PEW, J. HOWARD; AND PEW, JOSEPH N., JR.

born Jan. 27, 1882, Bradford, Pa., U.S. died Nov. 27, 1971, Ardmore born Nov. 12, 1886, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S. died Apr. 9, 1963, Philadelphia in full respectively John Howard Pew and Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. American industrialist brothers who expanded the Sun Oil Company (which their father had founded) by introducing new refining, marketing, and distribution techniques. Beginning in 1886, Joseph Newton Pew, Sr. (1848-1912), piped and refined oil in Pennsylvania and Ohio. When oil was discovered near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901, he bought some wells and built a pipeline to the nearby Neches River, whence the oil could be shipped to his huge new refinery at Marcus Hook, Pa., for processing. He consolidated his oil-producing holdings in Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, and Texas in the new Sun Oil Company and was its president from 1901 until his death. His son, J. Howard Pew, joined the company in 1901, was president in 1912-47, and thereafter was a director. He developed a way of making lubricants out of asphaltic Texas oil. Under his leadership, Sun was the first (in 1927) to use pipes heated with mercury vapour rather than with fire to separate lubricants and the first (in 1937) to use Eugene Houdry's catalytic-cracking process, instead of thermal cracking, to make its gasoline. Joseph N. Pew, Jr., joined the company in 1908. He persuaded the company to lay gasoline pipelines from the Marcus Hook refinery to distribution points in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey. He then negotiated with 1,000 landholders in four states for permission to cross their property. In 1916 the brothers founded a shipbuilding company that produced oil tankers for Sun and its competitors. Sun's shipyard used welding instead of riveting to build ships, thereby saving substantially on the amount of steel required per ship. During World War II, Sun pioneered in developing and refining aviation fuels and lubricants. In 1942 the company also adapted the Houdry process to the production of synthetic rubber. In 1933-34 Joseph, Jr., went to Washington to fight the New Deal petroleum code, which he believed would lead to price-fixing. The experience was the beginning of his involvement with the Republican Party. Besides contributing large sums of money to the party, he purchased trade publications and magazines, like Farm Journal, to sway the public to his way of thinking. He also wielded considerable influence in shaping several Republican Party platforms. The Sun Oil Company became the Sun Company, Inc., in 1971.