Winthrop Murray Crane was an American manufacturer and politician. He was the 40th Governor of Massachusetts from 1900 to 1903. He served as the United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1904 to 1913.
Background
Winthrop Murray Crane was born on April 23, 1853 in Dalton, Massachusetts, United States. He was bred in a family where paper-making and counsel-giving were hereditary activities. The son of Zenas Marshall and Louise (Laflin) Crane, he was the grandson of Zenas Crane who in 1799 established at Dalton, Massachusetts, the first paper-mill west of the Connecticut River. This Zenas Crane, his son, and his grandson, Winthrop Murray Crane, each served in the Massachusetts Executive Council.
Education
Winthrop had a brief schooling at Wilbraham Academy and Williston Seminary.
Career
At seventeen, Crane underwent a thorough training in all branches of the paper business from the crudest processes up to factory management and sales. At twenty- six, in keen competition, he secured for the Crane Company the contract for the silk-threaded paper such as has been used ever since for the United States notes, and then at the mill he personally worked out the novel processes for its production.
In 1892, as delegate-at-large from Massachusetts, he attended the Republican National Convention, and was placed upon the Republican National Committee. He served upon it for more than twenty years, but would never accept its chairmanship. In 1896 he was elected lieutenant-governor; he served three terms as governor, 1900-1902, giving the commonwealth a most businesslike administration.
In 1902 Crane was urged to accept the position of secretary of the treasury, but declined because of his duties to the state and to his family. On two later occasions he declined President Roosevelt’s tender of other cabinet positions—postmaster-general and secretary of the interior. In 1904 Roosevelt’s celebrated announcement as to a “third term” was issued after a conference in which Crane had advised such action, and on November 24, 1911, Roosevelt wrote to Crane expressing “extreme pleasure” that Crane took the position that he should not accept the nomination for the presidency.
On October 12, 1904, Crane was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the recent death of Senator Hoar. He quickly won friendly association with his colleagues of both parties, for no one who knew him could doubt his sincerity and his disinterested public spirit. It was said that not even the official whips knew the trend of opinion on different bills or the attitude of individual senators so well as he. A leading Democrat declared that in the last years of Crane’s service “no other member had such control in shaping and directing legislation”. President Taft’s opinion was that, although Crane entered the Senate without legislative experience, “he became its most influential member. ”
In routine work his most important service was on the Post Office and Interstate Commerce Committees. In May 1912, because of ill health and family responsibilities, he announced his intention not to stand for reelection. He was profoundly impressed with the opportunity and duty of the United States to enter the League of Nations, and in the Massachusetts Republican convention of 1919 it was his insistence that resulted in the platform’s declaration in favor of such entrance, against Lodge’s demand for indorsement of the Senate’s action. With waning strength but with undaunted spirit, in 1920 he went to the Republican National Convention, but there his utmost efforts could not dissuade the implacable senators on the Resolutions Committee from their determination to pledge the party to approval of their defeat of the League. Broken by this struggle into which he had thrown himself without reserve, he came home to die. To the last he remained convinced that the entrance of the United States into the League was demanded alike by justice and by sound national policy.
Achievements
Politics
Crane was an opponent of reduced tariffs with Canada and the Dominion of Newfoundland, working to water down provisions of a proposed treaty. In the 1908 presidential election, he expressed early support for William Howard Taft, but later came to oppose him, believing him a weak candidate.
Personality
Throughout his life Crane showed himself a man of unfailing friendliness, his strength constantly over-taxed by his will to help. “Arrange your business so as to have time for personal and public service” was his advice to young men. He responded not more generously to the need for financial help than to appeals for business counsel and for intimate human sympathy. He hated publicity. In all his political campaigns he made no speech; he stood upon his record. His gift to his town by will was a community house, for he “desired above all to provide a place where the people of Dalton could spend their evenings in pleasant companionship. ”
Quotes from others about the person
C. M. Depew: “He was one of the wonders of the Senate. He never made a speech. I do not remember that he made a motion. Yet he was the most influential member of that body. His wisdom, tact, his sound judgment, his encyclopedic knowledge of public affairs and of public men made him an authority. ”
Connections
Crane was married twice: in 1880 to Mary Benner of Astoria, New York, who died in 1884, and in 1906 to Josephine P. Boardman of Washington, D. C.