Crane's 75th

Because July 4 is a holiday it seems unlikely that a business should celebrate its anniversary on that date. Yet this week in Chicago Crane Co. (valves, plumbing) celebrated its 75th anniversary on July 4.* The business was founded in 1855 by the late Richard Teller Crane. His original small frame building was completed July 3. Enthusiastic impatient, he would not rest on the holiday. Accordingly on July 4 he poured the first metal that went into a Crane Co. casting. Approximately 20,000 employes were last week celebrating that gesture.

Founded on no patent or monopoly, Crane Co. prospered principally because of shrewd selling, economic, efficient manufacturing. Today the company has nine factories in the U. S., Canada, England. It manufactures more than 30,000 items, divided roughly into four categories: plumbing fixtures & supplies, heating equipment & supplies, valves & fittings, steam & water works supplies. The largest selling Crane products are brass, iron, steel valves & fittings, although most famed throughout the land are its much advertised colored bathrooms. The company last year earned $11,558,085 net.

When the first Richard Teller Crane died he was known as one of Chicago's great developers and industrialists, as traveler and philanthropist. That reputation extended to his five sons, three of whom are now alive, to whom Mr. Crane left his business. Of these Richard Teller Crane Jr. is present president of the company. Of him as of his father it is said that he would rather visit a Crane Co. shop than attend a theatre. He never flies although his wife's brother-in-law is famed flying Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson. In his huge Lake Shore Drive home where last week he entertained Crane Co. employes there are no modern Crane Co. bathrooms. Richard Jr. has but one son Cornelius, recently elected a director of the company. He has never, however, worked therein, prefers to make scientific expeditions in the South Seas with his 147-ft. yacht, Illyria.

Another founder's son is Herbert Prentice Crane, inactive director of the company. One of his sons, Charles Richard Crane 2nd, is vice president of the company, may perhaps be the next president.

The oldest and most famed founder's son is Charles Richard Crane, onetime president of the company (he resigned in 1914) and onetime Minister to China./- He more than any other Crane is peregrinatory. Principally his travels have taken him to the Near and Far East. Probably no man in the U. S. is as familiar as he with events in the Hedjaz or in Iraq, with the doings of Afghans or Parsees or the Annamese.

In his Manhattan home is many a souvenir of Arabian and Chinese voyages. Last year he and a party of friends including his son, John, were attacked by bandits during a trip through the Koweit Protectorate. A friend, the Rev. Henry A. Bilkert, was killed.

Sons of Charles Richard Crane are Richard Teller 2nd and John Oliver. Richard Teller 2nd was first U. S. Minister to Czechoslovakia, serving as such at the same time that his father was Minister to China. John Oliver is a former secretary to President Thomas Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, last year married in Rome the beautiful Countess Theresa Martini Marescotti. A sister of John Oliver, Frances, is married to Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovakian Minister to Great Britain.

* International Harvester Co. and Fairbanks-Morse Co. this year celebrate their centenaries.

/-Appointed Minister to China by President Taft in 1909 he was recalled because of a statement of his policies made at Presidential, request from the U. S. He became a Democrat and in 1920 President Wilson again and without recall appointed him to the post.

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