The Life of Charles Stewart Mott: Industrialist, Philanthropist, Mr. Flint by Edward Renehan (review)

The Life of Charles Stewart Mott has obvious interest for autophiles, Michiganders, and philanthropists (to list a few). But Edward Renehan has written a biography of wide appeal that many readers should find just as compelling. The Ruth Mott Foundation commissioned Renehan, as part of Applewood Estate's (Mott's historic home in Flint) centennial and gave him unfettered access to family archives. The result is an empirically rich portrait of Mott in private and public life that is both complementary and complicated.

In a well-structured chronology, the author provides numerous details of a wealthy industrialist who moved to Flint at the dawn of the automobile age. From an early age, Mott's family groomed him for the world of business by employing him in family owned firms when he returned from his Naval service in 1896. (16) It was, however, Mott's entry into the nascent automobile industry, when he moved his Weston Mott company to Flint, that launched him into the elite circles of American manufacturing. (62) As the industry grew rapidly after 1910, Mott parlayed his position into a share of the newly formed General Motors Corporation and continued to be a voice in GM as a member of the board of directors until his death in 1973.

Readers also get the sense that Mott was deeply interested in shaping his community. Like many successful businessmen in the Progressive Era, Mott presented his management acumen as the best way to do the city's business when he served as Flint's 50^th and 55^th mayor. He made similar claims when attempting a run for governor of Michigan in 1920. It was his philanthropic endeavors, however, that engaged Mott for most of his life and arguably the legacy with which most readers will be familiar. When he created the Charles Stewart Mott foundation with a generous gift of GM stock in 1926, Mott began a journey in which he would immerse himself and his foundation in the development of Flint for the next century.

The story is strongest when the author adds insight into familiar stories and allows readers into the intimate moments of Mott's life. Chapters seven through ten offer a fresh re-telling of the early history of General Motors. While Renehan does not present any new interpretation, readers will be interested in an appealing account—often in the words of Mott himself. Similarly, the text details family life in a way that reveals novel experiences about Mott, but also impresses upon the reader the significant people and events that shaped his life. These intimate instances even include the illness and death of his first wife Ethel Culbert Harding in 1924, his courtship with his fourth wife, Ruth Rawlings, who he married in 1934, and Mott's time spent away from Flint in the American Southwest or Bermuda.

There are some instances where the story would benefit from a broader survey of sources to more accurately place the events in their proper context. For instance, the author's generalization that Flint in 1920 was a city populated by "proud men with good paychecks from what they considered to be a fair and benevolent employer supported secure families living in good homes," (113) undermines the reader's confidence in the author—especially considering there is ample evidence that most people in Flint struggled and lived in substandard housing. Or the characterization of Mott's municipal political platform, whose business experience was the solution for guiding urban growth, was much less novel than the author intimates.

Engaging and accessible, readers will find The Life of Charles Stewart Mott as less a revelation on CS Mott, but rather an honest sentiment about the uniqueness of his contribution to Flint and his equally distinct and full life.