “energy anxiety” experienced by energy users, see Ruth W. Sandwell, “Women, Fear, and Fossil Fuels” in In a New Light, 67. For the agency of energy users, see Abigail Harrison Moore, “Agency, Ambivalence, and the Women’s Guide to Powering Up the Home in England” in In a New Light, 90–113. Some of these consuming practices were driven and manufactured by entrepreneurs. See, Aldrich, “Kerosene Kitchen.”

44 Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, vol. 4, 1885–1905 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 1–5. One observer noted that “kerosene has … increased the length of life … [and its users] now occupy a portion of the night in reading and other amusements.” Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 320.

45 On Ladies’ Home Journal, see Damon-Moore, Helen, Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880–1910 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Scanlon, Jennifer, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender and the Promise of Consumer Culture (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

46 Damon-Moore, Magazines for the Millions, 74–77.

47 Fannie E. Newberry, “The Care of Lamps,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1886, 7.

48 In 1889, they had to hire ten people a day to open letters. Damon-Moore, Magazines for the Millions, 27.

49 “Correspondence,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1887, 8, 12.

50 “Correspondence,” Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1887, 8.

51 Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1885, 5. Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1887, 8.

52 Goldstein, Carolyn M., Creating Consumers: Home Economists in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) 11 Google Scholar. See also Stage, Sarah and Vincenti, Virginia B., eds., Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leavitt, Sarah A., From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Levine, Susan, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Hoganson, Kristin L., Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

53 Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1887, 14.

54 To be sure, the Betty Lamp was not a kerosene lamp but a lamp for organic oils popularly used during colonial times. This was because home economists tried to retroact the image of reading housewives by the lamp light to the nation’s very beginning. Nickols, Sharon Y., “Keeping the Betty Lamp Burning,” Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences 93, no. 3 (2001): 35 Google Scholar.

55 Ladies’ Home Journal, Sept. 1904, 24; Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1905, 36.

56 Robert Kendall Shaw, Bibliography, 123–24. For the class distinction regarding the purchase and storage of coal, see the fourth chapter of Adams, Sean P., Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 109.

58 Maria Parloa, Miss Parloa’s Young Housekeepers: Designed Especially to Aid Beginners (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1984).

59 Juliet Corson, “The Routine of Housework,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1893, 22.

60 “Practical Housekeeper,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1885, 5.

61 Price, Jennifer, Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 122.Google Scholar

62 Ladies’ Home Journal, Sept. 1889, 12; Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1887, 12; Ladies’ Home Journal, Jan. 1890, 21; Ladies’ Home Journal, Apr. 1890, 18; Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1891, 31; Ladies’ Home Journal, Dec. 1891, 33; Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1892, 31.

63 Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1892, 31. Along with this, home economists described how to use kerosene to wash brushes for oil painting, another middle-class hobby. Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1887, 6.

64 This kind of material culture (and related experiences) played a crucial role in the development of middle-class identity among consumers of nationalized commodities like kerosene. See Moskowitz, Standard of Living.

65 Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 526.

66 This social meaning of kerosene lasted until the 1920s when middle-class families began to substitute kerosene with electricity as a primary illuminant. See Nye, Consuming Power, 97–98.

67 “Kerosene is King” Boston Globe, Jan. 1894, 30.

68 Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 246–47.

69 Legal scholar Robert Bork, for example, famously argued that the Sherman Act intended to protect consumers. Yet, his “consumer welfare” thesis on antitrust statutes has been refuted by other economists and historians. See Robert H. Bork, “Legislative Intent and the Policy of the Sherman Act,” Journal of Law and Economics, 9 (Oct. 1966): 7–48. For refutations, see, Christopher Grandy, “Original Intent and the Sherman Antitrust Act: A Re-Examination of the Consumer-Welfare Hypothesis,” The Journal of Economic History 53 (June 1993): 359–76; Werner Troesken, “The Letters of John Sherman and the Origins of Antitrust,” The Review of Austrian Economics 15 (Dec. 2002): 275–95; Orbach, Barak Y., “The Antitrust Consumer Welfare Paradox,” Journal of Competition Law and Economics 7 (Mar. 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 133–64. The quote is from Grandy, “Original Intent and the Sherman Antitrust Act,” 367.

70 Urofsky, Melvin I., Louis Brandeis: A Life (New York: Schocken Books, 2012), 90–91Google Scholar.

71 Tarbell, Autobiography, 273.

72 Chicago Civic Federation, Chicago Conference on Trusts (Chicago: Civic Federation of Chicago, 1900), 497.

73 Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 323–30. The notion of potential competition was polished by John Bates Clark, “How to Deal with Trusts,” Independent, May 2, 1901, 1002. For Clark’s complex stance on the trust problem, see Henry, John F., John Bates Clark: The Making of a Neoclassical Economist (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 117–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 On the Chicago Conference, see Hovenkamp, Herbert, “The Invention of Antitrust,” Southern California Law Review 96 (Apr. 2023): 129–206 Google Scholar.

75 Chicago Civic Federation, Chicago Conference, 530–33. See also Hovenkamp, “Invention of Antitrust,” 135–36.

76 Grover Cleveland, “Fourth Annual Message,” The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fourth-annual-message-second-term (accessed Aug. 3, 2019).

77 Chicago Civic Federation, Chicago Conference, 270, 280; George Gunton, Trusts and the Public (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899), 12–16.

78 Chicago Civic Federation, Chicago Conference, 73.

79 Jenks, “Trusts and Industrial Combinations,” 724.

80 McClure to Finley, Sept. 14, 1899, Finley Papers; recited from Wilson, Harold S., McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 131–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 “McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World: A Brief for Advertisers,” (New York: S. S. McClure Company, 1906). For national magazines in this period, see Mott, History of American Magazines, 1–5.

82 Richard M. Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (London: Verso, 1996), 84.

83 McClure, Autobiography, 243–44; Tarbell, Autobiography, 202; Wilson, McClure’s Magazine, 101.

84 Both magazines were bought by middle-class consumers, and they often launched promotions to sell the magazines altogether in a bundle subscription. “$8.30 for Magazines for Only 3.98,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Dec. 1900, 25.

85 Kathleen Brady, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (New York: Seaview/Putnam, 1984) 121.

86 Tarbell, Autobiography, 273.

87 For Tarbell’s stance, see Robert Stinson, “Ida M. Tarbell and the Ambiguities of Feminism,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 101 (Apr. 1977): 217–39.

88 Ladies’ Home Journal, Mar. 1913, 26.

89 Ladies’ Home Journal, Feb. 1913, 22.

90 In a business pamphlet for advertisers, the editors said that the magazine “has its place in the home, is read by every member of the family circle.” “McClure’s—The Marketplace of the World: A Brief for Advertisers,” (New York: S. S. McClure Company, 1906).

91 For muckrakers, see Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 164–67; Louis Filler, The Muckrakers (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Brian Thornton, “Muckraking Journalists and Their Readers: Perceptions of Professionalism,” Journalism History 21 (Spring 1995): 29–41.

92 Previous anti-monopoly treatises targeting general readers, such as Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth, lacked coherent narrative frameworks compared to Tarbell’s. Contemporary reviewers deemed Tarbell’s work as a more “readable story,” contrasting its good style with the “depressing effect” of Lloyd’s book. Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 649–52.

93 Tarbell was advised by prominent scholars like John Bates Clark and John R. Commons. Moreover, she surveyed many government reports and political economists’ works, which unanimously granted the fact that Standard Oil lowered the consumer price. “Introduction” written by Dorfman, Joseph in Clark, John B. and Clark, John M., The Control of the Trusts (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1971), 9 Google Scholar; Brady, Ida Tarbell, 133.

94 “Announcement,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1902, 4.

95 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: The Birth of an Industry,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1902, 3–4.

96 Wright, William, The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania: Showing Where Petroleum Is Found: How It Is Obtained and at What Cost with Hints for Whom It May Concern (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865), 38 Google Scholar. Perhaps this picture was closer to what they really were; as historian Brian Black observed, the Oil Region was “not a community at all.” Black, Petrolia, 14. One visitor observed that the Oil Region was the “rendezvous of strangers eager for speculation.” Yergin, The Prize, 29. See also Olien, Roger M., Hinton, Diana Davids, and Olien, Diana Davids, Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 21–23Google Scholar. The most recent work on independent oil producers is Dochuk, Anointed with Oil.

97 Tarbell, “Birth of an Industry,” 3, 15.

98 Tarbell introduced readers to the oilmen’s technological achievements by presenting the portraits of seven individual “inventors” and illustrations of their inventions. Tarbell, “Birth of an Industry,” 7.

99 Tarbell, “Birth of an Industry,” 15.

100 Tarbell, “Birth of an Industry,” 16.

101 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: The Rise of the Standard Oil Company,” McClure’s Magazine, Dec. 1902, 116.

102 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: The Fight for the Seaboard Pipe-Line,” McClure’s Magazine, Jan. 1904, 295.

103 Tarbell’s argument here was not correct. Standard Oil built two seaboard pipelines before Tidewater did and then managers of Tidewater began to ask Standard Oil to merge their firm. Williamson and Daum, Age of Illumination, 440–62.

104 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: Price of Oil,” McClure’s Magazine, Sept. 1904, 533.

105 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 533.

106 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 534.

107 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 545.

108 Jenks, Industrial Report, 724. For the contemporary debates on margins and monopolies, see Gunton, George, “The Economic and Social Aspect of Trusts,” Political Science Quarterly (Sept. 1888): 398 Google Scholar; Seligman, Edwin R. A., Principles of Economics: With Special Reference to American Conditions (New York: Longmans, 1905)Google Scholar, 347. See also, Olien, Oil and Ideology, 97–100; Hovenkamp, “Invention of Antitrust,” 137, 152–54.

109 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 548.

110 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 548.

111 Tarbell, “Price of Oil,” 539–40.

112 Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company: Conclusion,” McClure’s Magazine, Oct. 1904, 671 (original emphasis).

113 Although some previous studies consider the anti-monopoly sentiment as a “male” issue, it was not completely so. See “The World and His Wife: A Popular Explanation of the Affairs of To-Day,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Feb. 1903, 14; “The World and His Wife: A Popular Explanation of the Affairs of To-Day,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Apr. 1903, 17; “The Man President Roosevelt Works for,” Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1906, 19; “Who Is to Blame for the High Prices?: Why the Trusts Are to Blame,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Nov. 1910, 42; “Who Is to Blame for the High Prices?: Why Women Are to Blame,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Dec. 1910, 23; “His Letters to His Mother in Which Great Questions Are Made Clear,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Mar. 1912, 23. For the previous studies, see Muncy, Robyn, “Trustbusting and White Manhood in America, 1898–1914,” American Studies 38 (Fall 1997): 21–42 Google Scholar.

114 “Why the Trusts Are to Blame,” 42.

115 Abilene (KS) Daily Reflector, Dec. 14, 1903.

116 “Miss Tarbell There,” Topeka (KS) Daily Capital, Apr. 7, 1905, 1; Abilene (KS) Daily Reflector, Aug. 4, 1905, 2; “Rockefeller on the Stage,” Hutchinson (KS) News, Nov. 18, 1905, 7; “Press Favors Kansas Idea,” Topeka (KS) Daily Capital, Mar. 5, 1905, 19.

117 “Some Magazine Notes,” Abilene (KS) Daily Reflector, June 28, 1905, 3.

118 Olien, Oil and Ideology, 106–07.

119 Williams, “Roosevelt’s Populism,” 102–11.

120 Kansas Weekly Capital (Topeka, Kansas), Apr. 3, 1905.

121 “Oil Fields and Pipe Lines of Kansas,” Topeka (KS) Daily Capital, June 3, 1905, 6.

122 “Income $40,000,000,” Topeka (KS) State Journal, Nov. 18, 1905, 1.

123 “Will Have Refinery,” Abilene (KS) Daily Reflector, Feb. 2, 1905, 1.

124 “Proclamation,” Topeka (KS) State Journal, Apr. 3, 1905, 7.

125 “Oil Men Meet,” Topeka (KS) State Journal, Mar. 18, 1905, 10. Unfortunately, it is not easy to find how middle-class consumers themselves thought of the Kansas Oil War. While local newspapers in Kansas often mentioned consumers’ voices, they rarely printed ordinary readers’ letters or contributions. Perhaps consumers’ responses to Tarbell’s article were something like that of “a lady from Cochecton Centre, N.Y.” who wrote to McClure’s Magazine after reading it: “While visiting I found McClure’s in nearly every home in which I stopped, and no wonder, for it is the general opinion of the intelligent reading public that no better magazine is published.” “From our readers,” McClure’s Magazine, Aug. 1903, 21. While we need more research to know consumers’ own accounts of the Kansas oil war, it is possible to observe the increasing importance of consumers in anti-monopoly politics from the accounts of politicians, producers, and activists.

126 “Will Have Refinery,” Abilene (KS) Daily Reflector, Feb. 2, 1905, 1.

127 Tarbell, “Kansas and the Standard Oil Company,” 622.

128 George Gunton to Theodore Roosevelt, Dec. 17, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o39866 (accessed Feb. 11, 2023).

129 Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, Sept, 22, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers; Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, Sept, 27, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers.

130 Roosevelt, “Special Message” (May 4, 1906).

131 Theodore Roosevelt, “Sixth Annual Message,” The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/sixth-annual-message-4 (accessed July 4, 2018).

132 Data calculated from U.S. Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Crude Oil First Purchase Price, Annual,” Dec. 1, 2018. (statistics from Williams, “Roosevelt’s Populism,” 117).

133 National Civic Federation, Proceedings,144.

134 National Civic Federation, Proceedings, 332–33, 335.

135 National Civic Federation, Proceedings, 450.

136 Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 47–8 (1911).

137 United States Bureau of Corporations, Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Petroleum Industry (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1907).

138 Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 2 (1911).