James Scott
Scottish
| Notable Position | Organization | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carnegie Steel Company | 1877 | 1913 |
| Notable Position | Organization | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carnegie Steel Company | 1877 | 1913 |
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y/M/D | Description | Association | Composition | Place | Locale | Food | Event |
| Significant name | James Scott House | Pittsburgh |
History
A native of Scotland, James Scott came to the United States in 1872 at age twenty-two, having already served six years of technical apprenticeship in the steel industry in his homeland. In 1876 he married Helen E Johnston, daughter of a Scotsman, in Brooklyn, New York. The Scott's union produced five daughters and a son. James Scott began his career with Carnegie in 1877 as machinist on the Lucy Furnaces, which were doubled in capacity that year to meet the demands of Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thomson sled mill. At the time, the daily and weekly tonnage from blast furnaces was reported in newspapers, promoting competition between furnaces. Through this competition, innovation in design, and the relentless pressure to exceed previous production records placed on Carnegie Steel's employees by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, average production from a blast furnace rose from 50 tons per day when the first Lucy Furnace was fired in 1873, to nearly 1000 tons per day from newly-built furnaces early in the 20th century. James Scott contributed to the increase in production by innovating blast furnace techniques and inventing pieces of technology. A trusted and loyal Carnegie aide, he rose to be Superintendent of the Lucy Furnaces, and finally General Superintendent of the Lucy, Isabella, Edith, and Neville Blast Furnaces. Scott was a member of Pittsburgh's most prestigious business-oriented social organization, the Duquesne Club, and served on boards of charitable organizations.
It is clear from James Scott's career that he devoted his energies to the technical side of the steel business. Scott invented several pieces of blast furnace technology, and innovated new techniques at a time when the modern steel industry was evolving. He was not involved in the financial and political machinations of Carnegie, Frick, and their associates, and is therefore rarely mentioned in the biographies and corporate histories of the era.
From his tenure as Superintendent of some of Carnegie's best-known and most-productive furnaces, it can be concluded that Scott met the ever-increasing expectations of Frick and Carnegie. As a measure of Carnegie's trust in him, rising leaders of the Carnegie and US Steel companies were apprenticed to James Scott to learn the business.
According to the 1903 book by James Howard Bridge, The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company, James Scott had a major role in the twenty-fold increase in blast furnace production in the late 19th century:
No man in the Carnegie Steel Company, or indeed anywhere else, has been closer to the great changes described than Mr Scott, and few men have contributed more to produce these changes.
The enormous increase in iron production allowed for a like rise in Carnegie's steel output, which in turn fueled the nation's railroad, industrial, and building boom of the era. United States Steel became the world's first billion dollar corporation when it was formed in 1901. Upon Scott's retirement from US Steel in 1913, Andrew Carnegie described him as "Dean of the blast furnace corps of the world." - NRHP
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