Bios.Tulsa,OK SLOAN, James W. 
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Posted by Earline Sparks Barger on Sun, 27 Dec 1998
Surname: SLOAN, WILLIAMS
JAMES W. SLOAN
Vol. 3, p. 977-978 
As a youth in his native State of Pennsylvania, Mr. Sloan early gained practical experience in connection with the petroleum oil industry, and in later years he has witnessed and assisted in the development of this important productive industry in the newer fields of Ohio, Texas and Oklahoma, his activities having also touched the fields of West Virginia. In Oklahoma he has at the present time large interests in connection with oil operations, besides which he is president and general manager of the Oklahoma Iron Works, representing one of the most important industrial enterprises of the City of Tulsa, where he has maintained his residence since 1904 and where he has gained prestige as a representative man of affairs and as a progressive and public-spirited citizen, so that there is all of consistency in according him definite recognition in this history of the state of his adoption. 
Mr. Sloan was born in the City of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on the 5th of February, 1870, and is the younger of the two children of John W. and Catherine (WILLIAMS) Sloan, his mother having died in 1872, when he was a child of about two years; his sister, Mary, is the wife of John C. Sloan and they likewise reside in the City of Tulsa, as does also the venerable father, who celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday anniversary in 1915. 
John W. Sloan was born and reared in the old Keystone State, where he followed in his younger days the trade of carriagemaker, besides becoming also a skilled cabinet maker. Soon after the death of his wife he removed to Clarion County, Pennsylvania, where he became the owner of an excellent farm, and to the management of this old homestead he continued to give his supervision until 1894, since which time he has lived retired, after years of earnest and useful endeavor. This venerable citizen of Tulsa, where he is passing the gracious evening of his life with his children, is a consistent member of the Presbyterian Church and gives his political support to the republican party, whose cause he espoused at the time of its organization, after having previously been aligned in the ranks of the whig party. 
James W. Sloan, the immediate subject of this review, was a small child at the time of the family removal to the Clarion County, Pennsylvania, where he gained his initial experience as one of the world's workers and where his boyhood was compassed by the conditions and influences of the home farm. When but fourteen years of age he found employment in connection with lumbering operations in that section of the state, and he also found requisition for his services in the work of the farm of his father, the staunch and fixed habit of industry having been one of the fortuitous forces in enabling him to achieve definite and worthy success in his independent business career. His early education was acquired in the public schools of his native state and for a time he was a student in the State Normal School at Clarion, Pennsylvania. As a youth he was employed at farm work at the nominal stipend of $5 a month, and during the winter months he worked for his board and availed himself of the privilege of attending school. From the work of the farm he turned his attention to the dressing of tools utilized in the oil fields in the vicinity of Clarion, and later he found for several years employment as a driller of oil wells. In 1894 Mr. Sloan engaged in independent contracting for this work, and as such he was identified with the development of oil fields in West Virginia and Ohio, in which latter state he remained somewhat more than three years. He then returned to his father's farm, which property he purchased, but he eventually sold the same, and on the 28th of March 1898, he settled at Corsicana, Texas, where he became actively concerned with the producing of oil in the field that was there being rapidly developed. About two years later he transferred his residence to the new and celebrated oil fields at Beaumont, that state, where he became one of the organizers of the Producers' Oil Company, of which he was made vice president. For seven years he was representative of this company in practical operations in the fields at Batson and Jennings, Texas, and in the meanwhile he had further shown his initiative enterprise by assuming the contract for the installation of a waterworks system at Sour Lake, Texas. He continued as vice president and general manager of the Producers' Oil Company until the autumn of 1903, when he sold his interests in Texas and came to Oklahoma Territory, where he identified himself with development and producing activities in the oil fields in the vicinity of Muskogee. In the following year he established his permanent home at Tulsa and became interested in oil producing, as an interested principal in what was known as the Glenn Pool. His long and varied experience and authoritative knowledge have made him an influential factor in connection with the development of the oil and gas industries in this state, where his interest in the business are still of important order. In 1907 Mr. Sloan was one of the organizers of the Oklahoma Iron Works, of which he has since been president and general manager and for the providing of the fine plant of which corporation he selected and laid out a tract of twenty-five acres southwest of the city, where are situated the fine and essentially modern foundry and structural-steel works. As touching the importance of this enterprise as one of the foremost industries contributing to the prestige of Tulsa and of the state the following quotations, taken, with but minor changes, from a recently published article in a Tulsa newspaper, are will worthy of reproduction in this more permanent vehicle: "Established in April, 1907, in a small way, with capital of only $25,000, and employing only a small force of men, the Oklahoma Iron Works has grown until now it is the largest single institution in Tulsa with branches in Cushing, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and Tampico, Mexico and with a corps of about 200 employees. Here almost everything used in the oil field is made and all kinds of repairing are done. A business of such magnitude did not develop by accident. Those who have put their money into it have done so because dividends have been declared and a real business established - a business that is not only a credit to Tulsa and a great benefit to this oil field but also a lasting, permanent investment, bringing good dividends and with as near a certainty of future success as can be predicted for any large enterprise carefully and economically managed and supplying a demand that is sure to continue. The drawing of plans, the making of the designs, the completing of the product in all its details, from the smallest to the largest pieces of machinery utilized in the oil business, may here be traced and watched in all the interesting processes. 
"Such a business, built up in eight years and established on such a solid basis, must have a guiding mind and this enterprise is fully fortified in this important feature. That mind is that of the organizer and president of the company, J. W. Sloan. With a capital stock of $300,000, with assets of more than three-fourths of a million dollars, and with orders for work pouring in from every direction, Mr. Sloan and his associates surely have reason to feel proud of what they have built in the face of depressions and discouragements in the oil business. The plans are now being prepared for another building for the already large and substantial plant, and for the providing of the latest in modern equipment with all machinery driven by electricity. The building will be of fire-proof construction and its dimensions 250 by 74 feet. 
"The possibilities before this business seem almost limitless. It has been multiplied by more than ten in less than that number of years, and there is no reason why this should not happen again." 
Those agencies that tend to conserve the civic and material prosperity and advancement of the community have the loyal and liberal support of Mr. Sloan, and though he has never been imbued with desire for the honors or emoluments of political office, he accords staunch allegiance to the republican party. In the Masonic fraternity he has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, as a Member of the consistory in the City of Guthrie, and at Tulsa his ancient craft affiliation is with Delta Lodge No. 425, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, besides which he is identified with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. 
Transcribed by: Earline Sparks Barger, December 16, 1998