Crane, Charles Richard

Crane, Charles Richard (1858–1939) internationalist, philanthropist; born in Chicago. He was the heir to the Crane Company plumbing supplies fortune. He traveled at an early age and met the British adventurer, Richard Burton, in Damascus. He sold his interest in the family company to a brother (1912) and was the largest single contributor to Woodrow Wilson's campaign in 1912. At the end of World War I, he coauthored (with Henry Churchill King) the Crane-King report on what to do with the various lands belonging to the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire; although ignored at the time, their warning that Palestine was largely an Arab land would in later years be drawn into the controversy over the establishment of Israel on this territory. He was ambassador to China (1920–21). He gave generously to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and to the American Colleges in Istanbul. He created the Institute of Current World Affairs (1925). He had an extremely large number of international friends and connections.