For people who make it into positions of great power, having a mentor is vital. The man I am writing about today, Winthrop Murray Crane (1853-1920), was not only a politician of great significance in his own right, but he also mentored a president. Born to family in the paper mill business, the Crane Paper Company, Crane went to work for his father upon completing school at 17, and worked his way up through the company, serving in multiple roles so he could fully understand the business. In 1872, Crane had his first major success in obtaining a wrapping paper contract for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and seven years later he followed up by securing an exclusive contract for the Crane Paper Company to provide paper for the currency of the U.S. government, a role it still has today. After Crane’s father’s death in 1887 he took the reins of the business and managed to significantly increase his family’s wealth through wise investments.
In 1892, Crane entered politics when he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and would take part in subsequent conventions. He was notably not big on public speaking and disliked the process of campaigning. Indeed, Crane never made a speech in his years campaigning for office (can you guess who he mentored?). His reticence did not hurt him in Massachusetts, and in 1897, he was elected lieutenant governor, followed up by his election in 1899 as governor, serving from 1900 to 1903. As governor, Crane practiced fiscal conservatism, succeeded in getting an asylum constructed, and mediated a strike by the Teamster’s Union. His success in resolving that strike got him national recognition, including from President Theodore Roosevelt, who brought him on to be among the negotiators to successfully mediate the national Anthracite Coal Strike in 1902. Crane also advised Roosevelt to publicly state that he would not seek a third term when running for reelection (Bent). Although Roosevelt asked him to be Secretary of the Treasury, he declined. Crane was described thusly by author Carolyn W. Johnson, “This Governor of Massachusetts, deep in public service, was by temperament a private man. In public reticent and unwilling to speak, he conversed constantly in closed meetings, in quiet conferences, and on the telephone….he never said more than he had to, and he said it once…His program was not one of sweeping changes, but one of small steps toward his goals: curtailed expenditures, reduced indebtedness, and increased legislative self-discipline…His administration was unspectacular and widely praised; he had not been expected, or elected to introduce grand reforms…He was the classic man-behind-the-scenes. Avoiding limelight and applause, he was a man who ‘knew,’ a collector of information, an acute observer who had many sources…With an easy private approach to individuals, he won their confidence; with sound perceptions, he gained their respect. His colleagues knew that he could keep a secret. He was honest, not extravagantly frank, and eminently sensible, with a deep knowledge of men and a wide grasp of affairs” (24, 29, 39). Crane chose not to run again for governor, but public office would again call to him.
In 1904, Senator George Frisbie Hoar, a longtime institution in Massachusetts and on Capitol Hill, died after several months of illness. Crane was appointed his successor by Governor John L. Bates, and the legislature elected him to a full term in 1907. In the Senate, he was known as a capable behind-the-scenes leader of the conservative wing of the GOP. This was attested to by his colleague, Chauncey Depew of New York, who wrote that he “never made a speech. I do not remember that he made a motion. Yet he was the most influential member of that body” (Abrams, 38). Crane also would often advise people not to act in certain situations. As he would tell people, “Do nothing” (Abrams, 39). Even though he was one of the Senate’s most conservative members in his day, he was known for his skills in persuasion and in bridging differences between the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Crane also could be direct in a way that his colleagues hesitated to be. For instance, after numerous Republicans had tried all sorts of indirect ways to divine how a fellow senator was going to vote on a crucial bill, Crane told his colleagues to “wait a minute”, strolled over to the senator and conversed with him briefly, then walked back and telling his fellow Republicans that “he’ll vote for the bill”, and when asked how he found out, he simply stated, “I asked him” (The Buffalo News). He was also inherently a high-tariff man, in line with traditional Republican economic philosophy, and voted for the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. However, Crane was also willing to vote for President Taft’s push for reciprocal trade relations with Canada, something that wouldn’t come to pass until the Reagan Administration. Crane was opposed to many reform proposals of his day, including publicizing campaign contributions, direct election of senators, and abolishing the electoral college. He could also engage in some behind-the-scenes maneuvering, possibly including Democratic Governor William L. Douglas not running for reelection. According to politician Charles Hamlin, Republicans had uncovered that Douglas had obtained by fraud an honorable discharge during the War of the Rebellion, and that Crane and Senator Lodge agreed to keep this a secret if he did not run again (Abrams, 120). Active at the Republican National Convention, Crane feared that William Howard Taft would be not be a sufficiently strong candidate, but he would fully back his reelection effort in 1912. By this point, Crane had declined to be a candidate for reelection and was succeeded by the also strongly conservative John W. Weeks. Crane’s DW-Nominate score stands at a 0.669, making him the second most conservative senator by that scale in all the time he was in office.
Mentoring a President
Crane took some interest in the career of a young state legislator who he saw as possessing great potential, this being none other than Calvin Coolidge. Although Coolidge was naturally a quiet person around strangers, Crane told him that this was the right path, advising that silence “avoids creating a situation where one would otherwise not exist” (Tacoma). Thus, Coolidge’s silence was both natural and political strategy. Coolidge noted about his mentor, “his influence was very great, but that it was of an intangible nature” (Abrams, 38). Both Crane and Coolidge were similar politically, as Coolidge was also a backer of high tariffs and both men were opposed to inflationary currency.
Crane’s Last Cause: The Versailles Treaty
Although Murray Crane had a long history of being a strong partisan, he nonetheless saw the establishment of the League of Nations and the US’s participation in it as vital. His position would be that of a mild reservationist, being for including some modest Republican reservations to the treaty before enacting it. This placed him at odds with his old colleague, Henry Cabot Lodge, who was for strong reservations to the treaty, and it is debatable whether Lodge would have really accepted a treaty in any form. Crane advocated for the adoption of a plank for the Republican Party to endorse the creation of the League of Nations with “proper reservations”, which was interpreted by journalist Mark Sullivan (1920) of the Des Moines Register to be as strong as Wilson’s as “proper” was a word that had a lot of room for interpretation (1). By this time, Crane’s health was fragile, and the hot summer of New England pushed him over the edge. On July 31, 1920, he collapsed in Northampton, Massachusetts prior to an event notifying Coolidge of his nomination for vice president, having been in the hot sun throughout the day. Although Crane recovered enough to be taken home, he found himself having several more collapses when he tried to work in subsequent days. As he himself said about the situation, “something gave out” (The Franklin Repository). The last two months of Crane’s life would be of increasing lethargy, and despite his family seeking the help of specialists he died on October 2nd of brain inflammation at his family home.
References
Abrams, R. (1964). Conservatism in a progressive era: Massachusetts politics 1900-1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Ex-Sen. Crane Died Following Heart Attack. (1920, October 2). The Franklin Repository, 2.
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Johnson, C.W. (1967). Winthrop Murray Crane: a study in Republican leadership, 1892-1920. Northampton, MA: Smith College.
Memorial to Crane Unveiled at Dalton. (1925, October 3). The New York Times.
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On Great Examples. (2013, April). The Importance of the Obvious.
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Shlaes, A. (2013, May 12). Amity Shlaes: Irony of a Coolidge coin. Orange County Register.
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Sullivan, M. (1920, June 10). Sullivan Declares Crane’s League Plank As Strong As Wilson’s. The Des Moines Register.
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Tacoma, T. (2019, July 4). Calvin Coolidge’s Birthday Is The Perfect Time To Dispel Popular Myths About Him. The Federalist.
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Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 