"Massachusetts Senator" Winthrop Crane Hand Signed 2X3.5 Card For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

---

"Massachusetts Senator" Winthrop Crane Hand Signed 2X3.5 Card:
$90.99

Up for sale a VINTAGE "Massachusetts Senator" Winthrop Crane Signed 2X3.5 Card. 

ES-54A

Winthrop Murray Crane (or just Murray

Crane, April 23, 1853 – October 2, 1920) was a U.S. political figure and businessman. Born into the Dalton, Massachusetts family

that owned the papermaking Crane & Co., he successfully expanded the company during

the 1880s after securing an exclusive government contract to supply the paper

for United States currency (a monopoly the company continues to hold). During

the 1890s he became increasingly active in Republican Party politics,

and was for 20 years a dominating figure in Massachusetts politics. He served

several times on the Republican National

Committee, and was elected Lieutenant

Governor of Massachusetts 1896-99 and Governor of Massachusetts 1900-03.

In 1904 he was appointed by his successor John L. Bates to fill a vacated United States Senate seat,

which he held until 1913. Crane was an advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and

served as a political mentor to Calvin Coolidge. His success in defusing a Teamsters strike while governor prompted Roosevelt to

bring him in as a negotiator to resolve the Coal Strike of 1902. He

refused repeated offers for cabinet-level positions, and was known to dislike

campaigning and giving speeches. He was highly regarded and popular in western

Massachusetts. Winthrop Murray Crane was born in Dalton, Massachusetts to

Zenas Marshall Crane and Louise Fanny Laflin. His father was owner of the Crane Paper Company, a

dominant economic force in the small community and a major producer of paper

products. Crane entered the family business in 1870, and, alongside his brother

Zenas, Jr. presided over a period of significant growth of the company. In 1872

Crane secured a major contract for the supply of wrapping paper to the Winchester Repeating Arms

Company, and followed this up in 1879, with an exclusive contract to

paper for the Federal Reserve Notes, the

currency of the United States. The Crane

Company continues to be the sole supplier of currency paper to the federal

government today. The company continued significant growth throughout the 1880s

and 1890s. Crane expanded his business interests, and amassed a significant

fortune by investing in the Otis Elevator and Telegraph Company.

In

1880 Crane married Mary Benner, who died in 1884 giving birth to their only

child, Winthrop Murray Crane Jr. In 1906, Crane married Josephine Porter Boardman,

20 years his junior, from a politically well-connected family. They had three

children: Stephen, Bruce, and poet Louise Crane. Crane's rise in politics began in 1892, when he

was invited to attend the Republican National

Convention as a delegate by the "Young Republican

Club", a group of in 1888, who would come to dominate the state party apparatus and

political landscape.

After

the convention he was elected chairman of the state party. Although he was from

western Massachusetts, he was viewed by the party's mainly eastern leadership

as a "safe" and moderate choice, who would be good at fundraising. Crane,

although he was politically conservative, was adept at smoothing over and

negotiating the differences between the wings of the party, and refused to

become deeply entrenched into either the progressive or conservative wing.

He

was also well known as a somewhat taciturn politician, who did not make stump

speeches while campaigning, and is not recorded as having made speeches on the

floors of the legislative bodies in which he served. In 1896 he of Massachusetts, serving under another Young

Republican, Roger Wolcott.

The post was then viewed as a stepping stone to the higher office, and Crane

ran for governor when Wolcott opted not to run in 1899. He won a comfortable

victory against a disorganized Democratic opposition, and was reelected

the next two years by wide margins. Crane's tenure as governor was marked by

fiscal conservatism, business-like management, and relatively little reform. He

was viewed with favor even by Democrats, and his leadership was characterized

as nonpartisan. He successfully defused a Teamsters strike in 1902, and

was also called in by President Theodore Roosevelt to

mediate the 1902 Coal Strike, which

threatened the state's winter coal supplies. He vetoed legislative

authorization of a merger between the Boston Elevated Railway and

the West End Street Railway,

in part because it did not contain a clause calling for a referendum by the

affected populations. He did, however, sign legislation authorizing the

lease of the Fitchburg Railroad to

the Boston and Maine Railroad,

and of the Boston and Albany Railroad to

the New York Central Railroad.

Crane was a major shareholder in the New York Central. He would later use

his political clout as US Senator to help secure the state's approval of a

merger of the Boston and Maine with the New York,

New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Crane was hosting President

Roosevelt in Pittsfield on

September 3, 1902 when a speeding trolley car rammed into the open-air horse carriage carrying Roosevelt. The accident killed

the president's Secret Service agent, William Craig. Crane

was appointed October 12, 1904 by Governor John L. Bates to continue the U.S. Senate term of the

late George F. Hoar. He was

then elected in a January 18, 1905 special election to finish the term. he

was re-elected in 1907, and served until 1913. As Senator, Crane was famous for

his lack of public statements, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Chauncey Depew, another Senator, wrote of Crane 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." ]Calvin Coolidge observed that "his influence was

very great, but that it was of an intangible nature." He was also

known to often choose inaction over action on many matters, with a common

answer to requests for advice being "Do nothing. He was an with Canada and the Dominion of Newfoundland,

working to water down provisions of a proposed treaty. In the 1908

presidential election, Crane expressed early support for William Howard Taft, but

later came to oppose him, believing him a weak candidate. This placed him in

opposition to fellow Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, with each leading their wing of the state

party in a fight for control over the state delegation to the national

convention. Crane preferred to leave the delegates without formal instruction

as to how they should vote, while Lodge preferred that they be required to

pledge for Taft. Crane engineered the anti-Taft forces into control by

convincing Lodge to support delegate independence in exchange for the placement

of former Governor John Davis Long, a Taft

supporter, as an at-large delegate. Despite his lack of support for Taft,

Crane became one of Taft's closest advisors after taking office, and he worked

to secure Lodge's reelection in 1911. Crane was also operative in a secret deal

that denied Democrat William L. Douglas a

second term as governor. Douglas, owner of a successful shoe manufacturing

business, had won election in 1904 with labor support and widespread name

recognition due to his marketing activities. According to Charles S. Hamlin, Douglas may have been forced into this

position by the discovery by Republicans that he had apparently fraudulently

acquired an honorable discharge after

deserting during the Civil War. The quid pro quo for this information not being revealed,

supposedly engineered by Crane and Lodge, was that Douglas would not run again. In the 1912 general

election, in which the Republican Party was divided by Roosevelt's

defection, conservative elements of the Republican Party dominated

the state legislature's caucus. This resulted in the election in early 1913 of

the ultraconservative John W. Weeks over

Crane for the Senate seat. 

"Massachusetts Senator" Henry Cabot Lodge Cut Signature Mounted

$139.99

"Massachusetts Senator" Henry Cabot Lodge Signed TLS Dated 1937

$139.99

1980 Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy for President HAND SIGNED rally leaflet--

$29.99

1980 Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy for President signed bumper sticker COOL-

$29.99

1905 Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

$27.99

Rare Portrait Photo Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner Abolitionist Civil War

$257.00

"Massachusetts Senator" Winthrop Crane Hand Signed 2X3.5 Card

$90.99

Antique Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster W/ Death Note 1834 Engraving Art

$45.00