Washington Examiner contributing writer and presidential historian Tevi Troy has just written The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. Here’s an exclusive excerpt from Chapter Two of Troy’s new book about the different approaches two of the most prominent men of the beginning of the early 1900s, a president and the world’s richest industrialist, took to public relations:

In November of 1902, a fierce and dogged 6-foot-tall reporter named Ida Tarbell began running stories in McClure’s magazine about Standard Oil. The stories, which detailed Standard Oil’s — and firm founder and president John D. Rockefeller’s — predatory tactics in building its powerful monopoly, were an immediate sensation. The stories went on for two years and helped build the circulation of McClure’s to 375,000 — the equivalent of over 1.5 million today — making Rockefeller even more hated than he already was. Tarbell’s ultimate conclusion was devastating: “Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.” Sentiment against Rockefeller was so negative that the reformist monthly The Arena wrote, “There are worse men than John D. Rockefeller. There is probably no one, however, who in the public mind so typifies the grave and startling menace to the social order.”