Thomas William Lawson

Thomas William Lawson (February 26, 1857 – February 7, 1925) was an American businessman and writer. A highly controversial Boston stock promoter, he is known for both his efforts to promote reforms in the stock markets and the fortune he amassed for himself through highly dubious stock manipulations.

Early life

Thomas William Lawson was born February 26, 1857, at Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas and Anna Maria (née Loring) Lawson. Lawson's father, a carpenter, died when he was eight years old.

Career

At 12 years old, Lawson ran away from home to become a clerk in a Boston bank and soon began speculating in stocks. Lawson specialized in shares of copper-mining companies, which were then a staple of the Boston stock market, and became a multimillionaire during the copper boom of the late 1890s. He was a principal mover in the promotion of companies trying to establish the small town of Grand Rivers, Kentucky, as a major steel-producing city. He built the lavish estate called Dreamworld in Scituate, Massachusetts, at a cost of $6,000,000. Lawson was an independent candidate for the United States Senate in 1918. He finished a distant third with 5.26% of the vote.

In 1899, he joined Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller in forming Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, a company that combined several copper mining companies, mostly in Butte, Montana, and which tried to dominate the copper market. Amalgamated Copper was criticized for years afterward. It became Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1915. Lawson broke with the financial backers of Amalgamated and became an advocate for financial reform.