Charles A. Carlow (SME)
AIME Honorary Membership in
1947
Nearly 100 years ago the great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson said that coal is portable climate. Coal is also industrial wealth, and Great Britain was endowed by Nature with a bountiful supply-which has made her climate endurable and her industries great. In normal times the average annual output of the huge deposits located in the British Isles is worth nearly a billion dollars and is the basis for the manufacture of a multitude of products which are exported to all ports of the world.
One of the leading personalities in British coal mining is Charles Augustus Carlow, noted mining engineer and managing director of the Fife Coal Company, Ltd., of Leven, Fife, Scotland. Mr. Carlow was born nearly 70 years ago in the locality in which he now lives. He was educated at Heriott Watt College in Edinburgh and at the University in that city.
Upon completion of his university courses, Mr. Carlow began work for the Fife Coal Company, and his whole professional life has been spent with that organization, in many capacities, but always with increasing responsibility. For more than 15 years he has been in charge of the company and all its properties, and, as is characteristic of many Englishmen who have risen to the top of their profession, Mr. Carlow has always been willing to take on additional responsibilities if they would aid in advancing the industry and its workers, and the community where it is located. In addition to holding this high position with his own company, Mr. Carlow is chairman of the Shotts Iron Company; Ltd., the Fife and Clackmannan Coal Owners Association, the Fife Area Control Committee, and a number of other important organizations.
Like most successful executives in the mineral industries, Mr. Carlow has always been active in the professional societies connected with mining. He has been president of the Institution of Mining Engineers, the Mining- Institute of Scotland, and the Institution of Mining Electrical Engineers; and he is an active member of other mining societies in addition to being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Institute of Fuel.