Howard Scott (April 1, 1890 – January 1, 1970) was an American engineer and founder of the

Technocracy movement The technocracy movement was a social movement active in the United States and Canada in the 1930s which favored technocracy as a system of government over representative democracy and concomitant partisan politics. Historians associate the mov ...

. He formed the

Technical Alliance The Technical Alliance was a group of engineers, scientists, and technicians based in New York City, formed towards the end of 1919 by American engineer Howard Scott. The Alliance started an ''Energy Survey of North America'', aimed at documenting ...

and

Technocracy Incorporated The technocracy movement was a social movement active in the United States and Canada in the 1930s which favored technocracy as a system of government over representative democracy and concomitant partisan politics. Historians associate the mo ...

Early life

Little is known about Scott's background or his early life and he has been described as a "mysterious young man". 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. In 1918, shortly before the end of WWI, Scott appeared in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. 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 Muscle Shoals is the largest city in Colbert County, Alabama, United States. It is located along the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state and, as of the 2010 census, the population of Muscle Shoals was 13,146. The estimated popu ...

. Following this, Scott established himself in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

as "a kind of Bohemian engineer". Scott also ran a small business called ''Duron Chemical Company'' which made paint and floor polish at

Pompton Lakes, New Jersey Pompton Lakes is a borough in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 11,097,World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, Howard Scott helped to form the

which explored economic and social trends in North America; the Technical Alliance disbanded in 1921. 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 The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines gener ...

members, or that the research was intended for a strike. Eventually it was made known. Scott and the I.W.W kept in touch. According to

Ralph Chaplin Ralph Hosea Chaplin (1887–1961) was an American writer, artist and labor activist. At the age of seven, he saw a worker shot dead during the Pullman Strike in Chicago, Illinois. He had moved with his family from Ames, Kansas to Chicago in ...

he met Scott in Greenwich Village and was invited to his studio. Chaplin and Scott discussed the improvement of the I.W.W to better help a worker revolution and Scott was said to have made some impressive points, insisting that the revolutionary force will be with engineers. They also talked about Thorstein Veblen's Soviet of Engineers. Scott was dissatisfied with Veblen's use of the word '

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

'. Chaplin spoke of the IWW's need to have organized information. Scott suggested a Industrial Research Bureau explaining the importance of having all the data for an informed decision. Chaplin wrote: "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 A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...

airplanes, and

technological unemployment Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more effici ...

, I was looking at the other side of the studio where an appalling

phallic A phallus is a penis (especially when Erection, erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimesis, mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically— ...

watercolor painting Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...

was displayed among blueprints and graphs on a big easel. Evidently the "Great Scott" was a man of diversified interests." In correspondence 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 paintings. 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."'' In 1920 during a Wobbly convention (''it's unknown if Scott attended''), the I.W.W made an official

Bureau of Industrial Research The Bureau of Industrial Research was a New York City-based labor research organization. History In 1920, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) created the Bureau of Industrial Research to address such issues, in part due to the influence of ...

and the same year they hired Howard Scott as a research director. 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. 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.

Technocracy

After The Technical Alliance and the Industrial Research Bureau. Scott, together with

Walter Rautenstrauch Walter Rautenstrauch (1880–1951) was an American mechanical and consulting engineer, and Professor at Columbia University's Department of Industrial Engineering in the 1930s. He coined the term break-even point, and developing the break-even cha ...

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. Scott had "overstated his academic credentials", and he was discovered not to be a "distinguished engineer". 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. The speech was called a "grave mistake", "disastrous", and "a complete failure", as it was most likely that Scott had no experience or training as a

public speaker Public speaking, also called oratory or oration, has traditionally meant the act of speaking face to face to a live audience. Today it includes any form of speaking (formally and informally) to an audience, including pre-recorded speech delive ...

Genesis of the technocratic movement

M. King Hubbert Marion King Hubbert (October 5, 1903 – October 11, 1989) was an American geologist and geophysicist. He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geolog ...

joined the staff of

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

in 1931 and met Howard Scott. Hubbert and Scott co-founded

in 1933, with Scott as leader and Hubbert as secretary. Scott remained as the chief engineer of Technocracy Incorporated until his death in 1970. Scott "argued indefatigably that scientific analysis of industrial production would show the path to lasting efficiency and unprecedented abundance". 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 organization which lasted for about a year.Henry Elsner, jr. (1967). ''The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation'', Syracuse University.

Radical reform

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 In economics, a price system is a system through which the valuations of any forms of property (tangible or intangible) are determined. All societies use price systems in the allocation and exchange of resources as a consequence of scarcity. Even ...

" 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.

References

External links

The Hotel Pierre Address

A pamphlet of a given address by Howard Scott before the National Technological Congress and the Continental Convention on Technocracy at the Morris Hotel, Chicago, Ill. in June, 1933

The Last Utopians
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Howard 1890 births 1970 deaths Technocracy movement 20th-century American engineers Industrial Workers of the World people Engineers from Virginia