May 31, 2022
"Mr Flint" Charles Stewart Mott an American Capitalist Pt II
The Life of Mr. Flint, Charles Stewart Mott. 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 establish several 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.
This is Part Two of an interview with C.S. Mott biographer Ed Renehan who shares remarkable stories from The life of "Mr. Flint" Charles Stewart Mott. Renehan's book "The Life of Charles Stewart Mott" is a comprehensive look at the life of one of the world's most successful American capitalists. The interview covers Mr. Mott's career, family life, travels, hobbies, devotion to the Flint community, and philanthropy.
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Ed Renehan's critically-acclaimed books published under his name include:
- Deliberate Evil: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster,
- 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).
- The Life of Charles Stewart Mott (University of Michigan Press, 2019)
- John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (Black Dome Press, 1992)
- The Secret Six (Crown, 1994).
- Ed Rehehan has appeared on PBS's The American Experience, NPR, and C-Span's BookTV and has written for publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The San Francisco Chronicle.
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Books About Charles Stewart Mott:
- The Life of Charles Stewart Mott, published by University of Michigan Press, 2019, is available at local
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Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hello, this is Arthur Bush.
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You're listening to Radio Free Flint.
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My podcast guest today is author Edward Renahan.
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Mr.
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Renahan has written the book for the life of Charles Stuart Mott, an industrialist and philanthropist.
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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.
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It's called the Flint River Blues.
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We'll also play it on the outro.
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Hope you enjoyed part two of our podcast, Charles Stuart Mott.
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So if I look at Mr.
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Mott's life, to make things simple, which was a very complicated and long life, there were various inflection points in his life.
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One period of time was his establishing his business in Flint and then selling it, moving to Flint and then selling it, roughly between 1905 and 1912.
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And then he was something we haven't talked about, and I'd like to spend a little bit of time with you on this.
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There was his ventures into politics, which roughly elective politics, uh was roughly between 1912 and 1930.
00:01:08.879 --> 00:01:19.599
We actually add another 10 years to 40 because he he served uh uh uh in Republican uh party activities as an officer of some kind.
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Uh and then there's the establishing of the foundation.
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Another major thing in his life was the Union Industrial Bank.
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So if we can a little bit, if we've got a half an hour, we we could maybe go over a couple of these because I think they're they're things that we don't know about Charles Mott in the in the main.
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So let's start with Willie Durant and his relationship with Willie Durant.
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That Mr.
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Mott wasn't always so sure about Willie uh William Durant.
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No, yeah, neither were Sloan or or uh DuPont.
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They all have their misgivings about uh Billy Durant had was a great visionary, you know, and of course founded General Motors, but uh he had a habit of his practical acumen didn't quite match his uh grand vision and and ambition.
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While General Motors looked uh a great success from the outside, and there was lots of lots of activities, uh activity, the back office was a mess.
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Uh the company was at w at one point during Billy Durant's tenure very highly leveraged.
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He played fast and loose with capitalizations.
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This is why he incorporated the firm in Delaware because there was very lax regulation as far as uh capitalization and manner of uh collateralization of purchases.
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And so he was able to uh you know create a sort of hall of mirrors sometimes with companies uh that had little little or no capital capitalization being capitalized by investments from other companies that also had little or no real capitalization, eventually became quite a problem.
00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:14.560
That's why Pierre DuPont had to come in, sort of save things.
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Uh so there was generally among the hierarchy of General Motors through the years, uh uh skepticism of Billy Durant.
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He he was really good at talking a lot of people out of money in Flint.
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Yeah, oh yeah, totally, totally.
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And and a good number of them got very rich as a result.
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Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
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But it was because they came in, it was because of Mott and Sloan and Mott sort of cracking the financial whip that a lot of people made.
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Especially Mott.
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You know, Mott was in in his day, uh before he gave the bulk of his fortune to the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, was the single, he didn't have a controlling interest, obviously, but he was the single largest holder of General Motors stock among not just any individual but any other entity.
00:04:05.759 --> 00:04:10.560
You know, there weren't there were mutual funds who own less General Motors than Mott.
00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:11.360
But Mr.
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Mott's involvement with the corporation also extended to a lengthy service on its board of directors.
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Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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Many, many, many decades.
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Hell, he he attended his last annual meeting just a month or two before he died.
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In what sense can we hold Mr.
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Mott responsible for the legacy of General Motors Corporation and such things as uh environmental issues and so on?
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But to what degree was he involved in the in the actual operation of the company?
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In other words, nobody expects, at least during his period of time, that he would have been aware of some of the environmental degradation that was going on as a consequence of the operation of this company.
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But to what extent was he and any was he ever empowered to to the degree that we would look back and say, you know, he ought to have known better than to do that?
00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:14.879
He wouldn't have been in the area of the company where anyone, if anyone was, uh looking at impacts, environmental impacts.
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Uh once again, it was just uh a period before that became something that most people were thinking about.
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His key uh contributions to General Motors were he's in addition to being on the board for decades, he served for a very long time as the senior vice president in charge of various uh aspects of the firm.
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And his chief interest was in manufacturing and design.
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That was really what he really and he would uh collaborate with Kettering quite a bit on that.
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He wasn't involved to to the extent in day-to-day management of the operation, is what you're trying to say.
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No, he was involved in the management of the of uh design and also uh the management of production processes in the plan.
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You know, how can we do this part of the task better?
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Uh Flint was epicenter for civil rights and housing uh in the six in the sixties.
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There has good reason.
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And and I was aware previously of Flint's history, especially in the Civic Park neighborhood where JM put up a bunch of houses, and it spoke about in the uh book Principles of Living.
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But those houses uh, as many in Flint contained what we call restrictive covenants in law, which basically forbade the uh owners of people taking possession of these houses from transferring possession to people of color.
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Absolutely.
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And then there was the the open housing issues that emerged in the early 60s, uh the election of I mean the selection of uh Floyd McCree as the first black mayor.
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So my question to you is simple.
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What were Mott's thoughts about these issues?
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I mean, he he was he was ahead of you was the director of a company that actually sold houses and said he couldn't transfer them to black people.
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Did did you find anything that that talked to the those subjects?
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I found nothing that indicated that Mott, well, first of all, he wasn't directly involved with that aspect of things, that that financing company that did the housing.
00:07:28.079 --> 00:07:40.639
But that being said, I found nothing, I found nothing that indicated that Mott raised any concerns or criticism with regard to redlining.
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It just wasn't there.
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Talking about 1915, 1920, you know.
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There were a hell of a lot of houses built in Flint during his life.
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Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Um part, from what I understand from your work and others, others, that he really promoted the building of more houses because he had all these people living in the shadows of Buick in tar paper shacks.
00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:14.240
He had to Oh yeah, no, no, he aggressively pursued that, you know, and was ambitious in that area.
00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:21.759
Unfortunately, I can't say that he raised a uh a red flag over uh redlining.
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He didn't, you know, he just let it let it go.
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Now Flint had a public referendum during his life that that dealt with the issue of of redlining and uh open housing.
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Were you able to find anything in his diaries about that?
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No, I couldn't find anything at all.
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No comment, yay or nay.
00:08:41.919 --> 00:08:43.759
So let's go back here for a second.
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He ventured into politics in 1912, remained involved until, as we said earlier, 1940.
00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:55.519
His first interest in politics came after the socialists were elected.
00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:59.679
I think they elected three city councilmen and mayor Thomas Menton.
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That seemed to catch uh Mr.
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Mott's attention.
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Yeah, and and the attention of other uh uh powerful industrialists, uh other GM people.
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Because the town was rapidly becoming a a General Motors town.
00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:19.679
And the f the feeling, there's no better way to express this.
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The feeling among Mott and his clique was that having a socialist mayor and and socialist domination, largely of politics in the city, just wasn't a good look.
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Nothing more than that.
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It's also not very good business.
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Right, yeah, yeah.
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So they wanted a change, and that's why Mott was recruited and agreed to run.
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The socialists in that time, Mr.
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Menton and his comrades, as they probably called one another, they ran on issues essentially about wages, hours, and working conditions and a few things thrown in, like they wanted to be able to take a bath, and uh they didn't want to walk through puddles to get to work because it was a lot of flooding.
00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:03.759
Right.
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And these kinds of issues that went to the quality of life of the city.
00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:15.440
But the first thing that they ran on was that their work hours were bad, people weren't getting being paid right, you know, they had child labor, you know.
00:10:15.919 --> 00:10:18.320
You know, there were a panoply of allegations.
00:10:18.399 --> 00:10:21.360
I don't know if any of them were true, but uh it seemed like they were.
00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:23.279
Some of them a good number of them were.
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:27.519
Isn't that really I mean it you research this guy pretty carefully?
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I mean, you have to you have to put yourself in his spot.
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He just bought this company essentially.
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I mean, he's put all his money into it.
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Right, right.
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In 1912.
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He cashed in and and got he sold his company to GM.
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Yeah.
00:10:41.679 --> 00:10:46.639
But wouldn't he have been wouldn't that have been animating to him that oh yeah, totally.
00:10:46.799 --> 00:11:05.440
Well, you know, like it's it's twofold because he as I talked about before, his blind spot with uh labor rights and and all that, you know, he you know, he didn't like the idea of uh labor dictating anything uh to capital.
00:11:05.759 --> 00:11:09.679
Um so that was definitely a part of you know why he ran.
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Plus, however, he didn't think that the infrastructure problems could be addressed adequately by the uh current administration because he wanted the puddles off the streets too, and he wanted the sewers running, and he wanted all of this infrastructure stuff to happen, and it largely did under his mayorship.
00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:35.519
But you're right.
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I mean, he it was the labor aspect of it was he wanted to shut it down, workers' rights aspect of the socialist agenda.
00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:46.159
You're completely right.
00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:47.919
Essentially, what Mr.
00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:57.759
Mott he was an expert politician, he wasn't he may not have ever run before, but he had natural ability and skill, and he he was strategic.
00:11:58.080 --> 00:12:08.000
Can you tell us how it came to be in the intricacy, if you will, if you know, uh what made him successful in running in Lou Pollard town with largest shareholders?
00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:24.159
Well, he was very once again, this duality, he was very popular with men on the floor of the plants, just as an entity, as a person.
00:12:24.399 --> 00:12:40.480
And he did have a good way, he he didn't have a lot of bluster, he had a lot of very concrete promises and plans, and he here's what I'll do, and here's how I'm gonna do it.
00:12:40.720 --> 00:13:05.120
Whereas bear in mind there was a sentiment, as much as there was a sentiment for unionization on the plant floor, there was also those who didn't have a sentiment for unization, uh, who viewed themselves as uh company men and who viewed sort of accepted the paternalism of General Motors.
00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:21.039
You know, they're building me a house, they're giving me this, that, and the other thing, they've set up a stock option uh contribution plan for me, and there were people who were okay with the status quo and people who weren't.
00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:26.720
So it wasn't like there was a united front of labor gonna go vote for the socialists.
00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:47.200
What I found was really quite remarkable about his his frolic into politics was the fact that he was able to convince both Democrats and Republican parties at the time to not not oppose his candidacy, and he created a third party which was called the Independent Party.
00:13:48.000 --> 00:14:01.679
Looking back at history, and especially the history of Flint, the last guy in modern history who tried that trick called himself the American Independent Party and actually won Genesee County, and that was George Wallace in 1968.
00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:12.639
He he actually coalesced any real opposition to his candidacy at the beginning of the race by convincing the Democrats and Republicans to drive behind him.
00:14:13.039 --> 00:14:13.919
Yeah, yeah.
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And the one thing that those two parties could agree on was that they didn't dig the socialists.
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He got his program going, and and I think he even passed a millage at the time to implement some of his capital spending oper, you know, I think for roads or water or something.
00:14:32.639 --> 00:14:35.360
And then, you know, he's got this thing going.
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He decides he's gonna serve again.
00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:38.320
Right.
00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:48.000
Essentially, what happened was the people of Flint decided what was good for General Motors might not be good for them.
00:14:48.159 --> 00:14:50.799
Uh, he was defeated in 1915.
00:14:51.039 --> 00:14:51.279
Right.
00:14:51.440 --> 00:14:54.000
Uh what but I walked away from that.
00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:56.639
I mean, that's not all that unusual, the lucid election.
00:14:56.799 --> 00:15:01.519
But what is unusual is to hear, I mean, I never saw this side to Mr.
00:15:01.679 --> 00:15:06.480
Mott, and it probably was the biggest insight we have of him that I can see.
00:15:06.559 --> 00:15:07.759
I didn't read his diary.
00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:14.639
He seemed genuinely hurt by the fact that he was defeated and rejected by the citizens at the time.
00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:22.480
Yeah, uh, because he felt, you know, he he had great confidence in himself, very high esteem for himself.
00:15:22.799 --> 00:15:29.519
He felt that he had been doing the town a big favor by serving as mayor.
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He thought they were lucky to have him.
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And when he got repudiated in the polls, he felt like, you know, it's almost like, well, that's the thanks I get for uh annoying myself with this civic duty, uh, you know, trying to be of cer public service.
00:15:49.679 --> 00:15:51.840
Well, you know, good luck to them.
00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:55.519
So you're right, wasn't the best look for him by any means.
00:15:55.840 --> 00:16:01.200
In a a previous interview that you gave, at one point you were asked about Mr.
00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:06.000
Mott running for governor, and I think at that time you said he didn't run for governor of Michigan.
00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:10.720
I learned and discovered was he in fact did run in the primary.
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:12.399
He did run in the primary.
00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:18.000
So he ran in 1924 in the Michigan Republican primary to become governor.
00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:19.759
Do you know why he wanted to be governor?
00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:21.679
There's very little I found that explained him.
00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:36.720
What I got came away with from what I read in the papers was he had kind of been recruited to run for governor to throw his hat into the primary and did so rather half-heartedly.
00:16:36.879 --> 00:16:40.480
You know, he kind of felt pressured to do it.
00:16:40.799 --> 00:16:44.320
Then lost the primary almost with a sense of relief.
00:16:44.639 --> 00:16:44.799
Mr.
00:16:45.039 --> 00:16:46.399
Mott was a winner at business.
00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:47.759
There's no question about that.
00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:54.720
His ambitions in business may have been satisfied, but his political ambitions didn't seem to ever be satisfied.
00:16:54.879 --> 00:16:59.840
He never had the same uh success at politics as he did in business.
00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:01.200
Is that a fair statement?
00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:11.359
Yes, but I think it's also a fair statement to say he really didn't have any grand long-term ambitions in politics.
00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:15.680
I don't think he saw himself as being president of the United States or anything like that.
00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:22.319
There was some talk by Mott that he wanted to be a United States Congressman in the House of Representatives.
00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:24.799
Yeah, he kicked around that idea.
00:17:24.880 --> 00:17:29.279
Uh he kicked around a lot of ideas, you know, for the time to time.
00:17:29.599 --> 00:17:39.920
Really, from 1926 on, his chief interest, the one key thing that he was really into was that foundation.
00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:42.160
He set that foundation up.
00:17:42.400 --> 00:17:56.000
So when we look at people that are setting up foundations uh with this kind of wealth, we say, well, you know, they're they're stacking the the laws for the rich, so they don't have to pay taxes, or there's some other kind of angle.
00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:05.039
Was there any kind of angle that motivated him to set up the Mock Foundation or any of the others that he set up like the Ruth Mock Foundation?
00:18:05.359 --> 00:18:05.839
Right.
00:18:06.079 --> 00:18:12.400
I suppose, you know, as with that any charitable endeavor, there is a some sort of tax benefit.
00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:16.640
He was really focused on uh uh charitable giving.
00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:48.000
I believe he started it off with a uh gift of about a hundred thousand dollars or something, and then made incremental donations every year thereafter until the early 1960s when uh at the request of Harding, he decided to uh all things being equal to give the bulk of of his fortune to foundation of one fell swoop um and really set fuse for all that happened later.
00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:55.039
He himself personally went to the office and ran that foundation every day.
00:18:55.359 --> 00:18:58.400
How much money do you figure he gave away in his lifetime?
00:18:58.720 --> 00:19:00.000
More than 200 million.
00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:06.319
Of course, that was an invested, the uh income of the investment is what funded everything.
00:19:06.559 --> 00:19:22.640
In 2016, when they were uh celebrating their 90th anniversary, the Mott Foundation reported that they had in the in that 90-year period made grants in excess of three billion dollars with a B.
00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:27.200
We're still sitting on a corpus in excess of three billion dollars.
00:19:27.519 --> 00:19:37.359
The Sega of the Union Industrial Bank kind of looms over Charles Mott, considered by historians to be the largest bank failure in the Great Depression.
00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:37.839
Mr.
00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:41.599
Mott had a lot of interest in the Union Industrial Bank.
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:42.160
Yeah.
00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:45.920
Of course, there was fraud involved there, uh as you probably know.
00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:46.480
Mr.
00:19:46.720 --> 00:19:54.799
Mott was one of the incorporators of either the union or the industrial bank because those two had merged themselves at some point.
00:19:55.039 --> 00:19:55.440
Right.
00:19:55.680 --> 00:19:57.759
Do you know why he started a bank?
00:19:58.000 --> 00:19:59.759
I think he just thought it would be.
00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:01.119
A good investment.
00:20:01.279 --> 00:20:07.279
And maybe, you know, thought the town needed another bank or something, but I think it was just an investment for him.
00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:13.440
The best I can uh determine, there were four banks in the plan at the time that he got into the bank business.
00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:17.200
And I don't know if he was the principal or you know what that was.
00:20:17.359 --> 00:20:18.880
Do you know what his role was?
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:20.559
I mean he was on the board.
00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:22.000
He didn't run the bank.
00:20:22.079 --> 00:20:24.400
You know, he wasn't the president of the bank or anything.
00:20:24.559 --> 00:20:25.920
And he was an investor.
00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:34.240
I know that when the bank went into uh the financial difficulties, he spent a lot of his own money reimbursing.
00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:47.839
Uh the Mock Foundation Building was initially was initially named the Union Industrial Bank Building as it was being constructed in, I assume, after it was finished, and then eventually the name was changed.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:49.359
Do you know anything about that?
00:20:49.839 --> 00:20:56.000
I gather that the foundation purchased the building from the remains of the bank.
00:20:56.240 --> 00:21:08.880
Perhaps the foundation had in vet maybe the foundation had investments in the bank and made good on the uh uh after after the troubles on you know clawing back the building or something.
00:21:09.359 --> 00:21:25.759
The story with the Union Industrial Bank was that there were a number of individuals who were associated with the bank, some high-ranking uh high-ranking employees in the bank, uh vice president and so forth, that have engaged in stock speculation with the depositors' money.
00:21:26.079 --> 00:21:26.880
That's right.
00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:27.519
Mm-hmm.
00:21:27.759 --> 00:21:30.960
And then and then the depression came.
00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:35.279
Yeah, well, this and then that before that came was the stock market crash.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:35.839
Exactly.
00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:43.200
They had a bunch of margin accounts in New York City that had to be paid money because they were losing.
00:21:43.599 --> 00:21:43.839
Right.
00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:46.960
Gambling with other people's money is what it turns out.
00:21:47.279 --> 00:21:47.759
Exactly.
00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:48.799
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:49.599
Mr.
00:21:49.839 --> 00:21:55.279
Mott then eventually learned, sadly, I'm sure it wasn't a good day for him.
00:21:55.519 --> 00:22:10.720
His uh associates at this bank, or many of them were well-known names in Genesee County, had had used about three and a half million dollars, they figured, to uh they they had incurred a loss, basically embezzled three and a half million dollars from the bank.
00:22:10.880 --> 00:22:13.039
Now here's my question.
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:14.799
We got a little out of my sequence.
00:22:15.039 --> 00:22:15.279
Mr.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:23.359
Mott did get to the bottom line pretty quickly and conducted a meeting as I'm as I read uh in one of the books.
00:22:23.759 --> 00:22:29.119
It adjourned at five o'clock in the morning to be five o'clock in the morning is a long time to meet.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:32.880
But I guess when you're talking about that money, it's a lot.
00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:33.839
But in Mr.
00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:39.599
Mott's situation, once he learns about this, uh tell us what action he took.
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:45.759
Well, basically, you know, he dug into his own pocket and filled the hole.
00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:48.079
He did that pretty quickly, right?
00:22:48.319 --> 00:22:50.480
Yeah, well uh immediately.
00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:51.519
Immediately.
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