1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [125]
Tarbell, Ida (1857–1944) Tarbell was a pioneering investigative journalist whose 1904 History of the Standard Oil Company charted the rise of a giant business monopoly, chronicling a litany of unfair practices by which the company achieved its success. Tarbell was one of the leaders among the “muckrakers,” writers who exposed corruption in American society and whose work triggered the reforms of the Progressive movement.
Taylor, Edward (1645?–1729) Taylor immigrated to New England, studied at the newly founded Harvard College, and became a minister in Westfield, Massachusetts. During his life spent in this frontier ministry, he composed 400 pages of poems, most of them religious meditations in elaborate metaphysical style with complex metaphors.
Taylor, Frederick Winslow (1856–1915) In 1911, this former steel plant foreman published The Principles of Scientific Management, in which he presented a rigorous system for rationalizing the human element in industrial production. “Taylorism” soon swept American industry, whose managers strove to replace idiosyncrasy and “outmoded” individuality of craftsmanship with strict control of all work procedures and production methods so that the pace of production would never be tied to any particular worker or set of workers. While Taylorism increased productivity, it also created profound dissatisfaction among workers, who felt dehumanized, exploited, and alienated.
Taylor, Maxwell (1901–1987) During World War II, Taylor was one of the creators of the 82nd Airborne Division and was commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division. He pioneered the tactics and doctrine of airborne (paratroop) assault, which was widely used by the United States in World War II and afterward.
Taylor, Zachary (1784–1850) Taylor was a military hero of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848) and was tapped by the Whig Party as its presidential contender in 1848. He took office in 1849 and was immediately faced with the problem of whether to extend or to prohibit slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico. Taylor had little time to deal with this and other problems—including a Cabinet-level financial scandal—because he succumbed to cholera 16 months after taking office. He was succeeded by his vice president, Millard Fillmore.
Tecumseh (1768–1813) A Shawnee chief, Tecumseh traveled extensively in an effort to unite various tribes in order to make effective resistance against white invasion of the Ohio country. He allied himself and his followers with the British during the War of 1812 in hopes of stemming the tide of American westward-moving settlement. Although he succeeded in drawing together more tribes than any previous leader, Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames (in Ontario, Canada) on October 5, 1813, by troops under William Henry Harrison.
Teller, Edward (1908–2003) Born in Hungary, the Jewish Teller immigrated to the United States in 1935 to escape a Europe increasingly under the sway of Nazi anti-Semitic ideology. Already recognized as a major physicist, Teller taught at Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) and worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago beginning in 1941 to create the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In 1943, he joined J. Robert Oppenheimer’s team of Manhattan Project scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to create the atomic bomb. After the war, Teller advocated taking the bomb to the next step, using nuclear fission (the mechanism of the atomic bomb) to trigger a far more powerful explosive release of energy by means of nuclear fusion (hydrogen bomb). The fruit of Teller’s labors was successfully tested at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on November 1, 1952. Teller had given birth to the age of thermonuclear