Foundation for Living: the Story of Charles Stewart Mott and Flint
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FOUNDATION FOR LIVING FOUNDATION FOR LIVING the story of Charles Stewart Mott and Flint by Clarence H. Young & William A. Quinn McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. New York Toronto London To Ruth Rowlings Mott, the Flint Board of Education, and The Seven Universities of Michigan Partners in Progress Foundation for Living Copyright 1963 by McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. All Rights Re- served. Printed in the United States of America. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers, library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-13153 First Edition 72516 INTRODUCTION The memorandum I picked up from my desk concerned the fact that the year 1955 was the one-hundredth anniversary of the City of Flint As I thought of the almost incredible sweep of forces shaping modern Flint from the little river-crossing settlement of 1855, I was somewhat amazed to remember I had shared exactly half of Flint's first 100 years. I first saw Flint on September 2, 1905, the year the city celebrated its fiftieth anniversary golden jubilee. I found this valley of the Flint River still heavily grown with trees despite the rich harvest of pine which had brought Flint's booming lumber era. With the end of the pine had come the vehicle industry from which Flint-made wagons, road carts, and bug- gies rolled out to every corner of the country. Then, haltingly, after the turn of the century, automobile manufacturing began. I held the memorandum of Flint's hundredth year in my hand, trying to visualize the factors working so mightily to shape the city. There are no outside windows in my office in the Mott Foundation Building in downtown Flint, but I could lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and see, as if through the stone walls, the tremendous industrial establishments that mark the the Flint is points of the compass from the center of city. bounded on the north by Buick and Ternstedt, on the west by Chevrolet, on the south by Fisher Body, and on the east by the AC Sparkplug Division of General Motors Corporation. There are other industries, of course, but those are the greatest, employing some 70,000 people. Not the wildest imagination in 1905 could have conceived of such gigantic enterprises except, perhaps, the imagination of the man who had invited me to Flint, William Crapo Durant, key figure in so much that has happened to Flint factor of all The thought of Durant led me to the greatest once said that the of in the destiny of Flint Someone history the mankind is the lengthened shadow of great men. In history with of Flint, this concept has been demonstrated particular once the force. It has been pointed out before that Flint, pine of raw trans- was gone, had no natural advantages materials, to markets. There was no reason portation, or proximity why Flint should have become different from other small towns in the the settled Middle West except for the quality of people who here, and those who followed. of Flint in There were giants among the men 1905, casting the their shadows across the quiet river valley and over future as well. The Flint we know today is a living testimonial to the stature of those men to their vision, their courage, their abil- their and their faith in the boundless accom- ity, hard work, their hearts and to plishment possible for those who set minds a task. Then, as always, the men made the difference. those and work with It was my privilege to know men them, and with the successors who have caried on the great tradi- tions they established. It has become increasingly clear to me that the ideals, strength, ingenuity, daring, and hard work of individuals are responsible for Flint's remarkable record of accomplishment. Flint's demonstration that the quality of people underlies and overshadows all other factors in existence has had a pro- found influence on me, and on the activities to which I have devoted my life and resources in recent years. When a man believes that nothing else is important, really, except people, how can he implement his belief effectively? That is the question which has challenged me, and to which I have found, here in my own community, an answer that is deeply satisfying. It seems to me that every person, always, is in a kind of informal partnership with his community. His own success is dependent to a large degree on that community, and the com- munity, after all, is the sum total of the individuals who make VI it up. The institutions of a community, in turn, are the means by which those individuals express their faith, their ideals, and their concern for fellow men. The partnership between a man and his community is often an unconscious relationship, but this fact does not make it any the less real. For me, this sense of partnership has become a growing reality over the years. In the simplest terms: Flint is I has given me much that good; try, in return, to make available to the people of Flint much that is good, placing human values first. Flint has many splendid institutions expressing, as I have said, the faith of Flint people, their ideals, and their concern for fellow men. My own active partnership with my community is expressed mainly through another institution, called the Mott Foundation. This Foundation works principally through established community agencies, such as the board of educa- tion, to strengthen and extend their services by utilization of existing facilities to a degree far beyond the practices of the past. Further, the Mott Foundation is highly flexible, and thus is able to meet community needs not otherwise provided for, chiefly through pilot projects in new areas of community serv- ice. This, then, is the answer I have found for my own need to perpetuate the lesson Flint has taught me that only people are important. And since every man needs to devote as much imagination, skill, and conscience to the wise and useful spend- ing of money as he exercised to accumulate that money, the Foundation answers this need for me also. The Foundation serves as the most effective expression of the faith, ideals, and concern for fellow men which I have acquired in my lifetime. The objectives of the Foundation have become both deeper and wider in the course of a quarter-century of continuous growth and development. Our attempt here in Flint is to open for as many people as possible the doors of opportunity for self-advancement in health, education, recreation, active par- ticipating citizenship, technical skill, economic knowledge, and vn successful adaptation to every challenge of modern living. But only the opportunity can be provided, the rest is up to the indi- vidual. Our experience gives evidence that the individual re- sponds eagerly to a down-to-earth implementation of equality of opportunity. So broad and so deep are the objectives of the Mott Founda- tion that they touch almost every aspect of living, increasing the capacity for accomplishment, the appreciation of values, and the understanding of the forces that make up the world we live in. In this sense, it may truly be called a Foundation for Living with the ultimate aim of developing greater under- standing among men. We recognize that our obligation to fellow men does not stop at the boundaries of the community. In an even larger sense, every man is in partnership with the rest of the human race in the eternal conquest which we call civilization. Just as the Foundation conducts pilot projects in Flint for the sake of the whole community, so we consider the whole Foundation a total pilot project for the sake of as much of the United States and the world as may care to make a similar approach to the problems of people. We believe and there is a already significant body of evidence to support our belief that the both principles and techniques, such as the community-school concept, pioneered in practice by the Mott Foundation, can be utilized with excellent effect in other com- munities. We are happy to make available to others all the information we can provide to assist them in similar under- takings; this is a major objective of the Foundation. For each of us, there is a time for taking stock for compar- our ing intentions with our accomplishments. The thought of Flint's hundredth year, and my own sharing of half that period, to the brought me impulse for such an accounting. Even if a feels man no necessity to justify his life to others, there is no the escaping necessity to justify it to himself. There are many ways to approach such a reckoning. Each man's life has its own record of private success and failure in his respon- sibilities to himself, his family, his associates, his community, viii and his God. It is not always easy to set forth an honest balance sheet when human and abstract values are involved, but one can try. This book, then, is such a reckoning-up for me. Chiefly, it is the story of the reciprocal relationship ... the often uncon- scious partnership . between the City of Flint and myself. And, of more importance, it is also the record of the develop- ment of a pattern of community service. As I have said, the Mott Foundation may, in a large sense, be considered a Foun- dation for Living; for me, in another sense, it is a foundation for living the realization of the purpose of my life.