The Life and Times of Charles R Crane

1858 1939 American Businessman

Philanthropist and a Founder of
Russian Studies in America Norman E.
Saul
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-life-and-times-of-charles-r-crane-1858-1939-amer
ican-businessman-philanthropist-and-a-founder-of-russian-studies-in-america-norman
-e-saul/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Black Studies and the Democratization of American

Higher Education 1st Edition Charles P. Henry (Auth.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/black-studies-and-the-
democratization-of-american-higher-education-1st-edition-charles-
p-henry-auth/

The Storied Nature of Human Life: The Life and Work of

Theodore R. Sarbin 1st Edition Karl E. Scheibe

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-storied-nature-of-human-
life-the-life-and-work-of-theodore-r-sarbin-1st-edition-karl-e-
scheibe/

Finding Purple America: The South and the Future of

American Cultural Studies (The New Southern Studies
Ser.) 2nd Edition Smith

https://textbookfull.com/product/finding-purple-america-the-
south-and-the-future-of-american-cultural-studies-the-new-
southern-studies-ser-2nd-edition-smith/

Fryderyk Chopin A Life and Times Alan Walker

https://textbookfull.com/product/fryderyk-chopin-a-life-and-
times-alan-walker/
The Russian job the forgotten story of how America
saved the Soviet Union from ruin First Edition American
Relief Administration

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-russian-job-the-forgotten-
story-of-how-america-saved-the-soviet-union-from-ruin-first-
edition-american-relief-administration/

Born in Blood and Fire A Concise History of Latin

America 4th ed 2016 John Charles Chasteen

https://textbookfull.com/product/born-in-blood-and-fire-a-
concise-history-of-latin-america-4th-ed-2016-john-charles-
chasteen/

Paul McCartney The Life Philip Norman

https://textbookfull.com/product/paul-mccartney-the-life-philip-
norman/

Einstein s Monsters The Life and Times of Black Holes

Chris Impey

https://textbookfull.com/product/einstein-s-monsters-the-life-
and-times-of-black-holes-chris-impey/

State of Democracy in India Essays on Life and Politics

of Contemporary Times Manas Ray

https://textbookfull.com/product/state-of-democracy-in-india-
essays-on-life-and-politics-of-contemporary-times-manas-ray/
The Life and Times of
Charles R. Crane, 1858–1939
 The Life and Times of
Charles R. Crane, 1858–1939

American Businessman, Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian

Studies
in America

Norman E. Saul

LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Lexington Books
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-0-7391-7745-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-7391-7746-4 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for
Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

List of Figures
 Preface and Acknowledgments

During research and writing on Russian-American relations in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth century, I could not avoid encountering Charles R. Crane, who
had a deep interest in Russia, as well as a business connection. I soon discovered
that he had acquired an appreciation of Russian culture and life through travel in the
country, unusual for the son of a Chicago industrialist with little formal education. By
these contacts he developed relationships with many prominent Russians in political,
cultural, and artistic spheres. Perhaps what intrigued me most was how this man
pursued his goal of making Americans more aware and educated about that country
and devoted considerable amounts of his own wealth to achieve that goal. More
investigation provoked my curiosity into his family and his many political and cultural
associations in the United States and abroad. And I soon discovered that he also had
made major contributions to American political history.
I began to see this person as a rather remarkable man who devoted his time and
much of his financial resources first to his own enlightenment about the world and
then to a desire to share that with his fellow citizens through university studies,
sponsoring visiting lecturers from many parts of the world, and by subsidizing
publications. His dedication to these pursuits spurred my own goal of providing a
more detailed accounting of his life and work for posterity, especially as a premier
founder of Russian studies in America. Charles Crane was in one way a unique
individual in his foresight, imagination, and will power in pursuing his wide range of
interests in Eastern and Central Europe, the Far East, and the Near East, but in
others he was typical of a generation that led the United States to world power.
Charles Crane made unique contributions that created a record of a man who
believed sincerely that Americans should be educated through lectures, university
courses, study of foreign languages, and travel for the world they would lead,
especially those areas beyond London, Paris, and Berlin, to Russia and Eastern
Europe, the Near East, and the Far East. In all of them he left his mark in rather
curious ways, as will be related in the text that follows. Above all, he had a particular
genius in promoting the best in others, including his family and close friends, but
especially among the established political and cultural elite, as well as those who
wandered into his vision of what should be done. David Hapgood, his first biographer,
had it right: “The man who bet on people.” And it is quite interesting to see how he did
all of this.
Crane is probably best known as a member of the “King-Crane Commission” that
filed a controversial report on the Near East during the peace negotiations in Paris in
1919, but I will show that this difficult task was much more to his credit than appears
in many secondary accounts. This was only a small part of his involvements in world
affairs that involved an extraordinary amount of travel and investigation from Omsk,
Siberia, to Sanaa, Yemen, from Constantinople to Cairo, from Prague to Omsk, from
Peking to Calcutta. Few other Americans can challenge his record of ocean crossings
sailed, railroad miles logged, camels and mules ridden. This took dedication and
endurance especially for one not always in the best of health. And one thing can be
counted on—almost always wearing a tie, even at work on his California date ranch.
Another reason for my pursuit of this project is that new materials became
available in the Crane Family Papers at Columbia University. These shed much more
light on the man and his many missions. I am indebted to several individuals who
provided inspiration, advice, and encouragement along the way. First is Thomas
Smith Crane, a grandson and collector and supervisor of the Charles Crane Family
Papers, following on his father’s foundation of the collection. He encouraged and
advised me in this project from the beginning to the end. I have also appreciated the
assistance and openness of other members of the Crane family, ranging from
grandson David Bradley to great-grandson Joseph (“Brad”) Bradley, a colleague in
Russian history, who I knew long before beginning this endeavor.
Through Tom Crane, I have been fortunate to see many more important papers
of his grandfather deposited in the Bakhmeteff Archive (BAR) at Columbia University.
This collection, primarily consisting of papers of émigré Russians, was established by
Boris Bakhmeteff, the Russian Provisional Government ambassador to the United
States in 1917 and continuing officially until 1923. After the Bolshevik seizure of
power, he became a professor of engineering at Columbia University, which explains
the location of the papers. The papers of a number of Americans who were involved
with Russia were also included in the collection. The Charles Crane Papers were
begun by John Oliver Crane, the younger son of Charles Crane and father of Tom,
and consisted of microfilms of typed copies of original papers in the family. He had
also successfully collected other papers from family members and at the time
(1970s) was residing on the Upper West Side of New York, nor far from Columbia.
The Bakhmeteff Archive (BAR) and the Crane collection in it, have been expertly
organized and superintended by its curator of recent years, Tanya Chebotarev, to
whom I owe many thanks for her efforts to make unprocessed material available, as
well as to her inspiration and encouragement during many weeks spent in the
pleasant and collegial facilities of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Butler
Library. Her special interest in the Crane materials led to her presentation of a report
on them at a scholarly conference at Dartmouth in 2008. I have arbitrarily divided the
collection by the original microfilm deposit created by John Crane (CP—Crane
Papers) and the larger and more recent additions (CFP—Crane Family Papers). The
manuscript memoirs of Charles Crane are of special importance, though dictated to a
secretary late in life, and therefore in need of verification from other sources. There
are several copies with minor variances: three in the Crane Papers at Columbia, one
in the Chicago History Museum, and one at the Hoover Institution in Stanford. I have
relied mainly on that in box 20 of the Crane Family Papers that includes annotations
by John Crane. Without the memoirs this project would indeed have been difficult to
accomplish.
Problems still exist in portraying a full picture. The memoirs were dictated late in
life with few notes or letters to draw upon; son John added a few corrections and
annotations to one of the copies. True, he had recited his adventures to friends and
family many times over the years but with some elaborations and amendments.
Crane did not keep regular diaries and his correspondence while abroad was minimal,
apparently preferring to devote his time to absorbing the scenes. In fact, the most
complete descriptions of his most notable adventures were recorded by others, for
example, by John Crane on the trip across Siberia in 1921, and by George Antonius
of his conversations with King Ibn Saud in 1924. Also exasperating to the researcher
is Crane’s reliance on the telephone for conveying his views and for setting up
meetings for personal conversations in the evening, at lunch, on the train, and
elsewhere. His many guests in Chicago, New York, at summer and winter homes, and
fellow passengers on the road, on train and ship, could feel confident that their
conversations would not be revealed, unless they did so themselves.
Special credit for advice and a steady flow of new material and information on a
variety of related subjects is due to John K. Notz Jr., a semi-retired Chicago attorney,
whose special interest in my work originated from his own research on the
architectural heritage of the city that expanded into investigations into the Crane
family and its local legacies. He took time out of busy schedules to guide me expertly
through the Crane sites of Chicago and especially to Jerseyhurst on Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin, as well as to introduce me to the valuable Crane-Lillie Collection at the
Chicago History Museum (CHM). In a similar way, a recent doctoral student of mine,
Lyubov Ginzburg, originally from St. Petersburg, served as an important resource in
providing additional insights from her researches on the American community in St.
Petersburg and in answering a number of follow-up questions about the various Crane
connections in New York.
Closely related and just as essential are the services of the professional staffs of
the many libraries and archives involved in the research stage. They are the unsung
heroes of scholarly research, and I have benefitted from their invariably keen
knowledge of collections, expert assistance, and encouragements. Included for this
project in no special order are those archivists and librarians of the Library of
Congress Manuscript Division, the University of Chicago Manuscript Collection,
Chicago History Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Wisconsin Historical
Society, University Archives of the University of Wisconsin, University of Virginia
Archives, Harvard University Archives and Houghton Library, New York Public Library
Manuscript Division, and the University of Kansas libraries, where I may have set a
record for books checked out and for inter-library loans.
I also had opportunities to present preliminary pieces of my work at conferences
and meetings in New York, St. Petersburg, Boston, Moscow, Vologda, and in
Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Independence, Kansas. I have often been surprised and
encouraged by the interest in Charles Crane at these forums and through many
internet connections, and I am indebted to colleagues and students for their
comments and advice. To the always helpful and professional personnel of the
Department of History, headed by Sandee Kennedy, and to the College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences Digital Processing Center of the University of Kansas and Pam
LeRow, a big thanks for their assistance and guidance in the production of this work.
Above all, this subject inspired my belief in the importance of people-to-people
cultural exchanges, of which Crane was a pioneer. Russia and America, the Islamic
world and America, the Far East and America—these were the life and times of
Charles Crane. A champion of knowledge of these areas through education, lectures,
publications, he also was a major promoter of liberal, progressive agendas through
financial and moral backing of such prominent advocates as Lincoln Steffens, Louis
Brandeis, Robert La Follette, Woodrow Wilson, and university presidents—Charles
Eliot (Harvard), William Rainey Harper (Chicago), Nicholas Murray Butler (Columbia),
Edwin Alderman (Virginia), and Charles Van Hise (Wisconsin). His was a life to be
remembered for the variety of his encounters and endeavors and his sacrifices of
time, effort, and money for what he believed in.
 Glossary of Abbreviations in Notes

AEF—American Expeditionary Force

AMTORG—American Trading Corporation
AVPR—Archive of the Foreign Policy of Russia, Moscow
BAR—Bakhmeteff Archive, CU
CEP—Charles Eliot Papers
CDT—Chicago Daily Tribune
CER—Charles Edward Russell
CERYE—Committee for Education of Russian Youth
CFP—Crane Family Papers, BAR
CHM—Chicago History Museum
CM—Charles McCarthy
CMP—Charles McCarthy Papers
CRC—Charles R. Crane
CSC—Cornelia Smith Crane (wife)
CU—Columbia University
CWS—Cornelia Workman Smith (CSC)
CWE—Charles W. Eliot
DB—Donald Brodie
DFP—David Francis Papers, MoHS
DH—David Houston
DHP—David Houston Papers
DRF—David Rowland Francis
EA—Edwin Alderman
f. —folder, file
GU—Georgetown University
HL—Houghton Library (Harvard)
HU—Harvard University
HUA—Harvard University Archives
ICWA—Institute for Current World Affairs
JC—Josephine Crane (daughter)
JCB—Josephine Crane Bradley (daughter)
JOC—John Oliver Crane (son)
MD—Manuscript Division
ML—Mudd Library, Princeton University
MNP—Mildred Nelson Page
MoHS—Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
NA—National Archives and Records Administration
NL—Newberry Library, Chicago
NYPL—New York Public Library
NYT—New York Times
NYTribune—New York Tribune
PFM—Page Family Manuscripts (UVA)
PWW—Papers of Woodrow Wilson
RBML—Rare Book and Manuscript Library, CU
RC—Richard Crane (son)
RCP—Richard Crane Papers (GU)
RG—Record Group
RL—Regenstein Library (UC)
RLP—Robert Lansing Papers
PRFRUS—Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States
RTC—Richard Teller Crane, senior and junior (father and brother of CRC)
RW—Roger Williams
SH—Samuel Harper
SHP—Samuel Harper Papers (RL, UC)
TL—The Times of London
TW—Thomas Whittemore
UC—University of Chicago
UVA—University of Virginia Archives
UWA—University of Wisconsin Archives
WED—William E. Dodd
WHS—Wisconsin Historical Society
WP—Washington Post
WRH—William Rainey Harper
WW—Woodrow Wilson
YDS—Yale Divinity School
 Technical Notes

For the spelling of personal and place names the most common usage is
generally employed, though this may lead to some confusion. For example, the
Library of Congress transliteration system is the standard for Russian names and is
the model followed in the source notes, though a more common version is used in the
text: Trotsky for Trotskii, Kerensky for Kerenskii, as examples. Spelling of Near
Eastern names presented a challenge, since several variants are found in primary and
secondary sources. The more recent rendition is used when possible, but there are
still anomalies, especially with quotations from primary sources.
Western-style dating has been used throughout, though Russia, for example,
subscribed to the Julian calendar, thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar in the
early twentieth century. This results in the February Revolution of 1917 occurring in
March and the famous “October Revolution” in November. Again there may be a few
discrepancies between text and notes. The problem ceased when the Soviet
government adopted the Western calendar in February 1918. Near Eastern and Far
Eastern names and places were more of a challenge because of variations in
sources. The most current renditions have generally been followed.
 Chapter 1
A Chicago Wanderer: Family,
Friends, and Associates
Charles Richard Crane was born in a boarding house on the Chicago West Side
in August 1858. His life encompassed the rise of the United States from a weak and
divided nation on the eve of the Civil War to a world power in all respects by the time
of his death at his winter home and date/citrus “garden” near Palm Springs,
California, in February 1939, on the eve of another great war. He was a symbol of
that American transformation from his modest origins as a son of the owner of a
small brass foundry to a world traveler, businessman, politician, diplomat, and
philanthropist.
Much of his rise to prominence owed to the success of his father’s business,
Crane Company, which grew to be the largest manufacturer of plumbing fittings,
valves, fixtures, and pipe in the world. Though receiving only fragments of formal
higher education, Charles Crane would be honored for his achievements in various
fields with five honorary doctoral degrees from prestigious universities: University of
Chicago, Harvard, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and the College of
William and Mary. He had become an advisor to presidents and a devoted student of
Russian life and history, and was fascinated with the culture, intrigues, and the
economic and cultural possibilities of both the Far East and the Near East. As with
many of his contemporaries, family background shaped his future in his involvement in
a major business, in summer pastimes, an interest in world affairs, and a serious
effort to promote international studies in America.
Charles Crane is unusual and distinctive in his generation for his interests in a
variety of pursuits: exploration, philosophy, medical and natural science research,
international studies, the promotion of universities and colleges at home and abroad,
women’s education, local and national politics, settlement houses and civic
institutions, and the progressive movement. Though he cannot be compared to a
Carnegie, Ford, Mellon, or Rockefeller in the extent of his philanthropy, he was
nonetheless the son of a self-made millionaire, who followed his father’s wishes to
use his position and inheritance for “good causes.” Above all, he dedicated his life and
resources to the advancement of the United States in world affairs through his
association with world leaders, political causes, and the encouragement of American
knowledge about less-known areas—Russia, the Near East, and the Far East.
Many of his pursuits depended on financial resources that were born to him and
on his childhood surroundings and upbringing. His father, Richard Teller Crane (1832–
1912), came from Paterson, New Jersey, to Chicago in 1855, owing to a relative’s
success in the lumber business in the rapidly developing Middle West. The uncle,
Martin Ryerson, also from Paterson, went west to Michigan—Detroit, Muskegon,
Grand Rapids—in the 1830s as an Indian trader in fur and timber and by 1850 had
established in Chicago a lumber and construction business that soon extended into
ownership of prime real estate.[1] Charles Crane’s grandfather Timothy, after working
as a carpenter in New York City, had settled in Paterson as a builder and promoter of
recreational parks. His major achievement was the erection of a ninety-foot truss
suspension bridge over Passaic Falls, where he established a resort, especially
popular for families on summer holidays. He even made his own fireworks for
Independence Day celebrations.[2]
In 1827 Timothy Botchford Crane (1773–1846) married a much younger Maria
Ryerson (1803–1853), an older sister of Martin, and they had four children: Franklin
(1828), Jane Abigail (1829), Richard Teller, and Charles Squire (1834). Richard Teller
Crane carried the name of his father’s first wife, Sarah Teller, with whom he had nine
children between 1801 and 1827, about whom little is known.[3] Those by Maria had
little formal schooling but apparently learned much at home and on the job. “RT,” as
he was later generally known, began working, barely in his teens, in a local textile mill
and then in a tobacco processing factory, peddling the product from store to store in
Paterson.
After the death of his father when he was only fourteen, another aunt, Jane
Ryerson, found a job for him in Brooklyn at a brass foundry, where he learned the
basics of casting molten metals, proudly produced a large brass bell on his own,
while earning $2.50 a week and living in a boarding house that claimed most of his
wages.[4] From that time on he would be enamored of the process of casting bells, an
interest inherited by his son Charles. By 1850 Richard T. Crane was working in lower
Manhattan as a machinist for Hoe & Company, a maker of printing presses, for $2.00
a day, but the depression of 1854 left him unemployed. His mother having died in
1853, he journeyed to Chicago in early 1855 with his last savings to seek Uncle
Martin Ryerson, who was no doubt aware of his nephew’s mechanical training that
could add another dimension to his lumber and construction enterprises in the rapidly
growing Lake Michigan port and railroad center.[5]

R. T. Crane Brass and Bell Foundry, Chicago, c. 1858

(from Autobiography of R. T. Crane, Newberry Library)

With a loan of $1,000 from Ryerson, a considerable amount at the time, the
“Richard T. Crane Brass and Bell Foundry” was established in a corner of the
Ryerson lumberyard, where Crane lived in an unheated loft above the small factory
and employed sporadically up to seven workers.[6] As business grew, he summoned
his younger brother Charles from Paterson and they built a larger plant, “Crane
Brothers,” at 102 Lake Street (now no. 55 East Lake), that soon expanded to the
next lot and double in space, producing steam heating pipe and brass fixtures and
specializing in valves and cocks (faucets).[7] The company survived the 1857 financial
panic by taking surplus pipe in payments and by winning an important contract
($6,000) for the steam heating of the Cook County Court House in 1858 and another
for the Illinois State Penitentiary.[8]
The beginning of the Civil War brought an increased demand for metal workings
—bits and braces for horses and scabbards for swords. By 1865 the Crane firm was
meeting this demand while expanding its original production in yet a larger, four-story
plant at 10 North Jefferson Street with the number of employees increasing to 700.[9]
Brother Charles, while retaining a founding interest, left the business in 1872 to be
involved in a variety of other ventures, but the business would retain the title of “Crane
Bros. Manufacturing Company” for a time, later becoming simply “Crane Company.” It
grew with other Chicago enterprises—McCormick, Field, Armour, Swift—with the
city’s emergence as a major industrial and commercial center, and R. T. Crane,
concerned with the downtrodden who were often new immigrants, became known as
a liberal contributor to various charitable organizations, especially Jane Addams’s Hull
House and the Chicago Commons Association and its technical and civic training
school for indigent boys.
Owing to meeting two visiting sisters named Prentice from Lockport, New York,
Crane married the eldest, Mary Josephine, in 1857.[10] The younger sister, Eliza,
known by the future children as “Aunt Ide,” joined her sister in the Crane household to
assist with childbirth and parenting, and, after a number of years of loyal service,
succeeded her sister, who died of cancer in 1885, as his second wife, basically
continuing her role as manager of the household until her death in 1907. At that time,
Charles, the eldest son, persuaded his father to memorialize the first wife (his
mother) with the donation of a building and a substantial endowment of around
$100,000 to be added to the Hull House complex as a nursery school for poor
children, an interest of both Prentice sisters.[11] As the “Mary Crane Nursery School,”
this early Crane philanthropic enterprise, continues to serve families at four locations
in the Greater Chicago area, under the management of the Mary Crane League, a
non-profit corporation.[12]
To add to this large family, Richard Crane’s sister Jane (“Aunt Jennie”) also
moved in to share the chores of child rearing. And for a period the Prentice sisters’
brother Leon would also live with them to lend a hand.[13] The head of this large
household, for several years occupying a fifteen-room duplex rented from Ryerson on
West Washington Boulevard, concentrated many long days on his expanding
business, leaving the women the task of shepherding the family. Eight more children
followed Charles in regular succession: Herbert (“Herbie” or “Bert”) Prentice Crane
(1861–1943), who would be a long-time officer in the company but was never
seriously considered as a successor to its leadership; George Hamilton Crane (1862–
1864); Katherine (“Kate”) Elizabeth Crane (1865–1949); Mary (“May”) Ryerson
Crane (1866–1954); Frances (“Fan” or “Fannie”) Williams Crane (1869–1958); Emily
(“Emmy”) Rockwell Crane (1871–1964); Richard (“Dickie”) Teller Crane II (1873–
1931); and Harold Leon Crane (1875–1876).
Herbert married Harriet Doolittle (“Aunt Net”), a daughter of a company officer,
and Katherine wed Adolph Frederick Gartz (1862–1930), a New Yorker, who became
associated with Crane Company in 1890 and served many years as its treasurer;
Frances in 1895 became the wife of University of Chicago zoologist and marine
biologist Frank Lillie;[14] Emily was married for a few years to Chicago attorney
Thomas Chadbourne before a divorce in 1905;[15] and Mary wed Edmund Russell,
who was also an officer in the company. Richard Teller Crane’s expanded family and
business enterprise had become essentially the “Crane Family Company.” To be sure,
the eldest son Charles was never lacking for company—when at home. Perhaps his
early long-distance travels were an excuse to escape from the responsibilities—as
eldest son—from both family and business responsibilities.
Katherine and Frances were clearly Charles Crane’s favorite siblings, perhaps
because they were independent minded, developed liberal/radical political lifestyles,
and were advocates of women’s rights, such as the right to vote. They were also
bright, lively, entertaining, and vivacious—a challenge to their favorite brother. Kate
Crane Gartz was later known for her progressive activism in California where she
dubbed herself “a parlor provocateur” and was a friend of the Upton Sinclairs.[16]
Similarly, Frances Lillie created a stir in Chicago during the 1919 “red scare,” by
publicly supporting a workers strike against Crane Company. And she was not afraid
to be called a “radical”: “How did I become a radical? How did Tolstoy become a
radical? By thinking, I suppose. Every thinking person must recognize the fact that
there are inequalities and injustices in the present system of society.” She added that
her emphasis was on the welfare of children and supported the strike for a shorter
workday, so fathers could spend more time with their children.[17] The sisters certainly
influenced their brother toward the American progressive political arena, though he
had other motivations in that direction.
Charles Crane’s youngest brother, Richard, graduated from Harvard (class of
1895) and married Florence Higinbotham, a daughter of Harlow Higinbotham, a
prominent Chicago businessman, a partner of Marshall Field, and the president of the
Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Although fifteen years younger than Charles, Richard
Teller Crane II would succeed as director of the company in 1914 and enjoy the
considerable profits owing to the continued success and expansion of the “plumbing
fixture” company. He and his wife maintained a substantial residence in Chicago at
1550 Lake Shore Drive; a summer home, “The Castle,” on the North Atlantic shore of
Massachusetts near Ipswich; and a winter refuge on Jekyll’s Island, Georgia.[18] They
would have two children, Cornelius and Florence, who would both have interesting
lives of their own.[19]
 Sister Kate was involved in the company through her husband and son Adolph
Frederick (“Bud”) Gartz Jr. (vice president) for her lifetime. Suffering the tragic loss of
two young daughters in the Iroquois theater fire in 1903, she demonstrated the Crane
trait of “soldiering on.” Moving in the 1920s to Altadena, California, when her husband
retired, she promoted various social welfare causes through her substantial Crane
Company shares after his death in 1930. The Gartz family continued the “Crane”
presence at “Jerseyhurst” on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin through two more
generations, and many of them are buried in the prominently marked Richard Teller
Crane plot at Oak Hill cemetery in the town of Lake Geneva.[20]
According to the recollections of Frances Lillie, the first four Richard and Mary
Crane children were mostly under the care of “Aunt Ide,” while the younger four were
supervised by “Aunt Jennie,” in a calculated division of labor established by their
father. Their mother was often ill, and there was little but homemade entertainment,
one being a buggy pulled by a small horse that became a family pet.[21] She could not
remember ever having a Christmas tree.[22] It seemed to have been a plain and
simple but busy household that nurtured the upbringing of Charles Crane.
Though the Richard Teller Crane family was at first firmly Presbyterian from its
New Jersey roots in Paterson and parishioners of the Third Presbyterian Church in
Chicago, the restless head of the family steered it into the Congregational Church,
before finally joining the “more fashionable” Trinity Episcopal Church. Descendants
would follow this religious wanderlust, staying Episcopalian at St. Chrysostom’s, 1424
Dearborn,[23] converting to Roman Catholicism—for example, Frances Lillie and
Cornelia Smith Crane (Charles’s wife)—or drifting toward agnosticism and/or
mysticism with a consideration of other beliefs. The options thus presented may have
influenced the eldest son’s openness toward Russian Orthodoxy, Hinduism,
Buddhism, and, especially, the Muslim-Islamic world.
Still a “good willer” at heart, the elder Crane devoted his philanthropy close to
home, especially to workers at his factory and management employees, no doubt a
key to his business success. From the beginning of his Chicago enterprise, he
provided five-cent lunches for his workers at the plant and by 1890 had a full-time
physician at the factory to provide free primary care for employees and their families.
[24] Crane Company granted paid leave from work and expenses for all employees to

attend the Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition) in 1893. He also sponsored
regular summer outings for the workers and their families on the Fourth of July, as
well as on other occasions, cultivating the image of a generous, yet paternalistic
company.
Crane also prided himself on having an “open office” during workdays and for his
special emphasis on good letter writing, a trait passed to his children. This is not to
say that labor relations were always tranquil; during the Haymarket strife of 1886,
Crane workers went on strike, as well as during other economic downturns, in protest
of their wages being reduced. Nevertheless, his will provided a substantial
endowment ($1,000,000) for worker pensions and stated that he wanted to have
done more for charity but bequeathed that obligation to his heirs, who, on the whole,
carried it out.[25]
In the mid 1870s the family’s prosperity was recorded in a portrait by Theodore
Pine, who lived with them for a few months in 1875 to sketch out the members. As
the oldest son, Charles is depicted at the back and center, stern and adult (at age
seventeen), towering over the others, a position his father no doubt expected of him
—with a Rocky Mountain scene in the background. The painting was presented to
Hull House, where it hung for many years until after the death of the senior Crane,
when it was reclaimed by the Crane Company to honor its founder in the office of the
company, with a copy replacing it at Hull House.[26]

The Richard Teller Crane Family

(photograph of portrait by Theodore Pine, Chicago History Museum)

As the oldest child, Charles Richard Crane is remembered warmly by a younger

sister as studious, playful, athletic, but somewhat distant, and absent for long
periods. He spent time with books and seemed destined for a scientific or medical
career, acquiring a skeleton and a microscope and constantly dissecting insects and
small creatures,[27] except for the fact that his father was grooming him in his own
image as a skilled mechanic who would learn on the job and be his successor.
Consequently, the young Crane spent many hours of his youth observing and
participating in the actual processes of making things out of metal and assembling
them into fixtures and machines. He also had time to engage in a young men’s club,
along with his cousin and closest friend, Martin A. Ryerson, as charter members of
the Everett Literary Society that was active from 1872 to 1880.[28]
 CRANE COMPANY
The plumbing fixture business benefitted considerably from the Great Fire of Chicago
in 1871, having survived it intact while achieving public recognition by donating large
engines to pump water from the Chicago River to fight the fire; it then fostered the
rebuilding of the city, which happened to coincide with the large-scale introduction of
indoor plumbing and steam heating, and the company boldly expanded into the
associated manufacture of elevators for the taller buildings.[29] It was in this latter
“sideline” that Charles Crane was officially inaugurated into the business, building an
entire steam-powered elevator from scratch for a Detroit hotel, still in service in the
1930s. Much of his early education was on the job at the factory from age ten,
working—and observing—ten hours a day for five years, according to his memoirs,
probably an exaggeration.[30] He proudly informed his wife-to-be in 1877 that he was
now in charge of the brass foundry, the foundation stone of the Crane enterprise.[31]
Clearly, Richard Teller Crane and his company, after very modest beginnings,
were positioned on the cutting edge of major business growth from the rapid
expansion of urban population and construction—residences, business offices, and
factories. Indoor plumbing, steam radiators, and elevators for multifloor buildings for
passengers and freight after 1870 escalated its business, doubling the size of the
“works” in a few years. And by diligence and care he made the most of new
opportunities, and, with particular forethought, he discounted the sale of bulk facilities
for public restrooms that were installed in many county courthouses across the
Midwest, which also served as advertising. The business prospered even through
major economic downturns to become the world’s largest manufacturer of valves,
pipes, and fixtures associated with any kind of water movement involved in
construction—from homes and apartments to business and public facilities. In 1895,
however, Richard Teller Crane decided to concentrate on fixtures and pipe and sold
the elevator business to the Otis Company.[32] His son was disappointed by this
decision, since he was proud of his early introduction into that part of the business.
The company’s success led to the purchase of the Bridgeport, Connecticut,
factory of Eaton, Cole, and Burnham, expanded and embellished by exterior designs
by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan in 1903, the whole negotiation supervised by
Charles Crane.[33] This major expansion also resulted in another new factory in
Birmingham, Alabama. To no surprise, additional Crane subsidiary plants would be
established in Chicago. By that time Crane had become a name as closely
associated with “the second city” as those of Field, Palmer, Swift, McCormick,
Pullman, and Armour. Its success would naturally shape the career and future
activities of the oldest son, who served a number of years as vice president (de facto
executive vice president) and succeeded his father as president upon his death in
1912. Charles Crane’s exposure to the workplace, however, would be interrupted,
and displaced, by other interests, especially travel.
Even after company leadership was transferred to the younger brother in 1914,
Charles Crane would continue to be associated with the company and especially in its
Russian enterprise for a number of years. A 1921 company catalogue of almost
1,000 pages illustrates Crane Company’s scope and movement into the public
restroom domain.[34] By that time the central plant in Chicago occupied 150 acres
with 50 buildings and a secondary plant at Bridgeport of about half that size. It had
about a hundred distribution centers in the United States and over forty sales offices
in such cities as Fort Wayne, Indiana; Fresno, California; Madison, Wisconsin;
Portland, Maine; and Topeka, Kansas.[35] The company remained under family control
after the death of its founder until the 1950s, when the majority ownership of stock
and bonds passed to new owners who continued the name and central manufacturing
focus, though installing a bird (crane) as a symbol.[36] The original founder, Richard
Teller Crane Sr., clearly ranks among the elite of successful entrepreneurs of the
golden age of American enterprise, along with Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Deere,
Westinghouse, Edison, McCormick, Chrysler, Wright, Singer, and others.

CHICAGO AND LAKE GENEVA RESIDENCES

By the late 1870s the growing Crane family would move to more substantial homes
on Washington Boulevard,[37] before moving to a more impressive residence at 2541
South Michigan Avenue with the eldest son soon installed nearby (2559). These
residences (none surviving) became centers of Chicago social life by the 1890s,
especially during the Chicago World’s Fair.[38]
Lake Geneva in southern Wisconsin became a Crane summer living and social
center, first by the enrollment of three daughters at the Lake Geneva (Ogontz)
Seminary in 1878–1880.[39] After a preliminary visit during the summer of 1879,
Richard Teller Crane erected a summer home on the north shore, which was in its
early stages of becoming a popular destination for the Chicago elite.[40] The Crane
compound soon grew to four large summer houses at “Jerseyhurst,” the name
derived from the family’s New Jersey origins: for the senior Crane (Jerseyhurst,
1880), Herbert (“El Nido,” 1887), Kate and Adolf Gartz (“Glen Mary,” 1887), and
Charles and Cornelia (“Cloverbank,” 1889).[41] The houses were commodious
Victorian style homes with wide verandas. The first and largest, Jerseyhurst, was
designed by Chicago architect, Henry Lord Gay, who also had a home on the lake.
The Cranes were among the first of several prominent Chicago families to
establish summer homes on this unusual crystalline glacier-made lake. Others that
followed included “cousin” Martin A. Ryerson (“Bonnie Brae,” 1881)[42] and Charles L.
Hutchinson (“Wychwood,” 1901). More important, Lake Geneva is where Charles
Crane learned to sail and to relish water recreation—as well as summertime
entertainments, such as golf.[43] Since the railroad depot for the Chicago &
Northwestern trains in the town of Lake Geneva was several miles by road from
Jerseyhurst, and the country club and golf course were on the other side of the lake,
the Cranes soon had a steam boat on the lake, appropriately named The Passaic—
honoring the connection with New Jersey—to carry family and friends to and from
their homes and for outings on the lake. The first Passaic was made of wood by the
Napper Boat Shop and fitted by Herbert Crane with a steam engine from the Crane
plant in Chicago; after its launch in 1880, it served the family for twenty-two years,
then passed into other hands until broken up around 1925.[44]
A second, larger steamboat, also named Passaic, built by the Racine Boat
Company, replaced it in 1902. Plated with quarter-inch steel and eighty-seven feet
long, it competed with a number of other crafts on the lake, such as those of Ryerson
and Wrigley, in durability and size. It provided transportation for family and company
occasions, such as the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of Crane Company at the
lake in 1930. It remains in service after over a hundred years as a symbol of that time
and place, though renamed Matriarch and converted from steam to gasoline engine
power.[45]
The now wealthy Richard Teller Crane also indulged in wintertime escapes from
Chicago, focusing mainly on Pasadena, California, though occasionally also to Miami,
sometimes both during the same year.[46] These “extended vacations” were usually
limited to hotel or boarding house arrangements and included various members of the
larger family. In 1871 he went abroad for the first time to an exhibition in Paris with
“Uncle” Ryerson. A self-made entrepreneur with no formal education, the senior
Crane developed a critical view of colleges and universities, which he publicized in
privately printed diatribes aimed especially against Ivy League schools, who in his
estimation pampered, wined and dined, and spoiled the elite youth of America into an
alcoholic stupor, and, even worse, produced men of limited practical knowledge and
value for the new age of practical technology of which he was a leading example.[47]
This perspective, however, may have been inspired by his son Herbert’s brief
experience as a student at Harvard. It corresponds to widespread criticism of the
operation of America’s so-called elite institutions, reflected especially by Woodrow
Wilson’s failed attempts as president of Princeton University to curb the dominance of
exclusive eating and drinking clubs on that campus and his effort to establish college
quadrangles open to all students to foster a more productive educational environment.
[48]
The Passaic, Lake Geneva, launched 1902
(photograph 2010 by Mary Ann Saul)

R. T. Crane also stood out as a controversial figure in the Chicago business

community. A contemporary, Lucy Mitchell, described its leaders: “Armour and hams;
Pullman and sleeping cars; Marshall Field and the department store; Potter Palmer
and the hotel; R. T. Crane and plumbing, valves and elevators; Fairbanks and scales.”
And she added, “As for R. T. Crane, he had nothing in common with anyone else I
ever knew. R. T. as he was called was literally a law unto himself. I well remember
the agitation when he burned his wife’s will.”[49] According to this source, he had
deeded the Michigan Avenue house to his second wife (Eliza Prentice) for tax
reasons, and she then left it in a will to her brothers, who tried to claim ownership,
with the upset widower responding: “She was penniless when I married her. She
knew perfectly well that I gave her the house only to lessen my taxes. She had no
right to make a will. Of course, I burned it!”[50]
Equally controversial was his third marriage to a much younger Chicago socialite,
Emily Sprague Hutchinson, who would have little association with his children.[51] She
created a local scandal, shortly after his death, by her remarriage to P. T. A. Junkin,
known widely as her lover, and by her resolute continued occupation of the home on
Michigan Avenue.[52] Emily Junkin, fortunately, retained no role in the operation or
ownership of the company. “R.T.” made sure of that.
The senior Crane’s “opposition” to higher education no doubt contributed to his
eldest son’s lack of it, but this is probably an exaggeration because of the stir his
written and vocal pronouncements created. After all, Herbert attended Harvard for a
time and the youngest son, Richard, would graduate from that university.[53] And he
supported his daughter Frances’s successful pursuit of a medical degree at the
University of Chicago, certainly rare for a woman at that time—and she would marry
a professor from that institution with her father’s blessings. Charles took a special
interest in his sisters’ higher education, insisting that Frances spend a year in
Germany to learn the language thoroughly in preparation for a scientific career that he
had wanted. Another important factor was that his mothers, the Prentice sisters,
were clearly advocates of the cultivation of talents. Eliza Crane was fluent in French,
which she demonstrated in letters written in that language in 1901, encouraged
foreign language study of the children, and her sister left knowledgeable observations
in a diary of the 1877 family trip to Europe.[54] Charles Crane also promoted the study
of foreign languages to his sisters and children while expressing regret for his minimal
formal study of them, though he would pick up bits and pieces by sporadic exposure
to French, German, Italian, Russian, Czech, Chinese, Turkish, and Arabic.

EARLY TRAVELS
Charles Crane’s first long-distance trip away from Chicago and Lake Geneva was
with his family for the centennial celebration of the declaration of American
independence in 1876, when they stayed with relatives in West Philadelphia. The
main purpose of the visit involved business, an exhibit of a Crane engine pump at the
exposition, but the visit was clouded by the death of the youngest of the Crane
siblings, still under a year old. Charles Crane was clearly affected by this and would
often mention it in subsequent family gatherings.
Little is known about any influences that may have resulted from the young
Crane’s exposure to America’s first “world’s fair.” The following year, suffering from
some persistent health problems that involved the nervous system and digestion, he
embarked at age nineteen on his first overseas voyage, boarding the Emerald Isle in
New York in June for the British Isles. He was allowed to lodge in the wheelhouse and
took turns steering. On the ship he met William F. Libbey, a recent college graduate,
who he credits with guiding him around England, Scotland, and Ireland. In London he
stayed at the Castle and Falcon, near The Strand, where he would return several
times in the future, until it was demolished in 1925. By late July 1877 he was in
Coventry, recounting a visit to Stratford and expecting to go on to Chester.[55] Libbey
also tutored the inquisitive Crane in the culture, literature, and philosophy of the British
Isles. Clearly, Crane found travel exciting and fascinating, an education on the road.
That fall he enrolled at the Stevens Institute, a leading institution for technical
education in Hoboken, New Jersey, but his tenure was abbreviated. He withdrew with
his father’s approval after only a week to join the family on another tour of Europe,
sailing on 29 September on the Britannia (the largest steamship at the time) for
Liverpool. Traveling with them in Great Britain, he was thrilled to be returning as a
guide, and they continued on to the continent. He described his travels to his fiancée,
Cornelia Smith, in New Jersey, from Madrid and Nice, and hinted to “Marty” that he
might go on from Italy to Greece.[56] It is not clear whether he was with the family for
one of its highlights, a dinner in Paris on 8 November 1877 with former president
Ulysses S. Grant, who was on a world tour that would later include Russia.[57]
 From the continent Charles Crane departed from Naples to the Ottoman Empire
and Egypt, where he met Richard Burton, a “real Arabist,” returning through Palestine
and Syria and reaching Smyrna in May.[58] He rejoined the family in Paris in June by
way of Greece and Venice. He was clearly impressed by what he had seen and done
in the Near East during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). Witnessing the
oppressive Ottoman Empire close hand, he was decidedly on the Russian side. It can
safely be said that Charles Crane, having just turned twenty, gained a priceless
education during his ten months abroad. He had also become devoted to the pursuit
of travel in general, and the “fever” of the Near East would stay with him for life.

The Young Charles Crane, c. age twenty

(RMBL, Columbia University)

In February 1879, after only a few months at home, he set off westward for
Japan, going as far as San Francisco, where he was held up by unspecified medical
problems and aborted the trip.[59] Back briefly in Chicago, he accepted an invitation
from cousin “Marty,” then a student at Harvard, to attend the June Harvard-Yale boat
race. On his way back to Chicago he stopped over in New York City. Wandering
along the east side Manhattan docks, he happened upon the Venture, a small sailing
vessel, about to embark for Java with a cargo of kerosene. The captain offered to
take him along as company. After hastily assembling items for reading, such as the
works of Herbert Spencer, eating, and drinking—and obtaining his father’s permission
—Charles Crane departed New York on 26 June for a real travel adventure. He noted
in his memoirs that after passing Montauk Point he did not see land for 110 days—
until reaching Christmas Island in the Pacific, where he celebrated his twenty-first
birthday.[60]
This voyage was a rich experience, sharing duties with the captain, taking turns
at the wheel, going aloft to set sail, directing the mixed nationality crew, and suffering
through the heat and dead calm of the horse latitudes. The ship’s menu was limited to
oatmeal, salt beef, baked beans, and canned corn. He credited the addition of a
bottle of Guinness stout every night from the several cases he brought from New
York with saving him from beri beri, which caused a few deaths among the crew.
Arriving in Batavia (modern Jakarta) in mid-October, Crane wrote Marty: “Nowhere
have I been so greatly impressed with the value of facts—of even the most trivial
observations—as on the sea. It is wonderful, indeed, to see the enormous importance
of these little things when colligated by a philosopher. Everything has its own
significance. I can partially illustrate what I mean by taking up the color of water.” He
added a long description of the voyage, citing the works of Matthew Fontaine Maury,
original editions of his treatises on navigation happening to be on board.[61]
Besides Maury, the young Chicago seaman read the works of Spencer, to whose
“Principles” he became a life-long adherent, the journals of Nathaniel Bowditch, and
Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. Finally reaching the East Indies (Indonesia), Crane
debarked from the Venture to spent a month in the nature gardens of the Buitenzorg
Valley (Bogor), about forty miles south of Batavia; after three months on Java, he
visited the famous volcano of Krakatoa, just four years before its famous eruption. He
then toured India, visiting Calcutta and Agra, and went on to China, where he made
the acquaintance of the American missionary family of John Malcolm Kerr in Shanghai
before visiting Japan and finally sailing homeward in the late spring of 1880 across
the Pacific, arriving in Chicago in March.[62]
Still not having enough of extended travels, Crane set forth from San Francisco in
1882 on the W. H. Dimond, a 350-ton brigantine that had delivered sugar to San
Francisco from the Sandwich (Hawaiian) islands. He spent several weeks on the Big
Island and Maui exploring volcanos and lava tunnels and formed an attachment to the
Dimond, which remained in service on the same route until 1920.[63] For a young man
from the Midwest, Charles Crane had already logged an impressive number of miles
(and days) on the high seas. It is not clear why his father would allow these extended
diversions—and pay for them. Probably he believed that this was better than four
years at Harvard, or perhaps he did not want him in his road in running the company?
Later associate Walter Rogers may have summed it up correctly:

His father tolerated his gadding about because through his son he kept abreast
of the world. The old man had little education and knew little outside his own line.
His son’s wanderings were also tolerated because he had been sickly since
youth. CRC never went to high school. All his knowledge was self-acquired. He
 learned to speak good French, fair German, and quite a lot of Russian, which he
picked up during his travels.[64]

In any event, his travels abroad would shape the rest of his life. He set a
possible American passenger record in ocean crossings with an approximate count:
Atlantic thirty-six, Pacific twelve, Indian four, not counting other bodies of water such
as the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
Charles Crane’s travels also included the United States, and he was especially
fond of the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. He joined a group of Chicago
businessmen on a tour sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1880 that went as far
as Cimarron, New Mexico, and resulted in a recuperative delay of a couple of weeks,
owing to an accidental shot from his own pistol that creased his skull, causing much
bleeding and scars from powder burns.[65] But he was back on the rails again the next
spring to Colorado, ascending Pike’s Peak on 26 May, returning again in July 1882,
recording the climb to sister Fannie in raptured tones.[66]

FRIENDS
Though he met many people on his travels, four American friends, apart from the
immediate family, stand out for their inspiration and influence. One was Martin Antoine
Ryerson (1857–1932), the only son of Martin Ryerson, continuing the early Ryerson-
Crane relationship through the second generation. Though the seniors Crane and
Ryerson went their own ways after the successful expansion of Crane Company, their
progeny continued to correspond and refer to each other as “cousins” in an endearing
way.[67] Charles often noted that “Marty” was his best friend. The junior Ryerson, a
few months older than Crane, was also an inveterate traveler, whose destinations
included the Middle East and India but concentrated on Western Europe, where he
would become one of the leading American collectors of European art, especially the
works of prominent French impressionists (Claude Monet especially), but his interests
also included a wide range that included Roman and Greek artifacts. Ryerson’s
interests in art and culture shaped Crane’s own pursuits in those directions. They
would also have a common concern with supporting higher educational institutions and
museums. Another Ryerson influence on the young Crane may have been an
ambiguity (or neutrality) in regard to established religion.[68]
The elder Martin Ryerson had left a legacy of service to the city he did much to
construct. Perhaps most remarkable is a tribute to the Native American forerunners of
the region, with whom he had early close and friendly relations. As a tribute to the
Ottawa tribe’s contributions to the Great Lakes region, he commissioned a bronze
statue, The Alarm, by Philadelphia sculptor John Boyle, depicting a mature Indian
chief, his squaw, a boy, and a dog, unveiled in Lincoln Park in May 1884.[69] He also
left a considerable estate to his son, daughter, and widow valued at the time at over
$3,000,000, as well as a number of valuable properties—and the son added in tribute
to his father, a striking Egyptian style mausoleum, designed by Louis Sullivan, in
Graceland Cemetery.[70] Building on his inheritance and sound investments, Martin A.
Ryerson, the son, would become arguably the most important single benefactor of
the city of Chicago.[71]
Much of the junior Ryerson’s philanthropy was with the guidance of Charles L.
Hutchinson, who was the founding president of the Art Institute of Chicago, and
related to Ryerson’s wife.[72] Ryerson also contributed a substantial amount
($150,000), and was instrumental in gaining more, to match a million-dollar
endowment from John D. Rockefeller, for the establishment of the University of
Chicago in 1892.[73] He then served for over twenty years as the charter president of
the university’s Board of Trustees, endowed the Ryerson Physical Laboratory, one of
the initial buildings on the campus, and contributed to several endowed
professorships.[74] In retrospect, the new university could have been named the
“Rockefeller-Ryerson University.”
Martin A. Ryerson is best known for his contributions to the Art Institute of
Chicago, which compete with those of other major American art collectors, such as
Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and Whitney. Donating his purchases beginning in 1892
on a regular basis, he also left art valued conservatively at $7,000,000 to the Institute
upon his death.[75] The gifts ranged widely from ancient to modern—and to an
impressively designed art research library. Perhaps the most significant of his
contributions are Claude Monet’s Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise; The Blind Musician by
John Goossens; a small, exquisite Leonardo Di Vinci; and Winslow Homer’s The
Herring Net.[76] And he also contributed to the Field Museum and other institutions.
For example, the Walker Museum at the University of Chicago received a valuable
collection of over 200 pieces of Native American pottery and textiles in 1895 from
Ryerson. This “cousin” of Crane’s, a graduate of Harvard, and successful Chicago
realtor, investor, and promoter, clearly influenced Charles Crane toward world travel,
judicious art collecting, and philanthropy.
Martin A. Ryerson
(Chicago History Museum)

Years later, Charles Crane wrote a special tribute to Marty in a letter to his son
at the State Department, in recommending him for a position on the American
delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919:

I believe it would be hard to find in all the United States one who could be of so
much value at Paris just now as Martin A. Ryerson of Chicago. His earlier years
were spent in France and he speaks French as well as he speaks English. He
has a profound sympathetic understanding of the French people with whom he
has been in contact all his life, visiting France almost yearly. . . . No one is more
entirely trusted in Chicago in large matters requiring character, judgement and
experience. A call for him to go to Paris now would give a feeling of vast comfort
to all the people of the middle west and probably the whole country.[77]

In accepting a gift of an illuminated Chinese manuscript, Crane, concerned about

its safekeeping, offered either to return it, or to “send it, as I have sent a number of
other rare works, to the Ryerson Library at the Art Institute of Chicago.” He added,
“Mr. Ryerson was a cousin of mine and my closest friend so that in a way this is a
family institution. He had much to do with the building up of the Art Institute, finally
concentrating on the beautiful library, unquestionably the finest in the country.”[78]
Though not approaching the degree of commitment to the world of art as his
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe
and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating
the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may
be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to,
incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a
copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph
1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner
of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party
distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this
agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO
REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF
WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE
FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it,
you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by
sending a written explanation to the person you received the work
from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must
return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity
that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a
replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work
electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to
give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in
lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may
demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted
by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability,
costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur:
(a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project
Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.
It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and
donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a
secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help,
see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,

Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can
be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the
widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small
donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax
exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and
keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in
locations where we have not received written confirmation of
compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of
compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where

we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no
prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in
such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of
other ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how
to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.