baseball player, manager and promoter; aviation pioneer, philosopher; born London, England March 25, 1869, died San Antonio, Texas, November 24, 1954.

Lawson's parents immigrated to Canada when he was an infant, and later moved to Detroit where Lawson grew up before becoming a pitcher for an Indiana baseball team. He remained in baseball as a player and manager until 1907, after which he became interested in aviation, publishing "Fly," the first popular aeronautical magazine.

By 1917 he had moved to Green Bay where he started the Lawson Aircraft Company, developing a military training aircraft. His design was successful but the end of WWI eliminated his market. In 1919 Lawson secured backing for the Lawson Airplane Company in Milwaukee, where he developed a successful passenger aircraft, but the crash of a larger and more ambitious model ended the venture.

During the Depression, Lawson developed and promoted a popular "Direct Credits" economic theory which included eliminating banks and interest, and in 1943 he founded the University of Lawsonomy in Des Moines, Illinois, to teach his theories on health, physics, transmigration, telepathy and other aspects of his philosophy and religion. In 1952, Lawson's financing for his university attracted the attention of the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee, who asked him about mysterious purchases and sales of war surplus machine tools. The Committee was unable to extract any pertinent information from the witness or to grasp his explanation of Lawsonomy.

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[Source: WHS reference staff]