"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).

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Transcript

State of MI Archivist 0:00

Hello, this is Arthur Bush. You're listening to Radio Free Flint. My podcast guest today is author Edward Renahan. Mr. Renahan has written the book for the life of Charles Stuart Mott, an industrialist and philanthropist. Mr. Mott also is known as Mr. Flint. Music that's brought to you today by Colin Ort. It's called the Flint River Blues. We'll also play it on the outro. Hope you enjoyed part two of our podcast, Charles Stuart Mott. So if I look at Mr. Mott's life, to make things simple, which was a very complicated and long life, there were various inflection points in his life. 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. 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. There was his ventures into politics, which roughly elective politics, uh was roughly between 1912 and 1930. 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. Uh and then there's the establishing of the foundation. Another major thing in his life was the Union Industrial Bank. 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. So let's start with Willie Durant and his relationship with Willie Durant. That Mr. Mott wasn't always so sure about Willie uh William Durant.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

No, yeah, neither were Sloan or or uh DuPont. 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. 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. Uh the company was at w at one point during Billy Durant's tenure very highly leveraged. He played fast and loose with capitalizations. 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. 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. That's why Pierre DuPont had to come in, sort of save things. Uh so there was generally among the hierarchy of General Motors through the years, uh uh skepticism of Billy Durant.

State of MI Archivist 3:23

He he was really good at talking a lot of people out of money in Flint.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah, oh yeah, totally, totally.

State of MI Archivist 3:29

And and a good number of them got very rich as a result.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Oh yeah, yeah, totally. 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. Especially Mott. 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. You know, there weren't there were mutual funds who own less General Motors than Mott.

State of MI Archivist 4:10

But Mr. Mott's involvement with the corporation also extended to a lengthy service on its board of directors.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Oh yeah. Yeah. Many, many, many decades. Hell, he he attended his last annual meeting just a month or two before he died.

State of MI Archivist 4:27

In what sense can we hold Mr. Mott responsible for the legacy of General Motors Corporation and such things as uh environmental issues and so on? But to what degree was he involved in the in the actual operation of the company? 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. 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?

SPEAKER_02 5:04

He wouldn't have been in the area of the company where anyone, if anyone was, uh looking at impacts, environmental impacts. Uh once again, it was just uh a period before that became something that most people were thinking about. 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. And his chief interest was in manufacturing and design. That was really what he really and he would uh collaborate with Kettering quite a bit on that.

State of MI Archivist 5:50

He wasn't involved to to the extent in day-to-day management of the operation, is what you're trying to say.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

No, he was involved in the management of the of uh design and also uh the management of production processes in the plan. You know, how can we do this part of the task better?

State of MI Archivist 6:11

Uh Flint was epicenter for civil rights and housing uh in the six in the sixties. There has good reason. 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. 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.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Absolutely.

State of MI Archivist 6:48

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. So my question to you is simple. What were Mott's thoughts about these issues? 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. Did did you find anything that that talked to the those subjects?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

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. But that being said, I found nothing, I found nothing that indicated that Mott raised any concerns or criticism with regard to redlining. It just wasn't there. Talking about 1915, 1920, you know.

State of MI Archivist 7:46

There were a hell of a lot of houses built in Flint during his life.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

State of MI Archivist 7:52

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.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

He had to Oh yeah, no, no, he aggressively pursued that, you know, and was ambitious in that area. Unfortunately, I can't say that he raised a uh a red flag over uh redlining. He didn't, you know, he just let it let it go.

State of MI Archivist 8:25

Now Flint had a public referendum during his life that that dealt with the issue of of redlining and uh open housing. Were you able to find anything in his diaries about that?

SPEAKER_02 8:37

No, I couldn't find anything at all. No comment, yay or nay.

State of MI Archivist 8:41

So let's go back here for a second. He ventured into politics in 1912, remained involved until, as we said earlier, 1940. His first interest in politics came after the socialists were elected. I think they elected three city councilmen and mayor Thomas Menton. That seemed to catch uh Mr. Mott's attention.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, and and the attention of other uh uh powerful industrialists, uh other GM people. Because the town was rapidly becoming a a General Motors town. And the f the feeling, there's no better way to express this. 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. Nothing more than that.

State of MI Archivist 9:33

It's also not very good business.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Right, yeah, yeah. So they wanted a change, and that's why Mott was recruited and agreed to run.

State of MI Archivist 9:43

The socialists in that time, Mr. 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. Right. And these kinds of issues that went to the quality of life of the city. 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. You know, there were a panoply of allegations. I don't know if any of them were true, but uh it seemed like they were. Some of them a good number of them were. Isn't that really I mean it you research this guy pretty carefully? I mean, you have to you have to put yourself in his spot. He just bought this company essentially. I mean, he's put all his money into it. Right, right. In 1912. He cashed in and and got he sold his company to GM.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Yeah.

State of MI Archivist 10:41

But wouldn't he have been wouldn't that have been animating to him that oh yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

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. Um so that was definitely a part of you know why he ran. 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. But you're right. I mean, he it was the labor aspect of it was he wanted to shut it down, workers' rights aspect of the socialist agenda. You're completely right.

State of MI Archivist 11:46

Essentially, what Mr. 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. 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?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

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. 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. 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. 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. So it wasn't like there was a united front of labor gonna go vote for the socialists.

State of MI Archivist 13:27

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. 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. 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.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah, yeah. And the one thing that those two parties could agree on was that they didn't dig the socialists.

State of MI Archivist 15:15

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. And then, you know, he's got this thing going. He decides he's gonna serve again. Right. Essentially, what happened was the people of Flint decided what was good for General Motors might not be good for them. Uh, he was defeated in 1915. Right. Uh what but I walked away from that. I mean, that's not all that unusual, the lucid election. But what is unusual is to hear, I mean, I never saw this side to Mr. Mott, and it probably was the biggest insight we have of him that I can see. I didn't read his diary. He seemed genuinely hurt by the fact that he was defeated and rejected by the citizens at the time.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, uh, because he felt, you know, he he had great confidence in himself, very high esteem for himself. He felt that he had been doing the town a big favor by serving as mayor. He thought they were lucky to have him. 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. Well, you know, good luck to them. So you're right, wasn't the best look for him by any means.

State of MI Archivist 16:49

In a a previous interview that you gave, at one point you were asked about Mr. Mott running for governor, and I think at that time you said he didn't run for governor of Michigan. I learned and discovered was he in fact did run in the primary.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

He did run in the primary.

State of MI Archivist 17:06

So he ran in 1924 in the Michigan Republican primary to become governor. Do you know why he wanted to be governor? There's very little I found that explained him.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

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. You know, he kind of felt pressured to do it. Then lost the primary almost with a sense of relief.

State of MI Archivist 17:38

Mr. Mott was a winner at business. There's no question about that. His ambitions in business may have been satisfied, but his political ambitions didn't seem to ever be satisfied. He never had the same uh success at politics as he did in business. Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yes, but I think it's also a fair statement to say he really didn't have any grand long-term ambitions in politics. I don't think he saw himself as being president of the United States or anything like that.

State of MI Archivist 18:09

There was some talk by Mott that he wanted to be a United States Congressman in the House of Representatives.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Yeah, he kicked around that idea. Uh he kicked around a lot of ideas, you know, for the time to time. Really, from 1926 on, his chief interest, the one key thing that he was really into was that foundation.

State of MI Archivist 18:33

He set that foundation up. 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. 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?

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Right. I suppose, you know, as with that any charitable endeavor, there is a some sort of tax benefit. He was really focused on uh uh charitable giving. 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. He himself personally went to the office and ran that foundation every day.

State of MI Archivist 19:48

How much money do you figure he gave away in his lifetime?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

More than 200 million. Of course, that was an invested, the uh income of the investment is what funded everything. 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. We're still sitting on a corpus in excess of three billion dollars.

State of MI Archivist 20:20

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. Mr. Mott had a lot of interest in the Union Industrial Bank.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah. Of course, there was fraud involved there, uh as you probably know.

State of MI Archivist 20:39

Mr. Mott was one of the incorporators of either the union or the industrial bank because those two had merged themselves at some point.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Right.

State of MI Archivist 20:49

Do you know why he started a bank?

SPEAKER_02 20:51

I think he just thought it would be. A good investment. And maybe, you know, thought the town needed another bank or something, but I think it was just an investment for him.

State of MI Archivist 21:01

The best I can uh determine, there were four banks in the plan at the time that he got into the bank business. And I don't know if he was the principal or you know what that was.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Do you know what his role was? I mean he was on the board. He didn't run the bank. You know, he wasn't the president of the bank or anything. And he was an investor. I know that when the bank went into uh the financial difficulties, he spent a lot of his own money reimbursing.

State of MI Archivist 21:28

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. Do you know anything about that?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

I gather that the foundation purchased the building from the remains of the bank. 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.

State of MI Archivist 22:02

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.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

That's right. Mm-hmm. And then and then the depression came.

State of MI Archivist 22:24

Yeah, well, this and then that before that came was the stock market crash.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Exactly.

State of MI Archivist 22:29

They had a bunch of margin accounts in New York City that had to be paid money because they were losing. Right. Gambling with other people's money is what it turns out.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

State of MI Archivist 22:42

Mr. Mott then eventually learned, sadly, I'm sure it wasn't a good day for him. 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. Now here's my question. We got a little out of my sequence. Mr. 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. It adjourned at five o'clock in the morning to be five o'clock in the morning is a long time to meet. But I guess when you're talking about that money, it's a lot. But in Mr. Mott's situation, once he learns about this, uh tell us what action he took.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Well, basically, you know, he dug into his own pocket and filled the hole.

State of MI Archivist 23:39

He did that pretty quickly, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah, well uh immediately. Immediately. I believe with cash. I think he withdrew funds from uh a bank in Detroit or something. There's a story and had it delivered up to Flint and to deposit into the Union Industrial.

State of MI Archivist 23:59

That Mr. Mott went down to Detroit to his offices in Detroit. He went to the bank, he got three and a half million dollars in cash with three vehicles coming back, armored vehicles, along with himself, who apparently led the parade uh of people bringing money back. You know anything about that?

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Uh that that's basically what happened. Yeah. He thought that fast, immediate action, concrete action had to be taken to uh to shore things up, and he was liquid enough to do it. So he did it.

State of MI Archivist 24:34

He had insurance. I mean, this bank had insurance for losses.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Yeah, but but the hole needed to be filled then.

State of MI Archivist 24:43

Now, why did it need to be filled then?

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Uh I believe there were cash flow problems.

State of MI Archivist 24:48

Three and a half million bucks. I mean, the history books that I read said that there were people that were breaking the windows of the bank and had overturned cars outside of the bank.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Yeah, you know, some people wanted action.

State of MI Archivist 25:00

Uh, now he's before the FDIC. Of course, they were out of their money. Well, he was out money himself. Do you know what his total loss was? A lot. He had insurance. He had insurance, and these guys still had margin accounts, so there was some money still hanging out there. Right, right. But I heard that he had recovered about two million of the 3.5 that was.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

That sounds about right. You know, and uh the criminals, for lack of a better phrase, were on the hook for whatever they, you know, still owed to the you know, that that was their problem.

State of MI Archivist 25:36

They all went to prison uh in the same in the same cell, most of them. But number one, uh most people that aren't associated with the embezzlement aren't the ones usually that go race to get the money. I've never seen that happen before. That's and you've explained at least your sense of urgency with him. I think there's another explanation for it that I think might be. No, he did have the cooperation of the local media, which they didn't blow the whistle on his embezzlement immediately. That is the Flint Journal.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Mm-hmm. Did you know anything about that or what his relationship was with it? I know that he had close relationships with you know, he made a point of having close relationships, frankly, with uh various editors and reporters at the Flint Journal and elsewhere.

State of MI Archivist 26:28

You know, people that were already upset. Right, exactly. So a lot of publicity howling around this until the facts were known would not have been good for Flint.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

And I think Mott wanted when the story came out, he wanted one of the facts that became known was that the f the hole had been filled, that he had taken care of it. Uh that that sort of puts the pin back into the hand grenade.

State of MI Archivist 26:54

He invited Mr. Beagle to come visit him at at uh Applewood. I don't know, maybe his diary reflects some notes about what his intention was.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

I do not know. I would assume that they were, you know, he was trying to find out what the nature of the prosecution would be. I I wouldn't see him as trying to influence the prosecution, but he probably wanted to be up to speed on what the heck it was going to be.

State of MI Archivist 27:20

Well, or if Beagle even knew about it, because this meeting took place almost very, very short time after the embezzlement became known. So I'm not sure law enforcement was even involved until maybe even at the same occasion. And there might be other explanations which would be not nefarious, but that he wanted the prosecutor to know immediately what the situation was.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Yeah, I think it would be more like that. I mean, he was pretty above board in most of his dealings, let me put it that way. You might might not have liked what what he was doing or saying, but uh he wasn't uh trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, usually, if you know what I mean.

State of MI Archivist 28:01

Right. Well, there's some historical record and some some lingering about this meeting with Charles Beagle and and Flint and also in some of the other writings by other people of the time. That really centers on what you just were talking about, and that is the purpose of the meeting. There's one account that says that uh Mr. Beagle's son said that the meeting was there to try to pressure him not to prosecute. Harding Mott, on the other hand, claims his dad didn't do that. Uh neither of them were present at the meeting.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Right. I don't I don't see that as likely that uh Mott would be pressuring uh Beagle not to prosecute. I would think that uh from a uh PR point of view, uh which is one way that Mott usually looked at things, it would be better for the bank to have the idea of uh this was a few rotten apples, we're cleaning house, they're going to jail.

State of MI Archivist 29:05

Well, my experience with banks and Flint, and I do have experience with banks, is that they generally don't take that tact. Their tact is we don't want to tell anybody, in fact, they'll they'll lose a lot of money before they'll allow somebody to get involved in an investigation about embezzlement, uh especially big ones. And that has been a point of contention in Flint for many years. So that's why I've asked that question, because in my mind that's kind of an irregular deal. Uh I do know the family of Mr. Beagle. Some feeling on their part, and this is the last question. Um I really don't want to be an adversary in this situation, but uh No, no, it's not like that at all. I I'm not trying to sully his reputation to his dad and he and he he he did a lot of things for for my family and others. But what one of the things that is sort of hanging out there as well, the Beagle, John Beagle, who is the son of Charles Beagle, uh has reported, and I think it might be reported by other sources, that Charles Mott wasn't happy with Mr. Beagle's work, in which he uh got a whole bunch of guilty pleas and sent people to prison. And there were trials that he also won. Right. And these men were sent to prison for what appears to be just reasons and for I don't think an excessive amount. In fact, I looked at the size of that embezzlement. Probably today that was appropriate. I don't think we'd see anything different. What what what we did see that's on that's not unusual, and that is people taking action against a prosecutor for the type of cases that he's brought. And in this case, at least uh Beagle's son claims, and there might have been other support for this, that Mr. Mott organized against Mr. Beagle, saw him defeated in his election, that is Charlie Beagle. Do you did you cover any of this in your book? If you did, what did you say and if you didn't know?

SPEAKER_02 31:07

I I really didn't. I didn't go that far into uh the bank issue. I I do know that I saw letters that Mott wrote to people uh after the fellows had gone to prison saying that it was inevitable that they go and that they deserve to go, but he wished them well in the future and all that kind of thing.

State of MI Archivist 31:31

I think there was a book written by somebody explaining uh the Great Depression, and you know that they were more focused on the crash of the market itself. And I can't remember the name of that book. So we don't you don't have any information about Mr. Mott's role in the election or of defeating a process.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

No, the defeated Beagle, no, I don't.

State of MI Archivist 31:50

Lastly, you know, I grew up in Flint, and uh I like to think that that everything that affected me in a good way growing up was because of Charles Stuart Mott. And I was chatting with some friends the other day who said Mr. Mott, you know, everything about it, the my baseball league and team, my community school where I got to play in the gym and keep the cops uh, you know, keep me from having the cops take me home. All this kind of stuff, the health center which I went to as a child, they had a foot problem. It's just endless. I mean, this guy's fingerprints are all over the lives of people, uh, to this day. Flint obviously is a different place now than when I grew up. Now that you've studied this guy to this extent, do you have any opinions about Flint today?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

I think I've spent a lot of time in Flint while writing this book. For about a year and a half, I spent half my time in Flint. I I see Flint, frankly, as a t uh town today that is slowly ploying its way back from a very bad place. I know of a lot of enthusiastic, smart people who are working in Flint right now to improve things. Uh not the least uh the two Mott Foundations, but also uh others. And I see a lot of investment going on downtown. The Durant Hotel being made into luxury housing and so forth. I think the place is headed in in the right direction, especially with the broad footprint of the uh two colleges.

State of MI Archivist 33:30

Now, the Mo Foundation, uh you've had a lot of contact with them and a lot of contact with their leaders and with the Mo family themselves. Um one of the things that makes Flint much different than a lot of industrial Rust Belt cities that have experienced de-industrialization is that they don't have a three billion dollar foundation sitting in the center of the city.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Right. Right.

State of MI Archivist 33:56

Flint has had a lot of one point the biggest corporation in the world sitting all over our city. In all of your work, did you see any indication at all that the Mots wouldn't continue this kind of philanthropic activity toward the city of Flint?

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Oh, I I see every indication that they will. Uh they're deeply involved and committed. There's uh deep understanding i in the family that the fortunes of the family come directly out of Flint. Okay? They they get that. That's why you you will continue to see committed, you know, giving uh from the Ruth Mott Foundation and from the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation onward. I mean, um they're very cognizant what Charles Stuart Mott had in mind when he set this organization up. And although they've spread uh the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation anyway, although it has spread to a worldwide uh focus, it's also very much got the focus of Flint to this day. I don't see that changing. Even family members like Mary Ann, who basically live far away from Flint, are deeply committed and and uh are deeply involved, not just committed in a throw money at things kind of way, but involved in in the details of grant making and uh community engagement. The boards of both organizations, and in addition to including Mott family members, uh are also peppered with uh community activists, contemporary community activists on the ground in you know in Flint.

State of MI Archivist 35:43

Did you ever see any indication of this in other places or in your experience?

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Not really, but I experienced it in Flint. I know exactly what you're talking about, you know, because I I would talk to bump into people around town, what are you doing while I'm writing a life of mock? The interest in in local history, not just mock, but local history in general, of the man on the street in Flint was nearly constant. When the book was done and I had a book signing uh in Flint, we sold about over 400 copies in one day from to all make and manner of people who just I want to learn about Mr. Mott and Flint. I got this real sense of of the town and this real sense of community throughout my days there. Frankly, I came away with I I feel a certain kinship and affinity with Flint now, to be honest with you.

State of MI Archivist 36:42

So, Ed, does that make you a Flintstone too? I guess so.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Honorary, maybe. I'll have the uh the Newport, Rhode Island fan flint fan club.

State of MI Archivist 36:56

Ed Renahan, it's a blast talking to you. Enjoyed it too. You're gonna need this to be the wild.

SPEAKER_04 37:03

Okay, I'll talk to our broke out and rashes, somewhere losing their hair. I can play to the map. Well that's five people. I don't wanna do that. The water was fine, she got it all the research that she had really still studying that study. Oh, you'll children have been paused in the last flint water. It'll pause in your children and lie. You can tell them the facts.