William Crozier was an American army officer and inventor.
Background
William Crozier was born on the 19th of February, 1855 in Carrollton, Ohio, United States. He was the younger of two children and only son of Robert and Margaret (Atkinson) Crozier. The year after his son's birth, Robert Crozier moved from his native Ohio to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he followed a prosperous career as lawyer, founder of a newspaper, bank cashier, chief justice of the Kansas supreme court, and, briefly, United States Senator (1873 - 74).
Education
William Crozier attended the Ann Arbor (Michigan) high school, planning to enter the engineering college at the University of Michigan, but instead accepted an appointment in 1872 to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated, fifth in his class, in 1876. For his work in the improvement of military armament he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Engineering by the University of Michigan in 1923.
Career
Commissioned as second lieutenant in the 4th Artillery, Crozier served in the campaigns against the Sioux and Bannock Indians before returning to West Point as assistant professor of mathematics in 1879. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1881.
In 1887 William Crozier joined the staff of the Chief of Ordnance in Washington, D. C. , and there developed a professional interest in large-caliber guns and coastal defenses--an interest which was reflected in his appointment as inspector general of Atlantic and Gulf Coast defenses during the Spanish-American War and in his selection, while still a captain, as a delegate to the International Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899. Crozier served as inspector general of volunteers, with the temporary rank of major, between May and November 1898. In 1900 he was a staff officer in the field during the Philippine Insurrection and chief ordnance officer of the Peking relief expedition during the Boxer Rebellion.
President Theodore Roosevelt, acting on the recommendation of Secretary of War Elihu Root, chose Crozier in 1901 as Chief of Ordnance, a position he was to hold (save for an interim, 1912-13, as president of the Army War College) for the next seventeen years--an unprecedentedly long tenure. With this appointment came the rank of brigadier general.
Crozier undertook extensive reorganization of the manufacturing arsenals of the Ordnance Department with a view to increasing their efficiency and their ability to compete with private armaments manufacturers. He also reorganized the logistic work of the department, developing plans for the storage and rapid distribution of ordnance equipment to combat troops in the event of war. Extensive testing and development work on automatic small-caliber weapons was also carried out.
Promoted to the rank of major general in October 1917, Crozier was appointed to the War Council by President Wilson and saw service in Europe on the Western and Italian fronts, inspecting military installations.
At the conclusion of hostilities, in 1918, he was appointed commander of the Northeastern Department of the army, with headquarters in Boston; he was retired at his own request on January 1, 1919.
Crozier spent the years between his retirement and his death largely in world travel. He died at his home in Washington, D. C. , of bronchopneumonia and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Respected in his own time primarily as an inventor and administrator, Crozier now appears more significant for his insight into the relationship between technology and military potential. His long career as Chief of Ordnance was distinguished by dedication to the concept of the Ordnance Department as an agent of scientific advance in arms manufacture and procurement. Crozier saw two essential roles for the publicly owned arsenals: they were to be pilot plants in advancing the technology of military production, and they were to set the standards of efficiency by which the bids submitted by private arms manufacturers could be appraised. This concept inevitably involved him in controversy, in view of the large sums of money involved in arms contracts, the small number of influential firms submitting bids, and the hostility of legislators to the idea of the government competing with private business. In his reorganization of work in the arsenals Crozier received assistance from Frederick W. Taylor, the pioneer of "scientific management, " and certain of Taylor's associates were employed to introduce improved methods at the arsenal in Watertown, Massachussets This, however, was only one episode in Crozier's lifelong campaign to systematize military procurement. His contribution to American military preparedness before World War I was substantial; his innovations in defense procurement, though limited in their immediate impact, were creative efforts to deal with a problem that still awaits solution.