Howard Scott (engineer)

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

Howard Scott
Scott in front of Technocracy Inc. Section house RD-11833-2 SHQ in 1942
Born	April 1, 1890 Virginia, U.S.
Died	January 1, 1970 Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Occupation	Engineer

Early life

Little is known about Scott's 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 ancestry. He claimed to have been educated in Europe, but his training did not include any formal higher education.^[2]

In 1918, soon before the end of the First World War, Scott appeared in New York City. Scott worked in various construction camps, where he acquired some engineering experience, and in 1918 was working with a cement pouring group at Muscle Shoals.^[2][3] After this, Scott established himself in Greenwich Village as "a kind of Bohemian engineer".^[2] Scott also managed a small business named 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

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

Scott was queried by a few men seeking for research to be done; it's unknown who exactly suggested Scott to them. But when he first did their research it was about copper consumption for a potential copper industry strike, and Scott wasn't aware at first that the men who hired him were officials of the Industrial Workers of the World, or that the research was intended for a strike, though he learned of it eventually.^[5]

According to Ralph Chaplin 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 statements, 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'. Chaplin spoke of the IWW's need to have organized information. Scott suggested an Industrial Research Bureau explaining the importance of having all the data for an informed decision.^[6]

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 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]

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 a phallic painting. 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 an IWW convention (it's unknown if Scott attended), the IWW created 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 greater influence in spreading his ideas concerning technocracy, as in a few of the One Big Union Monthly papers he authored some segments using the name "An Industrial Engineer", criticizing the union for its lack of technological perspective and for its faith in Marxian analysis. ^[5]

After 1921 the Bureau of Industrial Research became inactive, and was soon replaced. However, Howard Scott became chief advocate of technocracy in North America.^[5]

Technocracy

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 directed by technical experts. The Committee disbanded in January 1933, after only a few months, largely because of different opinions possessed by Scott and Rautenstrauch and 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 people, which was also broadcast by radio nationwide.^[2][11][12] The speech was termed a "grave mistake",^[11] "disastrous",^[12][13] and "a complete failure",^[2] as Scott probably had no experience or training as a public speaker.^[14]

Genesis of the technocratic movement

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 chief engineer 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 devotees. M. King Hubbert, for example, considered Scott extremely knowledgeable in physics. There was some discontent with Scott's management during World War 2, and a number of technocrats quit Technocracy Inc. and established their own organization which lasted for about a year.^[17]

Radical reform

Technocracy Inc. formed in 1931 to promote the ideas of Howard Scott. Scott considered government and industry as wasteful and unfair and believed that an economy managed by engineers would be efficient and equitable. He advocated for the "price system" and fiat currencies to be replaced with a system based on the amount of energy needed to produce specific goods. Scott also advocated for engineers to manage a continental government, which he termed a technate, to "optimize the use of energy to assure abundance". Virtually unknown now, the organization had more than half a million members in California alone at its time of greatest popularity during the 1930s and 1940s.^[18]