Businessman internationalist philanthropist
Charles Richard Crane was born on August 7, 1858 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was the eldest in a family of seven children of Richard Teller and Mary (Prentice) Crane. His father, the founder of the Crane Company, one of the country's largest producers of plumbing supplies, planned the boy's education to fit him for a career within the company.
Leaving the Chicago public schools at the age of fourteen, Charles went to work. Five years later, satisfied that his son had the trades well enough in hand, the elder Crane enrolled him in Stevens Institute, Hoboken, Neew Jersey. Crane received honorary degrees from Harvard University (1922), the University of Wisconsin (1922), and the College of William and Mary (1924).
He came down with malaria, and his father, concerned for his health, sent him instead on an extended trip abroad. Always fond of the sea, Crane crossed the Atlantic on an old-time sailing packet and went on through the Mediterranean. In Damascus he met and was strongly influenced by the famous English traveler and writer Richard Burton. A year later he sailed on to Java and began a long interest in the Far East.
During the next few decades he continued to make frequent trips abroad, meanwhile becoming vice-president of the Crane Company in 1894 and president on his father's death in 1912. Two years later, however, he sold out his interest to his brother Richard T. Crane, Jr. Thereafter, though financially interested in various enterprises, he had no business responsibilities.
Crane's public career began in Chicago, where he served as president of the Municipal Voters League, a pioneer and successful civic reform society, from 1900 to 1905. William Howard Taft appointed Crane minister to China. However, because of difficulties, political and otherwise, with Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, Crane was called back to Washington from San Francisco, while on his way to China, for further consultations, and he at once resigned his post. During the next few years Crane threw his interest into the progressive movement, then at its height in the United States.
From 1912 to 1915, while Norman Hapgood was editor, Crane provided the chief financial support for Harper's Weekly. Crane's knowledge of Russia and the Orient, gained by his extensive travels, was several times called upon by President Wilson.
In 1917 Crane was a member of the special diplomatic mission to Russia headed by Elihu Root. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, Crane and President Henry Churchill King of Oberlin were appointed to the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey. Their report, for a time suppressed, pointed out the impossibility of reconciling the existing agreements (many of them secret) for the future of the Turkish territories, stressed the difficulties of transforming Palestine, largely Arab, into a new Jewish state, and recommended that a United Syria, including Palestine, be administered as a mandate by the United States.
Crane was most widely known as an international traveler and humanitarian. For this role he was well endowed by nature and circumstance.
After his first oversea journey he spent a great deal of time abroad, chiefly in Russia (to which he made twenty-four trips), China, Japan, and the Middle East. In these lands he came to know not only the rulers, educators, business men, and clergy, but also the general public--peasants, fishermen, bazaarkeepers. One of his prized memories was an offer made in the city of Bokhara, in Russian Central Asia, where he lived for some time in 1891. After he announced that he must return soon to America, his neighbors begged him to stay and offered a booth in the bazaar where he could support himself by selling the American medicines in his travel kit.
As a philanthropist Crane also played an unusual role. A few of his gifts were known, such as the building he gave to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachussets, and funds for the American colleges in Istanbul, but the majority were unknown and more personal. Two examples will suggest their variety. For years after 1919 the Russian monks at Mt. Athos, Greece, were kept alive by his shipments of food, and after his first visit to Yemen, American engineers went there to build roads and water and irrigation systems, all at Crane's expense. The most important of Crane's institutional philanthropies carried on his own lifelong international interest. The Institute of Current World Affairs, created in 1925, has enabled selected young Americans to become thoroughly familiar with the peoples and the political, economic, and social problems of foreign countries or areas through several years of residence and supervised training there.
A resident of Chicago until 1914, when he moved to New York City, he maintained for many years a summer home in Woods Hole and a winter residence at Palm Springs, California.
He died of pneumonia at his Palm Springs home and was buried in Woods Hole.
In 1920 Wilson appointed Crane minister to China. During his brief term in office (1920 - 21) Crane made a significant contribution to Sino-American relations through his leadership in the International Famine Relief Committee, which saved million of lives, and his travels throughout China. Crane founded the New York-based Institute of Current World Affairs. The institute employed field representatives in Mexico, Jerusalem, and occasionally Moscow.
Originally a Democrat, he supported William Howard Taft in 1908 because of Taft's views on the Far East.
As the election of 1912 approached, he gave financial backing at first to Robert M. La Follette, then to Woodrow Wilson. Once Wilson was nominated, Crane became the largest single contributor to his campaign, serving as vice-chairman of the Democratic finance committee.
Quotations: "The Jews, after winning the war, galloping along at a swift pace, getting Russia, England and Palestine, being caught in the act of trying to seize Germany, too, and meeting their first real rebuff, have gone plumb crazy and are deluging the world—particularly easy America—with anti-German propaganda. I strongly advise you to resist every social invitation. "
Genial in face and manner, soft-spoken and unassuming, a courteous conversationalist with a quick sense of humor, a gift for anecdote and description, and an inquisitive mind, he was exceedingly thoughtful of the situations and needs of others. His substantial wealth enabled him to travel freely, though usually quite simply.
One of his host of friends, Lord Bryce, once remarked that Crane had more international friendships than anyone else he knew.
His wife, the former Cornelia W. Smith of Paterson, New Jersey, whom he had married in 1881, and three of his four children, Josephine, Frances, and John Oliver, survived him; Richard, the oldest, had died in 1938.
