Howard Scott (engineer)

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Howard Scott
Scott in front of Technocracy Inc. Section house RD-11833-2 SHQ in 1942
BornApril 1, 1890
Virginia, U.S.
DiedJanuary 1, 1970
Orlando, Florida, U.S.
OccupationEngineer

Howard Scott (April 1, 1890 – January 1, 1970) was an American engineer and founder of the Technocracy movement. He formed the Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated.[1]

Early life[edit]

Little is known about Scott's background or his early life and he has been described as a "mysterious young man".[2] He was born in Virginia in 1890 and was of Scottish-Irish descent. He claimed to have been educated in Europe, but his training did not include any formal higher education.[2]

In 1918, shortly before the end of WWI, Scott appeared in New York City. Scott worked in various construction camps, where he picked up on-the-job engineering experience, and in 1918 was working in a cement pouring group at Muscle Shoals.[2][3] Following this, Scott established himself in Greenwich Village as "a kind of Bohemian engineer".[2] Scott also ran a small business called Duron Chemical Company which made paint and floor polish at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Scott's job was to deliver his goods and show his customers how to use the floor polishing material.[2][3]

Influence on the I.W.W[edit]

At the end of World War I, Howard Scott helped to form the Technical Alliance which explored economic and social trends in North America; the Technical Alliance disbanded in 1921.[4]

Scott was queried by a few gentlemen looking for research to be done, it's unknown as to whom exactly suggested they contact Scott. But when he first did their research it was about copper consumption for a potential copper industry strike, and Scott wasn't aware at the time these gentlemen who hired him were Industrial Workers of the World members, or that the research was intended for a strike. Eventually it was made known. Scott and the I.W.W kept in touch.[5]

According to Ralph Chaplin he met Scott in Greenwich Village and was invited to his studio. Chaplin and Scott had great discussions, talking about the improvement of the I.W.W to better help a worker revolution. Scott was said to have impressive talking points, insisting that the revolutionary force will be with engineers, they also talked about Thorstein Veblen's Soviet of Engineers which Scott has mentioned on other accounts unsatisfied with Veblen's use of the word 'Soviet'. Chaplin talked of the Wobblies needs on having organized information which Scott suggested a Industrial Research Bureau explaining the importance of having all the data for an informed decision.[6]

An interesting insight to Scott written by Chaplin to quote — "That idea appealed to me at once. After all, the engineer was included in our revised "One Big Union" chart. But I resented the bohemian atmosphere in which Scott seemed to thrive. All the time he was discoursing so plausibly about teardrop automobiles, flying wing airplanes, and technological unemployment, I was looking at the other side of the studio where an appalling phallic watercolor painting was displayed among blueprints and graphs on a big easel. Evidently the "Great Scott" was a man of diversified interests."[6]

Through a back and forth letter questioning between Assistant Professor of Economics J. Kaye Faulkner and Howard Scott, Prof. Faulkner questioned Scott's and Chaplin's interactions, mentioning Chaplin's book "Wobbly, the rough-and-tumble story of an American radical" To which Scott denied having talked to Chaplin for very long, or to having phallic painting's. As Scott puts it — "I never had a painting, phallic or otherwise, and if I had had a painting I certainly would not mix it up with blue prints and mathematical charts."[7]


In 1920 during a Wobbly convention (it's unknown if Scott attended), the I.W.W made an official Bureau of Industrial Research and the same year they hired Howard Scott as a research director.[2][5] This allowed for Scott to have a greater influence in spreading his ideas on technocracy as in a few of the One Big Union Monthly papers he authored some segments under the pen name "An Industrial Engineer", openly criticizing the union's lack of technological perspective and placing too much faith on Marxian analysis for worker prosperity. Potentially 100 of the Wobblies in the Bureau started to take a liking towards Technocracy instead of Marx. Scott's rebuttals might also be the reason for a few, yet, long term I.W.W members for canceling their membership after reflecting on Scotts points about engineers, socialism, communism, and syndicalism.[5]

After 1921 the Bureau of Industrial Research shifted into inactivity, soon to be replaced. And Howard Scott soon to become chief advocate of Technocracy across North America.[5]

Technocracy[edit]

After The Technical Alliance and the Industrial Research Bureau.

Scott, together with Walter Rautenstrauch formed the Committee on Technocracy in 1932, which advocated a more rational and productive society headed by technical experts. The Committee disbanded in January 1933, after only a few months, largely because of different views held by Scott and Rautenstrauch as well as widespread criticism of Scott.[4][8] Scott had "overstated his academic credentials",[9] and he was discovered not to be a "distinguished engineer".[2][10]

On January 13, 1933, Scott gave a speech about technocracy at New York's Hotel Pierre, before a live audience of 400, which was also broadcast on radio nationwide.[2][11][12] The speech was called a "grave mistake",[11] "disastrous",[12][13] and "a complete failure",[2] as it was most likely that Scott had no experience or training as a public speaker.[14]

Genesis of the technocratic movement[edit]

M. King Hubbert joined the staff of Columbia University in 1931 and met Howard Scott. Hubbert and Scott co-founded Technocracy Incorporated in 1933, with Scott as leader and Hubbert as secretary.[15] Scott remained as the chief engineer of Technocracy Incorporated until his death in 1970.[2] Scott "argued indefatigably that scientific analysis of industrial production would show the path to lasting efficiency and unprecedented abundance".[16] Scott gained many supporters within the movement. M. King Hubbert, for example, considered Scott extremely knowledgeable in physics. There was some discontent with Scott's leadership during WWII and a number of technocrats broke away from Technocracy Inc. and established their own breakaway organization which only lasted for about a year.[17]

Radical reform[edit]

Technocracy Inc. formed in 1931 to promote the ideas of Howard Scott. Scott saw government and industry as wasteful and unfair and believed that an economy run by engineers would be efficient and equitable. He called for the "price system" and fiat currencies to be replaced with a system based on how much energy it takes to produce specific goods. Scott called for engineers to run a continental government, which he termed a technate, to "optimize the use of energy to assure abundance." Virtually unknown today, the organization boasted over half a million members in California alone at its peak in the 1930s and 1940s.[18]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Peter J. Taylor (1988). "Technocratic optimism, H. T. Odum, and the partial transformation of ecological metaphor after World War II". Journal of the History of Biology. 21 (2): 213–244. doi:10.1007/BF00146987. PMID 11621655. S2CID 30320666.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j William E. Akin (1977). Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement 1900-1941, University of California Press, pp. 28-29.
  3. ^ a b "Science: Technocrat". TIME.com. 26 December 1932. Archived from the original on July 28, 2010.
  4. ^ a b Beverly H. Burris (1993). Technocracy at work. State University of New York Press. pp. 28–30. ISBN 9780791414958.
  5. ^ a b c d Gambs, John S. (John Saké) (1966). The decline of the I.W.W. Internet Archive. New York, Russell & Russell. pp. 156–164.
  6. ^ a b Chaplin, Ralph (1948). Wobbly, the rough-and-tumble story of an American radical. Internet Archive. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 295–296.
  7. ^ Howard Scott. History and Purpose of Technocracy. Howard Scott.
  8. ^ "Book review: Technocracy and the American Dream". History of Political Economy. 10 (4): 682. 1978. doi:10.1215/00182702-10-4-682.
  9. ^ David E. Nye (1992). Electrifying America: social meanings of a new technology, 1880-1940. p. 344. ISBN 9780262640305.
  10. ^ Layton, Edwin T. (April 1968). "Book review: The Technocrats, Prophets of Automation". Technology and Culture. 9 (2): 256–259. doi:10.2307/3102180. JSTOR 3102180.
  11. ^ a b Baker, Kevin (April 2000). "The Engineered Society". American Heritage Magazine. Archived from the original on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
  12. ^ a b Howard P. Segal (2005). Technological Utopianism in American Culture. Syracuse University Press. p. 123. ISBN 9780815630616.
  13. ^ Harold Loeb; Howard P. Segal (1996). Life in a technocracy: what it might be like. p. xv. ISBN 9780815603801.
  14. ^ Giles Slade (2009). Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Harvard University Press. p. 71. ISBN 9780674043756.
  15. ^ "The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand - Hubbert: King Of The Technocrats". theoildrum.com.
  16. ^ Frank Fischer (1990). Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise, Sage Publications, p. 85.
  17. ^ Henry Elsner, jr. (1967). The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation, Syracuse University.
  18. ^ Finley, Klint. "Techies Have Been Trying to Replace Politicians for Decades". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-08-11.

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Howard Scott.
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