Throughout MCM’s exploration of General Motors’ history, we’ve focused on the inchoate beginnings of what was later the model of efficiency and the power of precision. But who enacted this change? Who made the name of General Motors synonymous with industrial production? Answer: Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.

James H. Whiting was born in Torrington, CT in 1842. He served in the 23rd Connecticut Infantry during the Civil War and afterwards made his way to Flint. In 1882, he became manager of the Begole, Fox & Company lumber mills, whose anemic outputs resulted from the severe depletion of timber surrounding the town. Whiting was charged with converting the firm from a processor of raw material into a manufacturer of finished wooden products, enabling the company to survive the death of the lumber industry. Whiting rose to the challenge, establishing the town’s first incorproated business, The Flint Wagon Works, that same year. Some years earlier, William Paterson had begun producing high quality carriages, and while the Flint Wagon Works began by manufacturing farm wagons, wheels and axles, it would eventually enter the carriage business as a competitor to Paterson; both would be surpassed in that venture by the Durant-Dort Carriage Co.