Extra History

Teddy Roosevelt the Trustbuster - Breaking Standard (107x3)

Air date: Mar 06, 2021

The year is 1908. Teddy Roosevelt wins the election in a landslide, one of the biggest in American history. And as black gold flows over Kentucky all the way down to Louisiana, Standard Oil starts overreaching. Ida Tarbell goes down to help catalog the way Standard Oil circumvented anti-trust laws but this time, she has the government behind her. James Rudolph Garfield, Roosevelt's Secretary of Interior, was following Ida Tarbell's reporting and finally, there's enough to drag Standard before the courts. But will it be enough to break up these gigantic titans? Or is Teddy going to need something a little stronger?