Crane Name Synonymous With Berkshire Hills Town Since 1801 : Paper Mill’s Good Neighbor Policy Pays Dividends of Respect, Affection

Back in 1935, when Oscar Sabin desperately needed money for medical care for his 11-year-old son who had been accidentally blinded by a BB gun, the cash was advanced by his employer, Crane & Co. When the sightless son turned 21, the company hired him, too.

That son was Herb Sabin, and to him and many others in this company town, the Cranes are not corporate giants in executive suites but caring neighbors who have made paper here for seven generations.

“They gave me a chance,” said Sabin, now in his 41st year with Crane, best known for making stationery and the paper for U.S. dollars.

“It was very hard for any blind people to get jobs in those days. . . . They gave me an opportunity to raise a family. They gave me a sense of independence.”

Sabin, now 62, works at the plant wrapping envelopes for shipment. He and his wife raised two daughters and two sons.

Mill Built in 1801

The name Crane has been synonymous with this charming town in the Berkshire hills since 1801 when Zenas Crane built his first paper mill in Dalton.

The Cranes built the town hall, library, museum, opera house, and community and youth centers, and donated the land for most of the schools, a cemetery, an 18-hole golf course, a state park and a hunting preserve. They set up a college scholarship fund for needy students and gave workers paid time off to train as emergency medical technicians with the fire department.

It is hard to find anybody who has anything bad to say about the Cranes.

“I’ve lived here 35 years and I’ve never heard a derogatory remark about them,” said Alice Andrews, the town clerk. “I’m in a position where I have 7,000 people who can say anything they want to me and I can’t talk back.”

“They’ve done such a multitude of good and always in a quiet manner,” said Milt Geer, who retired from the company last year at age 70. “They’ve been involved so heavily in people. They’re involved in the environment. They invested millions in cleaning up the (Housatonic) river long before it was mandatory.”

Pollution Control System

According to a company history, Crane installed a pollution control system in the mid-1950s for the discharges from its mills.

George Hamilton, chairman of the Life Sciences Department of Berkshire Community College in nearby Pittsfield, said: “They were leaders in environmental pollution controls, very active very early on and very cooperative with the environmental program at the college.”

Maggie Kelly, who with her husband, Harry, retired from the company 13 years ago, recalled that when a fire destroyed their home in 1965, the Cranes provided them with housing and furniture until they rebuilt. The Cranes also matched a cash collection taken up by friends and neighbors.

“When people were sick, they worried about them, took care of them,” Maggie Kelly said.

Rarely does Crane lay off employees. Production workers make an average of $10 an hour, and they share in the profits that can mean as much as $3,000 more a year. There is a company-funded medical insurance plan.

Company Rents Homes

The company rents about 50 homes to its workers, many of them duplexes like the one for which Charlie Wellspeak pays $167 a month. It has seven rooms, a basement, attic and yard. Crane once owned more than 100 homes.

Wellspeak, 56, went to work for Crane while still in high school, following his mother, father, grandparents, uncles and cousins into the company. In the 36 years he has worked for the company, he can’t recall being laid off for more than a week.

Last year when Crane made more than $15 million in pretax profits, Wellspeak picked up more than $3,000 in the company’s profit-sharing plan.

“I think it’s a great place to work,” he said. “There’s no union. Normally, if you have a grievance you settle it by just talking to someone.”

That someone could be Frederick G. Crane or Winthrop M. Crane III, board members, or the chairman and chief executive officer, Benjamin J. Sullivan.

They say their doors are open to all employees with gripes that can’t be settled at lower levels. Everyone from switchboard operator to board member is on a first-name basis.

Sets Sales Record

Crane’s homespun style of doing business--none of the seven executives, including the chairman, has his own private secretary--has paid off handsomely. The company had its highest sales and profits ever last year, topping $100 million in sales for the first time. That included $24.5 million from the government for making paper for U.S. currency.

Family members Chris, David and Tim Crane work for Sullivan, who last fall became the first outsider elected chairman.

“We thought he’d do a better job,” said Frederick Crane when asked why Sullivan was selected over a Crane. Fred Crane, as he is called, took himself out of the picture when he took early retirement at age 62 at the end of last year after 37 1/2 years. He had been vice president in charge of research.

The headquarters is in a pair of two-story red brick buildings. The executives and headquarters staff, fewer than 100, go to lunch from noon to 1, many of them to their nearby homes.

“It’s not a bunch of prima donnas,” said Fred Crane. “It’s always been a very informal operation. My father used to work in this office and he always brought his dog with him.”

Crane himself is apt to show up on winter days in ski pants, ready to take off for the slopes.

Held Public Office

The Cranes have also served in public office, from town hall to Congress.

W. Murray Crane, grandson of the founder, was governor of Massachusetts from 1900 until 1903 and a U.S. senator from 1904 until 1913.

Fred Crane is chairman of the three commissioners of the Dalton Fire District. His wife, Joyce, was one of the founders of the town conservation commission.

There is little evidence of Dalton being a mill town. Crane’s half a dozen red brick mills are set back on the banks of the Housatonic River and blend in with the Colonial appearance of the community of about 7,000. Sugar and red maple trees surround the mills and line Dalton’s well-kept streets.

A certain amount of good fortune, Fred Crane said, lies behind the success of the company.

“I don’t think that my ancestors realized that they had located quite so luckily,” he said.