The Woman Who Exposed Standard Oil

Ida Tarbell invented investigative journalism (h/t Ritholtz):

Nobody -- and certainly not a journalist -- had ever tried piercing the corporate veil like Tarbell did. Calculating that, roughly speaking, Time Equals Truth, Tarbell spent month after month, year after year, digging into the origins, operations and accumulation of power by Standard Oil. That necessarily led her into the remarkable life of Rockefeller, the most powerful person within the world’s most powerful enterprise.
Rather than relying on gossip and innuendo, Tarbell gathered Evidence, with a capital E. She located corporate filings in state capitals and in Washington. She tracked down lawsuits in remote courthouses. She studied congressional hearings. She interviewed hundreds of current and former employees, Standard Oil competitors, government bureaucrats, academic experts, friends and enemies of Rockefeller. She attended Rockefeller’s church to observe him directly, given that he had refused to cooperate with her. She immersed herself in the culture of Cleveland, where Rockefeller had obtained his business acumen and begun building a corporate empire. She cultivated one of Rockefeller’s renegade brothers, and discovered that Rockefeller’s father had been a con man and philanderer.

Why do corporations have it easier in 2012 than in 1912?  Some people might say that businesses are overregulated today, but I still think they are underregulated.