Mott, Charles Stewart
Charles Stewart Mott was the dean of General Motors directors. He served on the board for 60 years from 1913 until his death in 1973. During this long period, he has held posts on the board's important Finance and Executive Committees. For 21 years, from 1916 to 1937, he also served as a vice president, and for a long period was chief-of-staff in charge of Michigan operations with headquarters in Detroit. It was during this period that Mott hired William S. Knudsen, who became president of General Motors in 1937.
Charles Stewart Mott was born on June 2, 1875 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended public schools in New York City, Stevens High School in Hoboken, New Jerset., and Stevens Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in 1897 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He studied Zymotechnology (science of fermentation) in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the chemistry of fermentation in Munich, Germany, in 1894 and 1895.
Following graduation from Stevens Institute, Mott went to New York City and joined with his father in operating two business ventures . The first was a company that manufactured soda fountain carbonating machinery. The second, was the Weston-Mott Company of Utica, New York, which had manufactured wire wheels since 1884 and had sold wire wheels to early automobile manufacturers in 1898. In 1900 the company supplied 3,000 sets of wheels for the curved dash runabout made by R. E. Olds. After joining the Weston-Mott Company, Mott supervised purchasing and engineering and served as secretary and superintendent.
In 1902, the shift to artillery wood wheels shut down the Weston-Mott Company, and Mott traveled throughout the United States to find new business for the company. He discovered auto companies were eager to buy axles and took orders for $250,000 without having made one. He returned to Utica and undertook the design and manufacture of axles. Shortly afterwards the company sold 1,500 sets of axles to the Cadillac Motor Car Company and 16 more sets to the Buick Motor Company.
In September, 1905, Mott and W. G. Doolittle, his Weston-Mott Company partner, visited Flint at the invitation of Billy Durant and decided to move their company to Flint. In a few years, it became the largest axle company in the world.
When General Motors was incorporated in 1908, it acquired 49 per cent of the Weston-Mott Company stock. In 1913, GM acquired the remaining 51 per cent in return for General Motors stock. A $100,000 business when Mott entered it in 1900, the Weston-Mott Company had reached a value of $3 million in 13 years under his management. He kept these GM shares and accumulated more through stock divi-dends, stock splits, and compensation payments, until by 1942 he became one of the largest individual shareholders of General Motors. He also had invested in the Little Motor Company --one of the predecessor companies of Chevrolet Motor Division -- and was instrumental in the reorganization of the Brown-Lipe Company into Brown-Lipe-Chapin which became a division of General Motors. After GM acquired the Weston-Mott Company, Mott continued to manage the division for several years.
In addition to his career in manufacturing, Charles S. Mott had a long military history that included service in the Spanish-American War, serving on the home front during World War I, as a civilian aide for Michigan to the Secretary of War and as the head of a group that took the initial steps to form a war board at the outset of World War II. He was also active politically serving as mayor of Flint for three terms (1912, 1913 and 1918) and running as a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of Michigan in 1920. Mott was also known for his vast philanthropic endeavors, primarily in the field of education, through the Mott Foundation.