Crane, Charles Richard (1858–1939)

US internationalist and philanthropist. He was the largest single contributor to Woodrow Wilson's campaign for the presidency in 1912. He cowrote (with Henry Churchill King) the Crane-King report on what to do with the various lands belonging to the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I.

He was born in Chicago. He travelled at an early age and met the British adventurer, Richard Burton, in Damascus. He was the heir to the Crane Company plumbing supplies fortune. He sold his interest in the family company to a brother in 1912. He was ambassador to China 1920–21. He gave generously to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and to the American Colleges in Istanbul. He created the Institute of Current World Affairs in 1925. He had an extremely large number of international friends and connections.