April 2, 2022

CS Mott: A Giant in Automotive History Part 1

CS Mott was a giant in automotive history.

Author Ed Renahan discusses the remarkable life of Charles Stewart Mott. "The Life of Charles Stewart Mott" is a fascinating and comprehensive look at the life of one of the world's most successful capitalists.

Charles Stewart Mott (1875-1973) was an American businessman and philanthropist born in Flint, Michigan. He is best known for his involvement in the automobile industry and his philanthropic work.

Mott began his career as a clerk in his family's business, which manufactured carriage and automobile parts. He eventually took over the company and expanded it into a major parts supplier to the automotive industry. Mott was also involved in developing the Chevrolet Motor Company, founded by his friend and business partner, William C. Durant.

In addition to his business pursuits, Mott was a philanthropist and supported several charitable causes. He was particularly interested in education and helped to establish many schools and universities, including Flint College (now known as the University of Michigan-Flint) and Kettering University, which was named in honor of Charles Kettering, another automotive pioneer.

Mott was also active in local and national politics and served on several boards and committees throughout his career. He received numerous awards and honors for his business and philanthropic endeavors and was widely respected and admired for his contributions to society.

The Legacy of CS Mott: Rust Belt Revival

The automobile industry has significantly declined since the 1970s. As a result, blue-collar Flint, Michigan, suffered the effects of deindustrialization and disinvestment., The CS Mott Foundation plays a significant role in orchestrating the rust belt revival of Flint and other factory towns in Michigan. It is impossible to overstate the impact CS Mott and his Mott Foundation had on helping working-class Flint, Michigan, survive. It can also be said that the contributions of CS Mott to General Motors as an officer and investor helped General Motors thrive in automotive manufacturing.

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The book The Life of Charles Stewart Mott, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2019, is available at local bookstores in Flint, Michigan, and major book retailers.

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Ed Renahan's critically-acclaimed books published under his name include Deliberate Evil: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, and the 1830 Murder of a Salem Slave Trader (Chicago Review Press, 2022), Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (Basic Books, 2006), The Kennedys at War (Doubleday, 2001), The Lion's Pride (Oxford University Press, 1998), John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (Black Dome Press, 1992), and The Secret Six (Crown, 1994). He has appeared on P

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Transcript

WEBVTT

00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:07.120
Hello, this is Arthur Bush.

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You're listening to Radio Free Flint.

00:00:09.439 --> 00:00:14.080
My podcast guest today is author Edward Renaghan.

00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:14.560
Mr.

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Renahan has written the book for the life of Charles Stuart Mott, an industrialist and philanthropist.

00:00:20.879 --> 00:00:21.199
Mr.

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Mott also is known as Mr.

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Flint.

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Music that's brought to you today by Colin Ort, called the Flint River Blues.

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We'll also play it on the outro.

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Hope you enjoy our podcast, Charles Stuart Mott.

00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:47.439
Alright, this is Radio Free Flint, Arthur Bush, along with Ed Renahan, and this episode is epic.

00:00:47.679 --> 00:00:48.640
Welcome, Ed.

00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:49.439
Thank you.

00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.039
Happy to be here with you, Arthur.

00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.119
First of all, tell us your background as an author.

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I'm uh just a writer of nonfiction with a focus on history.

00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:08.319
I've done a number of books uh ranging from the Civil War era uh up until uh the 1960s.

00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:27.680
My background with respect to the Mott biography, my strongest background is that uh I've written some financial history, some financial biographies, most notably a uh Dark Genius of Wall Street, which is a biography of Robert Barron, a Gilded Age Robert Barron, industrialist Jay Gould.

00:01:28.079 --> 00:01:35.519
And I think that's uh the book that set me up best intellectually, uh vision-wise for the Mott biography.

00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:39.040
You're not Ed Renaghan biographer for hire.

00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:42.719
No, I mean I I do this professionally.

00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:46.079
It's, you know, on a royalty advanced basis.

00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:55.359
In this case, as I understand it from listening to a previous interview of yours, the Mott family actually commissioned this biography.

00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.480
Yeah, well, not the Mott family so much as the Ruth Mott Foundation.

00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:03.200
It was an interesting uh sort of dance.

00:02:03.359 --> 00:02:11.599
They came to me and asked if I'd be interested in writing a full biography of Charles Stuart Mott.

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I had uh several issues that needed to be resolved.

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First of all, although I, like everybody else, had heard of the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, I have to admit I didn't have a firm idea who Charles Stuart Mott was, and I had to do a little digging right there.

00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:33.120
But then I saw that it was a very remarkable life.

00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:40.319
The next question for me was what the what resources were available uh in the way of primary source material.

00:02:40.560 --> 00:03:05.759
It turned out that there was a wealth of primary source material, two key sources being private uh collection at Applewood, Charles Stuart Mott's old mansion, and then the collection in the library of the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, uh, which combined formed a real gold mine of original primary source material previously untapped.

00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:30.319
Now, that being said, I wanted to make sure on the front end before I agreed to the project that they weren't looking for some sort of uh whitewash hagiography because I wasn't interested in writing that, and uh I sort of have to defend my uh reputation as a biographer, uh, independent biographer.

00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:38.319
Marianne Mott, Charles Stewart's Mott's youngest daughter, assured me that was exactly what they wanted.

00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:44.319
They wanted an independent, no-holds barred, tell the whole story biography.

00:03:44.479 --> 00:03:46.719
They didn't want a hagiography.

00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:48.639
Now let me stop you right there.

00:03:48.879 --> 00:03:56.400
Why do you think there are so few books written about Mott in his life, given his enormous impact on America?

00:03:56.800 --> 00:04:16.000
He was sort of as great and dynamic as he was, uh, I think he was sort of overshadowed by his colleagues, by Arthur Sloan, by uh Pierre DuPont, uh Louis Chevrolet, David Buick, Durant.

00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:39.040
Um I think these more prominent names just sort of overtook and put Mott from a publicity point of view, let's say, in the shade a bit, although he was certainly wasn't in the shade in the story of General Motors, generally expanse and trajectory and breadth of his life.

00:04:39.279 --> 00:04:43.839
You know, this is a guy who you know he was 97 years old when he died.

00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:49.120
He was born ten years after the Lincoln assassination.

00:04:49.439 --> 00:04:52.480
His last car that he drove was a Corvair.

00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:56.560
He died two years before the founding of Microsoft.

00:04:56.959 --> 00:05:03.040
Breadth of his life, in many ways, encapsulates the second century of the United States.

00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:10.000
You're a fellow that's wrote some tremendous books about subjects that are fascinating to history nuts.

00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:12.000
But why write a book about C.

00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:12.240
S.

00:05:12.399 --> 00:05:14.160
Mott and not Michael Moore?

00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:20.240
You're a guy can write about anybody that he wants.

00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:21.439
Yeah, yeah.

00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:26.720
Well, I I I personally uh no offense to anybody living.

00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:27.680
Uh I find C.

00:05:27.759 --> 00:05:27.839
S.

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Mott a lot more interesting than I do Michael Moore.

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Both his great positives and his uh occasional conflicts, vicissitudes.

00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:48.959
Mott very much represents his time, his opinions, his points of view, and his reactions to uh contemporary events.

00:05:49.519 --> 00:06:00.399
One of the things you've wrote as a history book, it does not uh contextualize necessarily the other arguments that are floating around out there in contrast to his own points of view.

00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:05.519
You talk about Stuart Mott in terms of his accomplishments and so forth.

00:06:05.759 --> 00:06:09.040
I'd like to know who Stuart Mott was as a person.

00:06:09.600 --> 00:06:12.000
He seemed like a bit of a compulsive guy.

00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:19.040
He seemed obsessed with certain things like picking up pennies, lighting his house.

00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:25.759
I interviewed one of the uh autopioneers uh children, grandchildren, I guess.

00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:31.759
And that guy who actually knew Mott called him parsimonious, which I thought was quite a generous term.

00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:34.160
Can you comment on any of this?

00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:34.800
Yeah.

00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:41.199
Well, he had a great, he had a very interesting combination uh of traits.

00:06:41.759 --> 00:06:44.639
He uh was a real spendthrift.

00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:51.120
He didn't want to spend a dime more than he had to, but at the same time, he really enjoyed nice things.

00:06:51.279 --> 00:06:59.920
Uh and at the same time, he was, as as we know with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, extremely generous.

00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:17.519
But even with the foundation grant making, he wanted to make sure that when when he granted$100,000 to some project that the grantee got$100,000 worth of benefit, he was very scrupulous about financial controls.

00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:20.399
And uh there's a great story, actually.

00:07:20.639 --> 00:07:33.279
When he was in his last illness and in the hospital in Flint, he could see out his hospital window to Applewood.

00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:43.759
And he could see one night that the nannies the light was on in the nanny's room, what he knew to be the nanny's room, and he knew the nanny wasn't there at that time.

00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:48.160
So he called the house and had somebody go up and turn off the light.

00:07:50.079 --> 00:07:59.439
As kids, I mean, it was a standing joke about his thriftiness, because we witnessed him picking up pennies off the sidewalk in downtown Flint.

00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:00.000
Oh, yeah.

00:08:00.319 --> 00:08:01.680
You know, we would see this.

00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.279
He was sort of the common everyday guy's billionaire.

00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:12.160
He was, you know, sitting at the lunch counter at Kreske's after we got out of the YMCA after we'd been swimming all morning.

00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:24.480
I mean, and that became sort of a standing joke for us is that if somebody in our group was not being generous with their funds, we used to tell them they were being a tightwad, and that we associated with Mr.

00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:25.120
Watt.

00:08:26.079 --> 00:08:31.519
Obviously, later in life, we learned that he wasn't as much a tightwad as we first thought.

00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:32.559
Right.

00:08:32.879 --> 00:08:34.799
A guy told me a great story.

00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:49.600
Oh, uh, when I was in Flint after the book published and us doing signings and talking, a lot of people came up to me with stories, first person stories, about their experiences with Mr.

00:08:49.759 --> 00:08:51.279
Mott, as they called him.

00:08:51.600 --> 00:09:01.360
This one fellow who was on the staff, who was on the mayor's staff, forgetting his name, I'm so sorry, uh, came up to me and said, I've got a story for you.

00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:22.080
He said, When I was a young man in the uh late 1960s, I was uh going away to college for the first time for my freshman year, and I took my bicycle to the express office to see if I could get my bicycle shipped to my college so that I'd have it there.

00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:28.720
And he said I they measured it and you know all this, and then told me what it would cost to ship the bicycle.

00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:33.600
And I said, Well, I can't afford that, so I just won't won't ship it.

00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:38.720
And he said he turned around and uh Mott was behind him on the line.

00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:43.519
And Mott said to the guy behind the desk, he said, ship the kid's bike.

00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:47.360
What I learned from your book, he was a copious diary writer.

00:09:48.159 --> 00:09:54.240
There are excerpts from his diary that that apparently date back into the early 1900s.

00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:57.120
He wrote every day in his diary.

00:09:57.440 --> 00:10:00.879
He wrote with the assistance of a stenographer.

00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.360
I mean, he wanted to make sure all his words were right.

00:10:03.679 --> 00:10:04.559
Oh yeah, yeah.

00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:07.440
He would dictate, you know, today's diary.

00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:09.679
Now you looked at these diaries.

00:10:09.759 --> 00:10:13.759
I don't know anybody else who has, but I'd love to spend a month looking at them.

00:10:13.919 --> 00:10:15.519
I mean, have they scrubbed them?

00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:19.440
I mean, there was some as it related to very personal matters of this.

00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:21.039
I didn't find that.

00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:34.000
I the one area that I thought it seemed as if things had been culled a bit, was with regard to his very brief and very unhappy third marriage to D.

00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:34.639
Fury.

00:10:35.360 --> 00:10:38.000
So that would be what we call divorce diary.

00:10:38.639 --> 00:10:39.759
Yeah, yeah.

00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:45.279
Uh that whole period, uh, and it was only a year or so, they weren't married that long.

00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:50.960
That whole period, though, uh seemed rather light in the way of uh material.

00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:54.720
What do you think the purpose of him writing this diary was?

00:10:55.039 --> 00:10:59.600
Uh he wanted uh to he did it on a two-fold basis.

00:10:59.919 --> 00:11:06.399
He wanted to preserve a a record for himself of what he'd been doing and who he'd been seeing.

00:11:06.639 --> 00:11:24.720
He would post, he would have copies, carbon copies made of what he dictated, and he would send it to his family members, to his children, as they grew and moved away, so that it was his way of keeping them informed on the doings.

00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:31.840
Now he was a little more ahead of our time because, as I understand it, he was a bit of a health nut.

00:11:32.080 --> 00:11:33.360
Oh, very much so.

00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:34.480
Very much so.

00:11:34.639 --> 00:11:43.919
He was lean and mean throughout his life, avid uh tennis player, horseman, didn't drink, didn't smoke.

00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:47.440
Well, he smoked a pipe, but he didn't smoke cigarettes.

00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:50.000
We we don't know where he bought his tobacco, do we?

00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:58.720
Yeah, he bought it at that uh shop that's still there on the main dragon flint, just down the block from the Mott Foundation.

00:11:58.879 --> 00:12:01.279
They called that Paul Paul's pipe shop.

00:12:01.759 --> 00:12:02.799
Yeah, yeah.

00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:04.639
That's where he would go.

00:12:04.879 --> 00:12:15.679
And now one of the lures of Paul Spagnola, who was the original owner, I guess, of this was a world champion smoke pipe smoker, whatever that was.

00:12:16.879 --> 00:12:26.240
And periodically the journal would cover his extravaganzas around the world where he uh was in competitions quite sure.

00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:35.679
A guy told me that Mott used to walk down from his office at the Mott Foundation building and stop at the pipe shop and get his tobacco.

00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:43.120
Then he'd keep on going down to the Masonic Lodge and have lunch at that little cafe that they do in there.

00:12:43.519 --> 00:12:44.080
Was Mr.

00:12:44.159 --> 00:12:45.759
Mott a religious man?

00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:46.799
Yeah.

00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:59.120
I got the sense that his spirituality was sort of practical, um action-oriented Christianity, shall you shall we say?

00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:13.440
He would go with the family to uh the uh church there, the Episcopal Church, uh of a Sunday, and the kids got sent to Sunday school, and he was on the vestry and you know all that kind of stuff.

00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:25.600
Uh I got the sense that he thought it was more uh uh more efficient to uh take action to uh improve the world rather than um simply pray about it.

00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:26.960
He did attend St.

00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:28.879
Paul, so that's what you're saying, right?

00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:29.519
Yeah, yeah.

00:13:29.600 --> 00:13:31.679
No, he was even on the vestry there, yeah.

00:13:31.919 --> 00:13:34.720
Do you know how long he had been part of that?

00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:37.759
Oh, I think th throughout his time in Flint.

00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:43.679
That church had a pastor that I forget his first name, but it was Pengalley.

00:13:43.759 --> 00:13:48.879
And the reason I remember his last name is because that was a street I was raised on, Pengalley Road.

00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:54.960
Caught my attention because uh he was so socially conscious in the 20s and 30s.

00:13:55.039 --> 00:13:58.080
I think uh he was uh the pastor.

00:13:58.559 --> 00:14:01.360
As legend have it, there's a building downtown.

00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:03.120
I don't I think it's gone now.

00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:09.919
His building was called the Pengalley Building, and it played a significant role in the sit-down strikes.

00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:15.759
And the strikers uh held off held court inside of this building.

00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:19.360
That's where they rented space or whatever, he gave space to them.

00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:27.279
And that way they could avoid having to you know do battle with the National Guard and uh General Motors thugs that were trying to beat him up.

00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:27.759
Right.

00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:42.799
Um also of interest to me was that Pengali would give sermons about what I would call more socially conscious social responsibility that most of the people who went to that church were quite wealthy.

00:14:43.039 --> 00:14:45.120
Their obligations to the poor.

00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:46.320
Nobles oblige.

00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:58.080
He had communists and socialists and all manner of collection of uh you know individuals that had different philosophies than the capitalist one.

00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:05.679
Struck me as odd was that here he is with the pillars of society written out places to these ragtags as they saw them.

00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:14.879
And Pengaly left his uh his work at the church, I believe it was after the uh sit-down strikes.

00:15:15.840 --> 00:15:18.639
Do you know anything about him or why he left?

00:15:18.799 --> 00:15:25.440
The only reason I asked at it is he said he left to become a real estate developer to engage in quote unquote other activities.

00:15:26.879 --> 00:15:30.240
I I'm sorry I don't know anything about him.

00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:58.720
I do know that uh Mott, of course, along with uh Sloan and Kettering and uh all not just at GM, but all the prominent industrialists of the early 20th and late 19th century, had uh a real blind spot for uh the importance of unions and collective bargaining in general.

00:15:58.879 --> 00:16:21.600
You know, they really hated hated the concept, and as you know, through the sit-down strike, it was only through the sit-down strike that uh which was an epic moment in the hist labor history of the United States, that uh GM was uh finally dragged kicking and screaming to the uh negotiating table with the in your review of Mr.

00:16:21.759 --> 00:16:28.159
Mott's diaries, did you note any of his opinions or thoughts about the the sit-down strike?

00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:36.559
He disliked this as an area where he was totally out of step with opinion and with history.

00:16:36.799 --> 00:17:13.519
His view was, and and it was the view of Sloan and Pierre DuPont and all of them, that the unions eventually, essentially, would only have an inflationary impact, forcing higher wages, which would f force the industrialists to increase prices, which in turn would have forced the laborers to need more money, and he saw it as sort of a vicious cycle, and he didn't like the idea of capital in general being under the thumb, shall we say, in his view of labor.

00:17:13.759 --> 00:17:18.400
You know, he was a generous hombre, but he w you know it was sort of on his own terms.

00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:20.559
Well, let's come back to that in a few minutes.

00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:22.559
What did he have any hobbies?

00:17:22.799 --> 00:17:25.279
Like woodworking or you know, stuff like that?

00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:34.640
Well, uh, you know, as I mentioned, tennis and uh horsemanship, but also what he really liked to do was to tinker.

00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:40.400
I mean, he had a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute in Hoboken, New Jersey.

00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:46.640
He liked the hands-on, you know, how are we going to improve the Buick this year?

00:17:46.799 --> 00:17:48.400
What's the design going to be?

00:17:48.559 --> 00:18:09.119
On the day of uh Pearl Harbor, the way he heard about Pearl Harbor was he had just gotten a new catalog and he was in the garage at Applewood with the radio on, tinkering under the hood and reading the manual, you know, seeing how everything was put together when he heard about the the raid on Pearl Harbor.

00:18:09.279 --> 00:18:11.119
So, you know, that was a hobby.

00:18:11.279 --> 00:18:14.240
And he liked designing other things too.

00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:21.440
He had um all sorts of devices and approaches that he came up with to do things at Applewood.

00:18:21.599 --> 00:18:52.160
For example, the uh the tennis court at Applewood, which is no longer there, the tennis court was purposely designed to be to be positioned at a slight angle down to one corner of the tennis court so that when it rained, all the water would go down to this one end and would would go into uh storage for watering the farm, which used to be there, where uh is now the uh community college grounds.

00:18:52.319 --> 00:18:58.160
Throughout the United States, lots of say uh water companies had mott ownership.

00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:05.359
He eventually just about everything that had Mott family ownership became foundation ownership.

00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:18.160
Uh his interest in water seemed to have started way back in the days when he came to Flint and when he began to run for mayor, I think he talked about water as one of his issues.

00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:19.519
Yeah, yeah.

00:19:19.839 --> 00:19:36.799
Positioning the community for further growth in many ways, including making sure viable water resources were available, ironically, given recent history, being able to enable further building out of the community.

00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:45.440
As uh GM expanded in Flint, they needed more laborers, and the laborers needed places to live.

00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:49.920
And so there was built construction and there had to be water running, you know.

00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:52.720
And so the all of the infrastructure of Flint.

00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:53.599
And Mr.

00:19:53.759 --> 00:19:54.799
Mott owns the U.S.

00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:55.519
sugar company.

00:19:55.759 --> 00:19:59.279
Now, it it's the largest sugar company, I think, in the United States.

00:20:00.400 --> 00:20:01.519
If not the world.

00:20:01.839 --> 00:20:05.279
And it's also the largest polluter in Florida.

00:20:05.519 --> 00:20:11.839
And it's been a company that's been attributed to you know the killing off of the Everglades.

00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:20.240
And it's front, it's front and center because just today here in the Tampa Bay region, uh down in Sarasota, red tide showed up.

00:20:20.559 --> 00:20:23.759
A lot of people associate red tide with U.S.

00:20:23.920 --> 00:20:24.400
sugar.

00:20:24.559 --> 00:20:26.960
So be that with that preface.

00:20:27.200 --> 00:20:28.240
Tell me why Mr.

00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:28.799
Mott.

00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:30.319
Oh, the other thing that U.S.

00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:35.839
sugar did is cause people like me to go to the dentist a lot to get my teeth fixed.

00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:41.839
But be that as it mate, why is Mr.

00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:43.200
Mott interested in U.S.

00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:43.920
sugar?

00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:53.279
He was interested in he liked as long-term investments, he liked goods that were never going to go out of style.

00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:57.359
He knew sugar, everybody's always going to want sugar.

00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:02.319
Same with water, all these water company investments that he made.

00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:06.240
He liked those kinds of investments for the long term.

00:21:06.799 --> 00:21:10.880
Doubling back a bit to the pollution question with U.S.

00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:23.839
sugar, and you're quite right in everything you say there, bear in mind Mott himself was involved in personally involved in in the management and running of uh U.S.

00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:32.799
sugar and the ownership much before today's environmental sensibilities were in place, before people were thinking that way.

00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:40.000
You know, Mott died in 73, which I think was might have been the year or the year before the first ever Earth Day.

00:21:40.559 --> 00:21:43.839
Not the year maybe is the next one where we got the Clean Water Act passed.

00:21:44.319 --> 00:21:45.759
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:55.119
It was before uh a sensibility that of what in industry in general was doing to the environment.

00:21:55.440 --> 00:22:00.720
Subsequent years, since Mott's death, you're right, U.S.

00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:05.519
sugar has not kept up with what they should have been doing.

00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:10.400
I would say in Mott's day, he didn't have a sense that he was doing anything wrong.

00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:30.799
No, he had a son, Stuart Mott, who I call the hippie philanthropist, who actually uh was an environmentalist because he was a very uh big curiosity for those in my generation and Flint because the Mott seemed to be so secretive about their lives.

00:22:31.599 --> 00:22:44.960
This guy was we had a garden up on top of his, all I remember is his penthouse in New York City, and he's got this garden with like 130 different varieties of some kind of way out there plant.

00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:56.960
I'm sure it wasn't marijuana, but no, it wasn't he he was a guy that explored the environment and actually gave money to you know support causes in the day.

00:22:57.359 --> 00:23:08.960
I should add that uh subsequent, you know, the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation is today very active on environmental affairs, especially in the Great Lakes.

00:23:09.200 --> 00:23:13.119
And they've been active, you know, in dealing with the Flint water crisis, too.

00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:20.559
I guess you know, when we look at history and what you call our sensibilities today, but the I call it the lens in which we measure everything.

00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:27.200
Uh we look at issues like race, we look at issues like environment, issues of corporate responsibility.

00:23:27.440 --> 00:23:28.559
Looking back at Mr.

00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:29.119
Mott.

00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:40.720
You know, the Mott Camp for Boys outside of Flint was the first uh such camp in Michigan to be interracial, to not be segregated.

00:23:41.039 --> 00:23:51.039
Yeah, and there's a fabulous story about uh his assistant, uh Frank Manley, uh, who actually was helping to put together some of these things.

00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.799
And I think it was Mr.

00:23:52.960 --> 00:23:55.920
Manley who said, you know, these kids need dental care.

00:23:57.039 --> 00:24:01.119
There was a local dentist, I can't remember his name, maybe, maybe it was Mr.

00:24:01.279 --> 00:24:07.279
Turry, but they they uh Charles Mott explored that idea with with Mr.

00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:14.480
Manley, and they actually implemented it to provide as part of their camping experience a trip to the dentist.

00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:16.160
That's right, that's right.

00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:19.440
A couple of other things, uh you know, Mott and Race.

00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:24.400
Uh there have been hatchet jobs done on Mott with regard to race.

00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:30.960
In uh 1943, he was instrumental in the founding of the Urban League in Flint.

00:24:31.680 --> 00:24:41.599
In 1945, he funded the founding of the uh Flint Interracial Community Center.

00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:44.720
Yeah, I talked to a wonderful woman in Detroit.

00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:49.839
She's a prominent black poet, Naomi Magic.

00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:51.519
Naomi Magic.

00:24:52.160 --> 00:25:16.319
And uh as a young Detroit school teacher in the 1960s, uh Charles Stuart Mott gave her a grant with the intention that she would put together the very first high school English anthology of literature that would include black writers, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, County Cullen, Lorraine Hansbury.

00:25:16.559 --> 00:25:20.640
That was and he gave her a ten thousand dollar grant to pull that off.

00:25:20.880 --> 00:25:24.240
One other quick story about Mott and Race.

00:25:24.559 --> 00:25:26.640
I think it was 1961.

00:25:26.799 --> 00:25:38.559
There was a guy on death row in Louisiana, Angola Prison in Louisiana, and his name was uh oh Edgar Labat.

00:25:38.960 --> 00:26:04.480
And this guy had been on death row since 1950 for um uh a crime that was generally acknowledged among people who who were pro you know willing to acknowledge it, he hadn't committed the rape and murder of a a white woman, and for which he was convicted after a very short trial by an all-white jury in the American South.

00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:30.240
And he had by 1961 exhausted all of his possibilities for appeal, and as a last-ditch attempt to uh save his own life, he went and he wrote letters to every prominent American that he could think of, any well-known name, any powerful person, and one of these was uh Charles Stuart Mott.

00:26:30.720 --> 00:26:36.640
I found a remarkable letter from Mott to Thurgood Marshall.

00:26:37.119 --> 00:26:38.880
They were acquainted.

00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:47.119
They had been seated next to each other at a dinner a month or two before Mott got this letter from Edgar Labat.

00:26:47.279 --> 00:26:49.440
So they had a an acquaintance.

00:26:49.920 --> 00:27:01.440
This remarkable letter in which Mott says to uh, and uh Marshall was not yet on the Supreme Court, he was the chief counsel for the NAACP and their offices in New York.

00:27:01.839 --> 00:27:11.440
Uh Mott wrote to Marshall in closing Labat's letter, and uh I I'm paraphrasing here, it's in the book.

00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:18.160
He says, I know that the jail cells of the South are full of Edgar Labats.

00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:26.079
I hope and trust the NAACP is working uh to address not just this case uh but all of them.

00:27:26.319 --> 00:27:36.400
If there is something that I can do personally to help this man or any others, please let me know and I will.

00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:40.880
You know, and I think that says a lot about Mott and race.

00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:41.519
Mr.

00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:44.000
Mott had an interesting family life.

00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:51.920
He was a unique guy for his times because people didn't s didn't trade out wives very often, and uh he had four of them.

00:27:52.319 --> 00:27:57.759
Yeah, but uh one of the reasons he had four of them is is that he lived so long.

00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:00.319
A couple of them died on him, you know.

00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:09.920
His first wife, Ethel, he was married to her.

00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:11.839
It was a true love match.

00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:16.880
They were married for more than 20 years, and he was devoted to her.

00:28:17.039 --> 00:28:18.720
You know, she passed away.

00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:31.839
And then his second wife, uh Middy Butter Middy's Butterfield, the daughter of uh the Butterfield Theater Empressario, the Butterfield chain of theaters in Michigan.

00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:40.960
He was married to her for a couple of years, again a true love match, and she came down with a rare sickness that killed her.

00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:47.119
Then he had a very brief, unhappy marriage that I alluded to earlier, to D.

00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:55.839
Fury, which is the area in the papers, uh the primary source material that uh seems to have been called.

00:28:56.079 --> 00:29:02.000
Um, but uh evidently she's uh she's known in the family and around Flint as the gold digger.

00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:05.039
It didn't last too long, it lasted only a year.

00:29:05.359 --> 00:29:08.880
Was she the one that fell out of the window and died mysteriously?

00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:10.960
No, no, sadly that was Ethel.

00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:13.279
That was the first first wife.

00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:15.920
Um one that he was madly in love with.

00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:19.519
Yeah, well, he was married and loved madly in love with the second one, too.

00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:20.640
First wife.

00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:35.440
She it's unclear, really, whether she fell out of the window or if she put herself out of the window because she had been suffering from depression for quite some time.

00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:39.440
I'm fairly familiar with Applewood as a mansion.

00:29:39.599 --> 00:29:43.920
I had a uh an office there while I was researching and writing the book.

00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:46.000
I spent a lot of time in that house.

00:29:46.240 --> 00:29:51.759
Just from my observation, I don't know how you could fall out one of those windows.

00:29:52.079 --> 00:29:53.920
Was there a police investigation?

00:29:54.240 --> 00:30:00.160
Yeah, there was, but no one could tell really, you know, what was in someone's mind.

00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:02.400
And she died of internal injuries.

00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:09.920
She very well might not have died because, frankly, the the second-story windows at Applewood aren't that high up.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:11.599
It's not a skyscraper.

00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:15.440
So it's it's open for conjecture what happened there.

00:30:15.599 --> 00:30:20.240
But needless to say, whatever happened, Charles Stewart Mont was very broken up.

00:30:20.319 --> 00:30:26.079
Um, I know something else he'd be very broken up about if he knew that there was a lady murdered in the guest house.

00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:27.119
Oh, that's right.

00:30:27.519 --> 00:30:28.480
Margaret Eby.

00:30:29.039 --> 00:30:29.680
Yeah.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:30.559
Yeah.

00:30:31.279 --> 00:30:34.240
That's not a part of the tour at Applewood, you know.

00:30:35.119 --> 00:30:40.880
Well, it was part of my tour in uh in the prosecutor's office because uh I I knew Miss Ms.

00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:45.759
Eby for many years as a as a provost at the University of Michigan Flint.

00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:46.640
Right.

00:30:47.119 --> 00:30:47.279
Right.

00:30:47.519 --> 00:30:58.559
Uh and uh so when I got elected in 1992, I wanted to to try and go backwards because we all we all wanted that murder case solved.

00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:00.960
And I'm forgetting, did it get solved?

00:31:01.279 --> 00:31:03.599
It did get solved, yes, it did indeed.

00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:09.359
Many years later, but uh we did eventually solve it, but we never forgot about that that murder.

00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:17.920
But I always was uh I was always uh fascinated by this murder and and why nobody's taken it to a higher level of of film.

00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:20.640
Because it has all the elements.

00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:22.640
Uh murder at the mansion.

00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:24.400
This lady this lady.

00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:26.720
Maybe that's my next project.

00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:27.759
Maybe that's what I should do.

00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:28.559
There you go.

00:31:29.839 --> 00:31:34.880
But murder at the mansion involves this uh who had a very engaging social life.

00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:43.839
She lived in the guest house, some guy who was servicing the uh sprinkler system at the at the mansion there.

00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:47.359
He did have access to the place, and he may have had keys.

00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:56.319
So anyway, he murdered her along with uh an airline stewardess at the Romulus Hilton Hotel outside of Metro Airport in Detroit.

00:31:57.039 --> 00:32:04.640
And uh she was uh flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, and the murders were nearly similar similar.

00:32:05.119 --> 00:32:18.079
Uh but but nonetheless, uh uh through this whole saga, which took me I can't remember exactly how many years, but it strikes me it might have been a decade in and out investigation.

00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:19.599
I put a lot of resources into it.

00:32:19.759 --> 00:32:21.759
I never heard from anybody from the Moths.

00:32:21.839 --> 00:32:26.799
We did issue some search warrants, but they didn't I don't think they were for Applewood.

00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:37.839
But the police had been in there and investigated that scene, and I just happened to hire the detectives who had actually initially uh responded to the scene.

00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:42.160
I was just lucky but it but it was quite a story in it.

00:32:42.559 --> 00:32:55.359
So then after D Fury, Mott's next long-term marriage, the last one, uh, which was also a real love match with was with Ruth Rawling, and with whom he had uh three children.

00:32:55.519 --> 00:33:02.960
He'd had he'd had three children with Ethel, and he had three children with Ruth, one of whom still survives.

00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:07.200
Uh Mary uh Mary Ann Mott, the uh youngest child.

00:33:07.519 --> 00:33:09.519
Kind enough to write the introduction.

00:33:09.839 --> 00:33:12.559
Was she raised in uh in Applewood?

00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:14.880
No, she was raised in Applewood, yeah.

00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:16.559
Did she go away to school?

00:33:16.799 --> 00:33:18.880
Was she educated in the Flint schools?

00:33:19.279 --> 00:33:25.839
I believe I believe her early years she was in some of the Flint schools and then went away to schools.

00:33:26.240 --> 00:33:28.160
Still very involved in Flint.

00:33:28.400 --> 00:33:30.799
She's on the Mott Foundation Board.

00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:35.440
She's uh the chair of the Ruth Mott Foundation board.

00:33:35.599 --> 00:33:48.079
She lives in uh Southern California and on a ranch in Montana and has a small uh apartment in Flint because that's how often she's in Flint.

00:33:48.319 --> 00:33:49.759
She has a place there still.

00:33:50.079 --> 00:33:51.359
Somebody described Mr.

00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:58.640
Mott's family as really quite unique in that he had children that were almost a generation apart.

00:33:58.880 --> 00:33:59.279
Yes.

00:33:59.519 --> 00:34:06.079
Uh the character and uh and the quality of contact he had with these children was remarkably different.

00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:08.000
Uh can you comment on that at all?

00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:11.039
He had a good relationship with all of his children.

00:34:11.360 --> 00:34:23.199
He was evidently more involved, probably because he was a younger man at the time with the raising of the first three children.

00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:25.679
He was younger, more energetic.

00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:35.119
Uh the first three children were around the house more than the later three children who you know tended to go off to various schools.

00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:48.960
Also, with Ethel, his first wife, dealing with with mental health issues, it was incumbent on him to be more involved with his three children, the first magic three.

00:34:49.280 --> 00:35:10.400
The second group of three children that he had with Ruth had a great relationship with all of them and was was involved, but uh he was also by that time deeply immersed and incredibly busy with the the foundation and uh also Ruth was around full-time uh due to mothering.

00:35:10.639 --> 00:35:17.760
For logistical reasons, it seems like he was more hands-on with the first group of children.

00:35:18.320 --> 00:35:22.079
All six of them were always devoted to him, and vice versa.

00:35:22.400 --> 00:35:25.119
Uh can you tell us anything about Harding Mott?

00:35:25.519 --> 00:35:29.280
Lived a life of what seemed to me to be similar to his father's.

00:35:29.679 --> 00:35:31.039
Very similar to his father's.

00:35:31.199 --> 00:35:35.360
Charles Stuart Mott found uh stepped down from running the foundation.

00:35:35.519 --> 00:35:43.679
Of course, it was Harding Mott, who was already working in the foundation, who stepped up to run the foundation for several decades.

00:35:44.079 --> 00:36:00.159
Basically, you know, approached everything with the same methodical manner of thinking as his father did, but also with the same generosity and the same uh philosophy uh beneficence as the father.

00:36:00.400 --> 00:36:06.880
And he in, you know, in turn passed this on to his son-in-law, to Bill White.

00:36:07.280 --> 00:36:10.079
Bill now has passed it on to Ridgway.

00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:16.400
You know, there's never been there have been four heads of the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, and they've all been family.

00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:27.519
Stuart Mott, which I keep coming back to, it's been reported in national newspapers such as the New York Times that he had a bit of a stormy relationship with uh C.S.

00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:28.239
Mott.

00:36:28.719 --> 00:36:31.199
Were you able to learn anything more about that?

00:36:31.599 --> 00:36:36.320
It wasn't so much stormy as respectful disagreements.

00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:53.840
Um uh they got along fine, and they I think they were both too efficient and sensible to waste time debating over the dining room table about uh birth control or whatever it might have been.

00:36:54.159 --> 00:37:06.239
Just for clarification, Stuart Mott was uh was one of the founders of uh Planned Parenthood and actually went around the country supporting that cause and donating money, as I understand.

00:37:06.559 --> 00:37:07.440
Exactly, yeah.

00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:11.280
You know, and of course, Stuart founded his own foundation.

00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:13.519
There's a Stuart Mott Foundation.

00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:15.840
There's a story behind that, too.

00:37:15.920 --> 00:37:18.719
Do you can you recount that for the audience?

00:37:19.039 --> 00:37:21.519
Uh I'm not sure what you're referring to.

00:37:21.840 --> 00:37:38.400
Well, it was reported in again, I think it's a New York Times who did a profile and an obituary on Stuart, uh Stuart Mott, that said that his charitable trust fund that he created uh was a part because his dad wouldn't support some of his causes.

00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:46.159
Oh, yeah, no, that's that's true because uh of differences of opinion on what was a priority and what wasn't.

00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:48.559
But that's true, that's why he started it.

00:37:48.719 --> 00:37:54.559
But he's you know, he started it with money that came from uh the old man.

00:37:54.800 --> 00:38:01.679
Each of Charles Stuart Mott's children when they came of age were given, they each got a$30 million trust fund.

00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:03.199
That's real money.

00:38:03.440 --> 00:38:05.360
Yeah, yeah, even today.

00:38:06.159 --> 00:38:08.960
You know, they were free to do what they liked.

00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:17.840
Matter of fact, they all, the only one who hasn't started her own unique foundation is Mary Ann.

00:38:18.079 --> 00:38:22.719
But she's so up to her neck in the Ruth Mott Foundation.

00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:28.639
She's she's done other uh charitable things with her own money, but she hasn't launched a foundation.

00:38:28.719 --> 00:38:33.840
But all the others have, you know, started their own foundations, doing this, that, and the other thing.

00:38:34.400 --> 00:38:35.760
Thank you for joining us.

00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:45.599
This is the conclusion of episode number one, part one, with Edward Renahan, the author of the story of the life of Charles Stuart Mott, Mr.

00:38:45.679 --> 00:38:46.159
Flint.

00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:51.039
Music that you're listening to is by Colton Ort.

00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:52.719
Mr.

00:38:52.880 --> 00:38:57.920
Ort uh provided this music uh for us to use a radio-free Flint.

00:38:58.719 --> 00:39:00.639
The song is the Flint River Blues.

00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:02.239
Thanks again for joining us.

00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:04.159
See you next week for part two.

00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:10.400
The water was bad.

00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:14.800