Ida Tarbell was one of the most famous Muckrakers. Muckrakers are reform-minded journalists who focus on social downfalls and political or corporate corruption. In this case Tarbell decides to chase the large and powerful Standard oil company. Rockefeller, who was the leader of Standard Oil, used the rapidly changing economic landscape to help his company become a monopolistic trust. Tarbell wrote that these monopolistic trusts "disturbed and confused the people." A probable cause why Ida Tarbell scrutinized the Standard Oil monopoly over any other was that it was a personal matter for her because Rockefeller, the leader of Standard Oil, had excluded her father from the thriving business when she was a young girl. “Things were good in my father's business,” he would write years later. “There was an ease like we had never known; luxuries we had never heard of. ...Then suddenly (our) cheerful and prosperous city received a shot between the eyes." The year was 1872 when the shot between the eyes occurred. The Southern Improvement Plan, a Hidden Agreement between the railroads and refineries led by John Rockefeller, it hit the Pennsylvania Oil Region like a tidal wave. This was Standard Oil's way of cutting off his father and many other small oil companies, creating their powerful Tarbell monopoly tried to destroy the Standard Oil Company because of its illicit activities. Rockefeller was constantly making illegal deals with the railroads, which allowed him to lower the price of his oil, thus pushing more people to buy the cheaper oil Americans wanted the cheaper oil, standard oil's competitors had to lower the price of their oil, preventing small companies from making profits, forcing them out of business. Tarbell saw what was happening and recognized how illegal it was to make these backroom deals, which caused middle-class small business owners to become unemployed. Tarbell's goal was to stop large corporations' use of extortion