CRANSTON, a city of Providence county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., adjoining the city of Providence on the S. Pop. (1890) 8099; (1900) 13,343; (1910) 21,107; area, 30 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. The surface of the E. part is level, that of the W. part is somewhat rolling. Within the city are several villages, including Arlington, Auburn, Edgewood, Fiskeville and Oaklawn. The inhabitants of the country districts are engaged largely in the growing of hay, Indian corn, rye, oats and market-garden produce; in the several villages cotton and print goods, fuses for electrical machinery, and automatic fire-protection sprinklers are manufactured. The value of Cranston’s factory product increased from $1,402,359 in 1900 to $2,130,969 in 1905, or 52%. The state has a farm of 667 acres in the S. part of the city; on this are the state prison, the Providence county jail, the state workhouse and the house of correction, the state almshouse, the state hospital for the insane, the Sockanosset school for boys, and the Oaklawn school for girls—the last two being departments of the state reform school. The post-office address of all these state institutions is Howard. Cranston was settled as a part of Providence about 1640 by associates of Roger Williams, and in 1754 was incorporated as a separate township, but in 1868, in 1873 and in 1892 portions of it were reannexed to Providence. The township is said to have been named in honour of Samuel Cranston (1659-1727), governor of Rhode Island from 1698 until his death. It was incorporated as a city in 1910.
CRANTOR, a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy, was born, probably about the middle of the 4th century B.C., at Soli in Cilicia. He was a fellow-pupil of Polemo in the school of Xenocrates at Athens, and was the first commentator on Plato. He is said to have written some poems which he sealed up and deposited in the temple of Athens at Soli (Diog. Laërtius iv. 5. 25). Of his celebrated work On Grief (Περὶ πένθους), a letter of condolence to his friend Hippocles on the death of his children, numerous extracts have been preserved in Plutarch’s Consolatio ad Apollonium and in the De consolatione of Cicero, who speaks of it (Acad. ii. 44. 135) in the highest terms (aureolus et ad verbum ediscendus). Crantor paid especial attention to ethics, and arranged “good” things in the following order—virtue, health, pleasure, riches.
See F. Kayser, De Crantore Academico (1841); M. H. E. Meier, Opuscula academica, ii. (1863); F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, i. (1891), p. 118.
CRANWORTH, ROBERT MONSEY ROLFE, Baron (1790-1868), lord chancellor of England, elder son of the Rev. E. Rolfe, was born at Cranworth, Norfolk, on the 18th of December 1790. Educated at Bury St Edmunds, Winchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1816, and attached himself to the chancery courts. He represented Penryn and Falmouth in parliament from 1832 till his promotion to the bench as baron of the exchequer in 1839. In 1850 he was appointed a vice-chancellor and created Baron Cranworth, and in 1852 he became lord chancellor in Aberdeen’s ministry. He continued to hold the chancellorship in the administration of Palmerston until the latter’s resignation in 1857. He was not reappointed when Palmerston returned to office in 1859, but on the retirement of Lord Westbury in 1865 he accepted the great seal for a second time, and held it till the fall of the Russell administration in 1866. Cranworth died in London on the 26th of July 1868. Never a very zealous law reformer, Cranworth’s name is associated in the statute book with only one small measure on conveyancing. But as a judge he will continue to hold first rank. His judgments were marked by sound common sense, while he himself was remarkably free from the prejudices of his profession. Few men of his day enjoyed greater personal popularity than Cranworth. He left no issue and the title became extinct on his death.
See The Times, 27th of July 1868; E. Manson, The Builders of our Law (1904); E. Foss, The Judges of England (1848-1864); J. B. Atlay, Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. (1908).
CRAPE (an anglicized version of the Fr. crêpe), a silk fabric of a gauzy texture, having a peculiar crisp or crimpy appearance. It is woven of hard spun silk yarn “in the gum” or natural condition. There are two distinct varieties of the textile—soft, Canton or Oriental crape, and hard or crisped crape. The wavy appearance of Canton crape results from the peculiar manner in which the weft is prepared, the yarn from two bobbins being twisted together in the reverse way. The fabric when woven is smooth and even, having no crêpé appearance, but when the gum is subsequently extracted by boiling it at once becomes soft, and the weft, losing its twist, gives the fabric the waved structure which constitutes its distinguishing feature. Canton crapes are used, either white or coloured, for ladies’ scarves and shawls, bonnet trimmings, &c. The Chinese and Japanese excel in the manufacture of soft crapes. The crisp and elastic structure of hard crape is not produced either in the spinning or in the weaving, but is due to processes through which the gauze passes after it is woven. What the details of these processes are is known to only a few manufacturers, who so jealously guard their secret that, in some cases, the different stages in the manufacture are conducted in towns far removed from each other. Commercially they are distinguished as single, double, three-ply and four-ply crapes, according to the nature of the yarn used in their manufacture. They are almost exclusively dyed black and used in mourning dress, and among Roman Catholic communities for nuns’ veils, &c. In Great Britain hard crapes are made at Braintree in Essex, Norwich, Yarmouth, Manchester and Glasgow. The crape formerly made at Norwich was made with a silk warp and worsted weft, and is said to have afterwards degenerated into bombazine. A very successful imitation of real crape is made in Manchester of cotton yarn, and sold under the name of Victoria crape.