The year was 1879. E. Irvin and Clarence Scott arrived in Philadelphia from Saratoga County, New York, and together they opened a company that produced a product that was only spoken of in whispers. Imagine the scene: a small East Coast dry goods store ... a polite gentleman walks in ... he eyes the shelf with a certain product ... walks around a bit, picks up a box of soap, just for appearances, and finally grabs a product in a plain brown wrapper. The product? Toilet paper.

The Scott brothers' company was one of the early producers of the product. In earlier times, people used corn cobs or old newspapers in their privies. Since they were selling an unmentionable product, the Scott Paper Company saw no need to shout about it. Instead, they sold the toilet paper to merchants who would sell it either with no brand label or with a label of their own. It took a pair of eyes from mother generation to change this view.

It was Irvin's son Arthur Hoyt Scott who urged the older Scotts to advertise their products. They began labeling their toilet paper "Waldorf Tissue," which was advertised as "soft as old linen." By 1907, the ScotTissue company was well known. In that year, a shipment of long tubes of tissue, which were cut down to size at the factory, was deemed defective. It was too tough, not at all like tissue. The company was; stuck with a railroad car full of paper it couldn't sell. Again, Arthur had an idea. Why not cut the paper into towel-sized sheets and sell it as "paper towels."

The product was offered to the public as SaniTowels. At first, they mostly were sold for use in public buildings, but as the price dropped, people were able to buy them to use in their homes. In 1931, the company changed the name of the product from SaniTowels to ScotTowels.