To give credit where credit is due, as we discussed the “BP massacre” one recent night, my husband reminded me, Rebecca, the amateur historian and fierce political blogger, who should have this fact on the tip-of-her-tongue at all times, that it was an amazing woman, who first said what time it is about “Big Oil.”
That would be Ida (Minerva) Tarbell, who, over a century ago, wrote of Big Oil: “They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.”
And that’s one of Ida Minerva’s milder comments.
And who was Ida Minerva writing about? Well, none other than Standard Oil (at its last, headquartered in Chicago and employing hundreds of today’s Chicago women), a cousin of BP, bought by BP a few years back.
In 1904, Tarbell published The History of the Standard Oil Company. “…[o]ne of the most thorough investigations ever written of how a business monopoly exploits the public by using unfair tactics, [it] has been called…’arguably… the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States.’”
Now, this bit about Ida Minerva isn’t some obscure bit of women’s history trivia, of interest only to those of us whose favorite form of trivial pursuit is the one about women in American history.
No. This bit about Ida Minerva is really, really important for all today’s Chicago women, today and everyday.
Why? Well, because Ida Minerva had the guts, the guts to get to the gut (wrenching) heart-of-the-matter, as I noted above, over a century ago, about Big Oil’s avaricious and unending willingness to exploit women, men, the environment, the vanity of public officials, you-name-it; the guts to write about the willingness of Big Oil to exploit whatever in pursuit of its holy grail, Big Profits.
You could say that this is all a justifiable, totally reasonable, smart (businessman’s) reaction to the American public's "stuck-on-stupid" approach to (not) saving our environment, because of our well-of-desire for cheap oil, but I think this analysis too facile.
No, there is something bigger at-hand here, and that something is our repeatedly-apparent, for over two centuries and counting, unwillingness to understand and take-hold-to what Independence Day is really about: American days un-dogged by the willful and injurious actions of British, or, for that matter, any other, kings.
Hear this: Ida Minerva, just like another amazing American woman journalist named Ida, Ida B. Wells, who I’ve also written about in these pages did what we all need to do everyday, not just on the Fourth of July: She celebrated the Fourth of July, Independence Day, not by going to the beach, but by writing tirelessly and unceasingly about the meaning of the Fourth of July, Independence Day: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,”un-dogged, even in the dog days of summer, by the willful and injurious actions of kings.
Forget the beach, the barbecue, and the brew: July Fourth is about our independence from kings’ oppression. On July 4th 1776, it was the oppression of King George; on July 4th 2010, it’s the oppression of another, and no better, British king, British Petroleum.
This post was originally published for the Fourth of July in Today's Chicago Woman. Image credit: Robert Shetterly/Americans Who Tell the Truth
