CRANE, MAN OF BUSINESS.
Massachusetts Senator, Though Neither
an Orator Nor an Author, Is a
Highly Successful Statesman.
Winthrop Murray Crane, who succeeded George Frisbie Hoar as United States Senator from Massachusetts, is not an author, orator, or scholar, but Massachusetts is as proud of him as of the other distinguished Senators she has furnished. Senator Crane was born in Dalton, Massachusetts, in 1853. His grandfather had started a small paper-mill in a valley among the Berkshire hills, more than fifty years before that date, and Crane's father, in turn, had taken up the business and continued it. Still, while it gave a fair living, it did little more, and was of no greater consequence than hundreds of other little industries in the State.
Young Crane was educated at Williston Academy, Easthampton. He showed no fondness for books and study, and made no attempt to get a college education. At seventeen he left school, put on overalls and started in to learn the paper-making business in his father's mill. Methods were still crude and the production of the mill was small.
When Crane had learned all the mill could teach him he began to look beyond it for improved methods, for a greater outlet for the product, and for increased capacity. He speedily found ways to reach all three, and the little mill began to take on importance.
In 1879 he learned of a new method of running silk threads through paper, and he was convinced that this was an important advantage in the making of paper for currency, as it would render counterfeiting more difficult. He made up some samples of the new paper and took them to Washington. Those whom he saw were not at first impressed, and he was referred from one official to another, back and around the whole line, spending several weeks in fruitless endeavor.
The case of the red-threaded paper seemed hopeless, but he stuck persistently to the task, and brought the paper so often to the notice of the authorities that at last they consented to look at it. Then its advantages were evident, and the Crane Brothers' paper-mills got a contract to furnish a lot of bond-paper for the printing of government notes. They have held the contract ever since, and all the paper on which United States money is printed comes from the paper-mills in Dalton.