More Fiends

Blog to be retired--Lawsons' future

    I'll be semi-retiring this blog in mid-February in order to concentrate on current writing research projects. Future posts will be very occaisional.

    I very much doubt that I'll have an opportunity to see a revised edition of Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines that could incorporate some of the posts made in the past 14 months. The only post-publication finding that I really regret not having found in time is the strong evidence that Alfred W. Lawson was sent to the State Reform School as a teen.

    What information might come forward that would dramatically effect the Lawson Brothers narrative? Here's my list:

• An interview or memoir written by one of A. W. Lawson's two children. I'm not sure they could throw more light on his character, but they could offer a fascinating inside look at the community of Lawson's followers.
• Any soldier's diaries or military records that would shed light on G.H. Lawson's activities during WWI. I can not believe that the old rogue led a quiet military life. There must be some hilarious material there.
• Some very specific mention of the original cause(s) of conflict between Al and George
• A list of books that A.W. Lawson read or kept
• Additional evidence of sexual misconduct by their father, R. H. Lawson
• Additional information on where the money came from for A.W. Lawson to start the Humanity Publishing Company and DCS movement.
• Additional information on the amounts donated by DCS members and Lawson's later followers to fund the DCS, the University of Lawsonomy, and Lawson's publishing efforts.

Fifty Speeces and 100 Great Speeches

    Anyone who glances at a bibliography of Alfred W. Lawson's books will note that he penned both Fifty Speeches and 100 Great Speeches, published about a decade apart. One might assume that the latter title is just an expanded version of the earlier; and in one sense, that is true. The bulk of the text of both works are reprints of the editorials from Lawson's newsheet, the Benefactor. Fifty Speeches includes vol. 1 and vol. 2 (to number 23) of the Benefactor, arranged in consecutive order. 100 Great Speeches includes numbers from vols. 1-3, but are not in consecutive order.

    Both books are folio size (in the loose sense of that term), with the binding measuring 17" x 11". The earlier work has 175 pages; the latter has 232. Lawson obviously devoted great attention to the details of both publications, but the similarities end there. Fifty Speeches is the rarer, more interesting work, brimming with content found in no 
other Lawson titles. It is the most complete document archive of Lawson's 1930's social movement, the Direct Credits Society.

    Unlike most of Lawson's works, Fifty Speeches does not contain a lengthy autobiographical section on Lawson's life accomplishments. Instead, the first 63 pages are photos of Direct Credits Society parades, group photos, and individual "officer" portraits. If there was ever a doubt that the DCS was a genuine popular movement, these photos dispell that notion. Most of the group photos and individual photos list members by name--something rarely seen except in the very earliest DCS newspapers.

    On page 63, you can even see the young mother of A. W. Lawson's two children, E. Hosta.

    In the years between the publication of the two books, the DCS movement lost its impetus and fell victim to internal dissention and scandal. Several of the officers depicted in Fifty Speeches were later accused of adulterous relationships; a few of the photos show people who later disagreed with certain actions that Lawson took (especially in regard to support of War Bonds). Lawson himself wanted to deflect the attention drawn his relationship with Hosta (and other young women in the DCS office staff?).

    For these reasons, Lawson did not keep Fifty Speeches in print. He did not suppress its dessimination (in fact, Fifty Speeches is one of the titles sold in an ad found in 100 Great Speeches on page 224), but unlike his other works, massive printings did not keep it in stock beyond the 1940s.

    Collecting Lawsoniana or studying the DCS? Fifty Speeches is essential!

Luxury Liner by Charles H. Hubbell

I had not been aware until this showed up on eBay recently that the noted aviation artist Charles H. Hubbell had drawn Lawson's first airliner. The colors are magnificent:

This was one of a series that Hubbell did in the mid-1960s, entitled "Famous Firsts." They were commissioned by TRW, Inc. Many of Hubbell's aviation prints were printed by TRW in calendars, but were also sold for framing.

Christmas Greetings from Alfred Lawson (1936)

Starting in the late 1920s, Alfred W. Lawson began writing an infrequent series of short Christnas Greetings messages. Once he reached adulthood, Lawson openly scorned organized religion, and, at best, could be labeled an agnostic. His later homespun philosophical writings professed monotheism and expouded the central role in the workings of the Universe for God the Almighty, the Creator. Eventually, as evidenced in the essay below that Lawson wrote in 1936, he even admitted that Jesus Christ had been God's messenger, though Lawson can't bring himself to call Him by his proper name.

The following Christmas missive probably gained quite a bit of infamy, since in it Lawson makes a direct comparison of himself to Jesus, and suggests that he has inherited the role of Divine Messenger. This is Lawson at his loopiest (and most idealistic):

    "Nearly  two thousand years ago God sent a man to earth with a message for everybody to accept and be benefited by. It was--LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

    "But instead of exchanging love with one another the people practiced hate for each other. Instead of worshipping a God with Life they groveled beneath a dead lump of metal.

    "So, for Gold, or its purchasing power, people have lied to each other, cheated each other, stolen from each other, murdered each other, beggared each other, mutilated each other and degraded each other.

    "People have not loved one another as this man told them to do, but they have detested each other and the reason for that is because they have put Gold above God.

    "Now, nearly two thousand years afterward another man comes to earth and tells the people not to hate each other. He tells them that they cannot love and hate at the same time. He says that they cannot worship God and Gold together and unless they give up Gold it will be impossible to follow the precepts of the man who asked them nearly two thousand years ago to LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

    "But there are certain creatures on earth who either directly or indirectly teach the people to worship Gold. They themselves pretend to worship God, but they sell their souls for Gold. Their purposes are both selfish and fiendish. They make laws for the strong to victimize the weak, which in the eyes of God is the meanest of all sins.

    "The people are taught that Gold is the base of value and through its medium they are fleeced of the products of their labor. They are also taught that they too can practice the same trickery for gain through Gold. But the reaction of God's laws causes punishment and misery for all those who crave Gold no matter what the pretense may be. So God says this infernal practice must be stopped.

    "Now God sends another message to the human race, which is JUSTICE FOR EVERYBODY HARMS NOBODY.

    "That message will make it possible for the teachings of the man, whom God sent two thousand years ago, to be followed by everybody instead of being followed by nobody as happens at the present time.

    "Not only has God sent one man to deliver this message to the people, but he has sent one hundred and fifty thousand men and women of all races and religions into the highways and byways to teach JUSTICE FOR EVERYBODY HARMS NOBODY.

    "These men and women are officers of the Direct Credits Society and they love one another because they actually worship a living God and do not hate each other because they do not worship a lump of dead Gold.

    "These officers do not let the creatures who victimize everybody through the medium of Gold make them hate, fight and degrade each other.

    "So, in behalf of these real missionaries of God, it is to be hoped that not only will the people rejoice on Christmas Day that a movement has at last been started that will cause one to love another, but that the people will begin a new year by obliterating the horrible cause of their hatred for each other.

    "Direct Credits teaches everybody to be kind to one another three hundred and sixty-five days a year, not just one day a year.

    "Thus may this Christmas bring permanent love to the soul and may this New Year bring real intelligence to the mind so that all men may stop fighting and mistreating each other over a lifeless piece of deceptive Gold."

Long Review!

Finally, a lengthy, critical review of Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines! I don't think copyright allows me to reprint the entire review, but here's the citation and an excerpt:

Benjamin James Dettmar. "Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines: The Many Lives and Outrageous Times of George and Alfred Lawson (review)." NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 19, no. 1 (2010): 150-152. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed November 9, 2010).

"The many lives of George and Alfred "Al" Lawson are told humorously, intelligently, and with great reverence to baseball lore by Jerry Kuntz. Relatively well known in baseball circles, the Lawson brothers' escapades in fin de siècle America will appeal to both hardcore enthusiasts and casual fans. Indeed, as someone with an academic and casual interest in baseball history and Americana, the book was entirely satisfactory and will undoubtedly appeal to others with similar interests. Kuntz has previously published two articles on the Lawsons, and readers are regaled with tale after tale of the eccentricity and quirky deviance that so defines George and Al Lawson.

One of the more interesting aspects of Kuntz's book is how he manages to show the impact the Lawsons had on society outside of their lives in baseball."

Short Review

The book reviews have been few and far between, but here's a recent quickie from the Society for American Baseball Research's (SABR) Nineteenth Century Notes:

"Besides heading up our 'How to Do 19th Century Baseball Research' project, Jerry Kuntz demonstrates that he really does know how to do 19th Century baseball research and beyond in his fascinating dual biography, Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines: The Many Lives and Outrageous Times of George and Alfred Lawson."

--Fall 2010, p. 11.

That Distinctive Lawson Font

I've heard it said by more than one person that Alfred Lawson's books can be spotted from fifty feet away by the distinctive all-upper-case sans-serif bold font used for all his cover titles. Case in point:

[In this example, the author credit lettering uses a different font than the title itself.]

I've tried to identify these using some online tools, but none resulted in a perfect match. The title font above is very close to a variant of Futura Extra Bold. See commercial example at:

MyFonts

It has a very 1930s feel to it, which is probably not a coincidence. Futura was designed in 1927 by Paul Renner using simple geometric shapes, inspired by the Bauhaus style. Futura Extra Bold,  however, was not released until the 1950s, so Lawson's Humanity Publishing Company was using something else. Actually, I see where Humanity Publishing used at least three different fonts for cover titles and inside title pages, all geometric sans-serif.

Like so much else about A. W. Lawson's writings, it turns out that his preferred fonts have a contextual link to the times he lived in.

So You Want to be a Knowledgian?

One of the more interesting pieces of A. W. Lawson ephemera that I picked up on Ebay was 1953 Des Moines University of Lawsonomy "Student Survey." By 1953, only a few handful of students resided on the campus in Des Moines, and the University had already come under fire by local tax officials. It is more than likely that this survey was sent out in an attempt to inflate the documented enrollment figures that the school was being asked to produce.

Here's the cover letter that accompanied the survey:

The survey itself was printed on a folding envelope. Students were asked to record their progress towards earning the only degree the school offered, the Knowledgian degree. Obtaining the degree was measured by the number of books written by Lawson that had been studied, and the number of years, months, and hours each text had been reviewed. For all texts combined, the starting point had to be at least 30 years in the past. So, if you want to be a Knowledgian, just fill  out this "My Record" form. See ya in three decades!

Collectible Lawson Publication: Direct Credits for Humanity (magazine)

One of the rarer and more collectible Alfred W. Lawson publications is the magazine Direct Credits for Humanity, published by Lawson's Humanity Publishing Company between June, 1932 and mid-1935. As far as I know, 5 issues were published, each about 32 pages. By my reckoning, it predates the earliest issues of Lawson's Direct Credits Society newspaper, the Benefactor, by almost two years.

Although the content is still most editorials/speeches by Lawson, Direct Credits for Humanity also has news about, articles by, lists of, and profiles of dedicated DCS officers. Very little of this is found in later Lawson DCS publications, other than in the photographic sections of his books.

 

The content of the magazine also demonstrates that Lawson, from the very beginning of the DCS, harbored no ambitions for an independent political movement. The DCS was all about pressuring elected officials--whatever their party affiliation--to adopt the Direct Credits platform for economic reform.

In Late September, 1931, Lawson had incorporated the Passenger Compartment Company in Wilmington, Delaware (where many companies filed their incorporations.) Sometime between late 1931 and June of 1932, Lawson had moved to Detroit, founded the Humanity Publishing Company, published Creation and Direct Credits for Everybody, and came out with the first issue of Direct Credits for Humanity magazine in June, 1932.

Detroit was already fertile ground for the vilification of "financiers." During the 1920s, Henry Ford's newspaper The Dearborn Independent made overt references to "financiers" being an international Jewish cabal. Lawson never made any obvious anti-Semitic statements, but his Detroit readers would have recalled Ford's attitudes.

Leech Maskrey

In Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines, I connected the dots and credited Leech Maskrey with planting the idea in Alfred Lawson's mind of making a baseball tour to England. Had I had more room for images, I would have included Maskrey's Old Judge cigarette card:

 

I can't put my fingers on the references now, but as I recall, when Maskrey retired from baseball he became an art teacher. The above image is from Find a Grave: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6428956