Grant was born on September 15, 1881, in Chillicothe, Missouri, the son of Benjamin Thomas Grant, a horse dealer and equestrian, and Ida Belle Johnston. When Grant was fifteen, his father committed suicide. His mother went to work as a dance teacher.
As a boy, Grant quit school to provide for the family after his father's death. By saving his money and studying at night, Grant was able to enter Harvard as a special student in 1903. After one year his money ran out, and he returned to St. Louis. After one year his money ran out, and he returned to St. Louis to try to start a mail order company. The plan failed because he could not raise enough capital. Grant then took a job as a roofing salesman. He returned to Harvard in 1905 and struggled through his sophomore year, studying mining and geology and working part-time as advertising salesman for student publications. At the end of the year he gave up trying to get a degree and moved to New York City.
Young Grant became a railway messenger, earning $5 a week. He spent six years working for railroads and in stockyards, rising from mail clerk to ticket clerk. In 1900 he quit to become a bookkeeper and cattle checker at the East St. Louis branch of Swift and Company. Grant found a job with the N. W. Ayer and Son advertising agency, where he worked from 1906 to 1909. One of his early accounts was Rubberset Brush Company. The firm hired him in 1909 and sent him to London as its British representative. Grant lived in England for several years. Late in 1910, he met a British capitalist who wanted to develop the rayon industry in the United States. Grant was named manager of what became the American Viscose Company in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania. Although the business prospered, Grant left it in 1912. After a brief period back in England, he joined the New York advertising firm of O'Mara and Ormsbee in 1913. Shortly thereafter he became vice-president of the firm, in charge of its Chicago office. One of Grant's clients was the daily Milwaukee Journal. In 1916, Lucius W. Nieman, the owner of the Journal, hired Grant as advertising manager of the paper. Grant proceeded to reorganize the advertising department, substantially increasing the advertising volume of the Journal. In 1919 he bought one-fifth of the Journal Company stock from Judge J. E. Dodge and George P. Miller, the Journal's legal adviser. In three years Grant had become vice-president and treasurer of the Journal Company, a stockholder, one of the three directors, and publisher. In 1919 the Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for its editorial support of intervention in World War I on the side of the Allies, a stand that reduced its popularity among the large German population in Milwaukee. Grant nevertheless stuck to his principles, stressing the importance of editorial freedom. He avoided making public appearances and took no part in direct handling of the news. Under his leadership the Journal achieved the largest circulation in Wisconsin. For several years it carried more advertising than any other publication in the world. The paper was a leader in using new methods of printing and photography. Shortly after Nieman's death in 1935, Grant succeeded him as president and editor of the Journal. Three years later he gave up both titles and became chairman of the board. Thereafter he spent half the year in Milwaukee and the other half in Miami Beach. Grant initiated his unit holders plan after Nieman's death. He wanted the Journal to be free to report the news without being tied to any outside interests, and to provide security for its employees. Under Grant's plan shares of company stock are held in trust; employees who wish to sell their shares must sell them back to the trust. Thereby all stock is kept within the company. The first 25 percent of company stock was acquired by employees in 1937, and by Grant's death the employees owned 75 percent of the stock. By 1980, employees owned 90 percent of the stock, with Grant's daughter, wife of Journal board chairman Donald Abert, owning the rest. He died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 12, 1963.
Director of the Associated Press (1940, 1941), member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, member of the Milwaukee Art Institute, honorary fellow of the Sigma Delta Chi (1948)
Grant married Dorothy Glyde Cook, a wealthy American, on July 6, 1910. They had one daughter.
