ALFRED WILLIAM LAWSON, Supreme Head and First Knowlegian of the University of Lawsonomy, at Des Moines, Iowa, is in his own opinion the greatest scientific genius living today. It’s regrettable there isn’t some sort of Nobel Prize which would recognize his fantastic career and incredible literary output. As proof, here are two testimonials from Lawson himself.
“His [Lawson usually writes of himself in third person] mind responds to every question and the problems that stagger the so-called wise men are as kindergarten stuff to him.”
“When I look into the vastness of space and see the marvelous workings of its contents . . . I sometimes think that I was born ten or twenty thousand years ahead of time.”
The publishers of Lawson’s book, Manlife, have this to say about him: “In comparison to Lawson’s Law of Penetrability and Zig-Zag-and-Swirl movement, Newton’s law of gravitation is but a primer lesson, and the lessons of Copernicus and Galileo are but infinitesimal grains of knowledge.” (Note: Manlife was published by Lawson.)
A preface to the same book, by someone with the improbable name of Cy Q. Faunce,1 states: “To try to write a sketch of the life and works of Alfred W. Lawson in a few pages is like trying to restrict space itself. It cannot be done. . . . Who is there among us mortals today who can understand Lawson when he goes below a certain level? There seems to be no limit to the depth of his mental activities . . . countless human minds will be strengthened and kept busy for thousands of years developing the limitless branches that emanate from the trunk and roots of the greatest tree of wisdom ever nurtured by the human race.”
Before hazarding a sketch of the life of this remarkable thinker, let us first survey briefly the basic principles of Lawsonomy. Although Lawson has written more than fifty books and pamphlets, the most important sources of his views are Lawsonomy (in three volumes, 1935-39), Manlife, 1923, and Penetrability, 1939. It is from these books that most of the quotations will be taken.
Lawsonomy is defined modestly by Lawson as “The knowledge of Life and everything pertaining thereto.” He has little use for the theories of “so-called wise men and self-styled scholars . . . everything must be provable or reasonable, or it is not Lawsonomy. . . . If it isn’t real; if it isn’t truth; if it isn’t knowledge; if it isn’t intelligence; then it isn’t Lawsonomy.”
At the base of Lawsonomy, underlying the entire structure, is a theory of physics so novel that Lawson was forced to invent new terms to describe it. In fact, Lawson himself has declared, “The basic principles of physics were unknown until established by Lawson.” Many of his books open with lengthy glossaries defining these new and revolutionary terms.
The concept of “energy” is completely discarded. Instead, Lawson conceives of a cosmos in which there is neither energy nor empty space, but only substances of varying density. Substances of heavy density tend to move toward substances of lesser density through the operation of two basic Lawsonian principles—Suction and Pressure. The law governing this movement is called Penetrability. “This law was far too reaching for the superannuated professors of physics,” Lawson writes, “. . . but little by little the rising generations of advancing scholars have begun to grasp its tremendous value. . . .”
When a balance is reached between greater and lesser density, Lawson calls it Equaeverpois. An even more important principle is that of Zig-Zag-and-Swirl. Lawson defines this as “movement in which any formation moves in a multiple direction according to the movements of many increasingly greater formations, each depending upon the greater formation for direction and upon varying changes caused by counteracting influences of Suction and Pressure of different proportions.”
This makes more sense than one might think, and can be explained as follows. No object in the universe moves in a simple straight line or curve because it partakes of many different motions which ultimately give it a zig-zag path, “neither coming nor going.” Lawson illustrates it colorfully by considering a germ moving across a blood corpuscle in the body of a man who is walking down the aisle of a flying airplane. The germ thinks he is moving in a simple straight line. Actually, the corpuscle is moving in the blood, the blood is circulating through the body, the body is walking down the aisle, the airplane is moving relative to the earth, the earth is both rotating and going around the sun, and the sun, with its system of planets, is rushing through space. Thus the path of the germ is a highly zig-zag one which “continues without direction or end.” Lawson suggests that a “Supreme Mathematics” will have to be devised for computing such complicated paths.
The concepts of Suction and Pressure recur again and again in all of Lawson’s thinking. “Currents”—such as rain, heat, blood, etc. —are due to these two forces. Light is a “substance drawn into the eye by Suction.” Sound is another substance similarly drawn into the ear. Gravity? It is simply the “pull of the earth’s Suction.” In fact, Lawson candidly admits, “When one studies . . . Lawsonomy . . . all problems theoretically concocted in connection with Physics will fade away. . . .”
The human body, as might be expected, operates by means of thousands of little Suction and Pressure pumps. Air is sucked into the lungs, food into the stomach, and blood around the body. Each cell contains minute pumps. Waste matter is, of course, eliminated by Pressure. This “internal swirl goes on as long as the Suction and Pressure terminals . . . are properly maintained.” When they cease to draw and push, the man dies.
The earth is a huge organism operating by Suction and Pressure. Although it swims in a sea of “Ether,” a material of extremely rare density, it contains within its body a substance of even rarer density which Lawson calls “Lesether.” This creates a Suction which draws into the earth, through an opening at the North Pole, various substances supplied by the sun and by gases from meteors. Some of this material is also sucked into the earth through surface “pores.” Through the center of the earth, from pole to pole, extends a central tube. From it branch the arteries which carry life-giving substances to all parts of the earth, and veins that flush away waste matter. The South Pole is the earth’s anus. Through it, by Pressure, are expelled the “discharged gases,” although some of this waste matter also is eliminated through volcanic pores. The Aurora lights, at both poles, are caused by these gaseous movements in and out. On page 32 of Penetrability is a beautiful color plate showing the earth in violent action at both ends.
Sex, as might be expected, is simply Suction and Pressure. “Suction is the female of movement. Pressure is the male. . . . Female movement draws in from without, and male movement pushes out from within. . . . The attraction of one sex for the other is merely the attraction of Suction for Pressure.”
Magnetism, which still baffles the “professors,” is a form of low-grade sexual activity. If a magnet “has more female particles than male particles then it will have the power of Suction. . . . If it has more male particles than female particles, then it will have the power of Pressure and push matter away from it.”
Within the human brain, according to Lawson, two types of tiny creatures are living which he calls the Menorgs and the Disorgs. The Menorgs (from “mental organizers”) are “microscopic thinking creatures that build and operate the mental instruments within the cells of the mental system.” They are responsible for everything good and creative. “To move your arm requires the concentrated efforts of billions of Menorgs working together under orders from one little Menorg.”
Unfortunately, the Menorgs have opposed to them the destructive, evil activities of the Disorgs (“disorganizers”), “microscopic vermin that infect the cells of the mental system and destroy the mental instruments constructed and operated by the Menorgs.” As Lawson expresses it, “a Menorg will sacrifice himself for the benefit of the body, but a Disorg will sacrifice the body for the benefit of himself.”
Of course much more could be written about the extraordinary principles of Lawsonomy, but this should be enough to give a picture of its great depth and scope. Let us turn now to a sketch of the life and career of its discoverer and some of the institutions he has founded.
“The birth of Lawson,” according to Cy Q. Faunce, “was the most momentous occurrence since the birth of mankind.” It took place in London, March 24, 1869. Lawson’s parents (a mixture of Scotch and Scandinavian descent) left England shortly after his birth, going first to Canada, then to Detroit. His first study of Natural Law began, he writes, “at the age of three years while working on a small farm near Detroit. There he gained knowledge of insect life while picking potato bugs from the vines.”
At the age of four, young Lawson “noticed that when he used the Pressure from his lungs to blow the dust within his bedroom, that it moved away from him and that when he used the Suction of his lungs by drawing in his breath that the dust was moved toward him.” This was Lawson’s first great discovery in physics.
After selling papers on the streets of Detroit, running a bobbin machine for his father, who had become a rug weaver, and working as a bootblack, Lawson ran away from home. For several years, he made his way around the country riding freight cars. In most of his books, which devote almost half of their pages to a pictorial description of his life, there is a drawing of himself standing on the cowcatcher of a speeding locomotive, much buffeted by the wind. The caption beneath reads: Alfred Lawson studying atmospheric resistance to moving bodies.
At the age of nineteen, Lawson became a pitcher for the Goshen, Indiana, ballteam. For the next nineteen years (until 1907), he was in professional baseball, both as player and manager. In many of his books, he reproduces photographs of himself wearing the uniforms of various ball clubs. They reveal a handsome, finely chiseled face, with dark curly hair, high forehead, and dreamy eyes.
It was when he began his baseball career that Lawson became corrupted by his friends. He began to earn money for money’s sake. Worse than that, he took to tobacco and liquor, and the eating of meat. His health failed. His teeth decayed. At the age of twenty-eight, by a superhuman effort of will, he abandoned all these vices. His ailments stoped immediately, and from that day to this (he is now eighty-three), he has enjoyed perfect health. His first book, a novel called Born Again, 1904, was written about this experience. It is certainly one of the worst works of fiction ever printed, but Lawson says that “many people consider it the greatest novel ever written by man.” If his claims are correct, the novel was also published in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan.
Collectors of early science fiction will be interested to know that Born Again is a Utopian fantasy in which the author predicts radio (transmitted by Suction and Pressure), poison gas, and several other features of the modern world. The hero, John Convert, tries to persuade the world to live by the principles of Natural Law which he learned in a mystical experience from a sleeping beauty named Arletta. After his kiss has awakened her, she initiates him into the organization of her home, Sageland—a Utopia destroyed by the flood of Noah. Convert later falls in love with a reincarnation of Arletta, a wealthy Chicago society woman named Arletta Wright. The plot is complicated by the fact that Arletta has a double, named Arletta Fogg, and Convert also has a double with the same last name as his. The evil Convert murders Arletta Fogg, and the good Convert is arrested for the crime. He is electrocuted one minute before Arletta Wright arrives with the evil Convert’s confession. But John Convert’s little band of followers have remained loyal through it all, and Arletta Wright dedicates her life and wealth to carrying on the great cause. John Convert dies wishing he could have another body in which to continue his work. If God could grant him this he would be willing to give his soul in exchange, and “take upon himself everlastingly, all of the misery, suffering, and torture now inflicted upon the rest of mankind.”
Soon after he published this novel, Lawson began an astonishing career in aviation. In 1908 he established and edited in Philadelphia the first popular aeronautical magazine, Fly. From 1910 to 1914 he edited, in New York City, another magazine called Aircraft. It was a word he coined in 1908. He himself introduced it into the dictionary as editor of the aviation section of a revised Webster’s. In 1917 and 1918 he designed and built war training planes for the Army. He claims he was the first to propose the idea of a flat-top airplane carrier, which he called to the attention of Congress and the Navy in 1917 by a series of weekly bulletins.
In 1919 he invented, designed, and built the world’s first passenger airliner. It carried eighteen people, and although there was considerable doubt as to whether it would fly, Lawson himself piloted it from Milwaukee to Washington and back. The Lawson Aircraft Corporation was established in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1920, he built a twenty-six-passenger plane, and made a handsome profit flying it around the United States. It was the first plane to have sleeping berths. A year later one of his planes crashed, and soon the company followed suit.
From aviation, Lawson turned his attention to the social sciences, establishing the Humanity Benefactor Foundation, in Detroit. It published his second book, Manlife. The public paid little attention to his views, however, until the great depression came. Then suddenly he zoomed into prominence as the leader of an economic reform cult called the Direct Credits Society.
In his books Direct Credits for Everybody, 1931, and Know Business, 1937, are the basic tenets of the “Lawson Money System.” The gold standard must be abolished. “Valueless money” is to be issued, not redeemable for anything. Also to be abolished are all interests on debts. Only such drastic measures will rid the world of its principal source of evil, the “pig-like maniacs known as financiers.” The financiers, according to Lawson, milk undeserved interest from everybody. They control the country’s press, schools, churches, and “every influential organization in the United States of America except the Direct Credits Society.”
The Society published (and still does) a four-page tabloid called Benefactor, which at one time claimed a circulation of seven million, and was issued in ten different languages. It bears across the top the slogan, JUSTICE FOR EVERYBODY HARMS NOBODY. During the depression, most issues carried gigantic, single-word scare headlines—such as ISMS, THINK, JUMP, and WHICH—followed by one of Lawson’s articles or speeches.
The most disturbing aspect of the Direct Credits Society is that it actually did attract tens of thousands of ardent followers. There is no more terrifying proof of the mass following that a worthless economic theory can achieve in the United States, in time of economic stress, than the pictures which appear in Lawson’s book, Fifty Speeches, 1941. There are several hundred photographs of mass meetings, parades, lecture halls, office fronts, bands, and groups of DCS officers wearing a special white uniform and cap, and a diagonal red sash.
Parades and mass meetings were held in dozens of midwestern cities, but the largest was in Detroit on October 1, 1933. The floats, carrying plump and elaborately costumed women, were so preposterous that unless there were photographs you wouldn’t believe them. They carried such banners as “All nations need direct credits for little children and feeble old folks.” After the mammoth parade, Lawson spoke for two hours to 16,000 people assembled in the Olympia auditorium. When he made his entrance to the stage, amid hysterical flag-waving and the music of Hail to the Chief, he received an ovation that lasted fifteen minutes.
Special songs were written for these meetings, and one of Lawson’s books, Short Speeches, 1942, reproduces the words and music of fifteen of them. They include such titles as Hark to Lawson by Ella Heft, and God’s Gift to Man by Marie Pluks. Each stanza of the latter song ends with “Alfred William Lawson is God’s great eternal gift to Man.” And there is a stirring hymn of six verses called Mighty Menorgs, the second stanza of which runs:
Menorgs are wondrous builders all,
Builders of the great and small.
All of life they permeate,
All formations they create.
Disorgs tear down eternally
While menorgs build faithfully.
In 1942, Lawson purchased the University of Des Moines. The school, which included fourteen acres, six buildings, and dormitories for about four hundred students, had been closed since 1929. It is now called the Des Moines University of Lawsonomy.
Lawson’s opinion of American education couldn’t be lower. “You don’t begin to get bald on the inside of your heads until you start to go to high school,” he once declared, “and you don’t get entirely bald until you pass through college.” His own educational views are summed up powerfully as follows:
Education is the science of knowing TRUTH.
Miseducation is the art of absorbing FALSITY.
TRUTH is that which is, not that which ain’t.
FALSITY is that which ain’t, not that which is.
The University of Lawsonomy is teaching, of course, the TRUTH. Only Lawson’s own writings are used as texts, and they must be read by a student before he is eligible to attend. A basketball rule book was once banned because Lawson hadn’t written it. Accredited teachers of Lawsonomy are called “Knowlegians,” and top level Knowlegians are Generals. Lawson is Supreme Head and First Knowlegian.
There are no fees for enrollment. Board and room are furnished without charge, although students work part-time in the machine shop and on similar projects in agriculture, engineering, and other fields. Like all of Lawson’s organizations, the University supposedly operates on a non-profit basis, without stocks. and is managed by trustees who pay for his “meagre living expenses” out of the sale of his books. Lawson insists that in 1931 he promised God he would never again accumulate wealth for personal use. He likes to describe himself as “moneyless and propertyless.” To prove it, he often turns his pockets inside out at meetings. His board members are secret, however, and Lawson’s place of residence is equally vague. He seems to live somewhere “near Ann Arbor.”
In March 1952, the Senate’s Small Business Committee summoned Lawson to Washington to ask him how it came about that his school had purchased sixty-two war-surplus machine tools “for educational purposes,” then resold forty-five of them for a handsome profit. Lawson professed ignorance of the details. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never go in for figures at all.” His attempts to explain Lawsonomy to the Committee, and how it included mechanics, proved somewhat confusing. Lawson left the conference snorting, “The damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of in all my life,” which moved Senator Blair Moody, of Michigan, to reply, “I don’t know whether we’re talking about the same thing, but I’m inclined to agree with you.”2
At first, the University of Lawsonomy was coeducational but after one father sued to get his daughter out of the place,3 Lawson decided to admit only men. They are accepted on a ten-year basis, and at present, about twenty such students are enrolled. They can be seen occasionally through the high picket fence which surrounds the campus. The faculty has an even lower degree of visibility, and there is a widespread theory among Des Moines newsmen that Lawson is the only member.
The use of liquor and tobacco is strictly forbidden on the campus. Such poisons overpower the Menorgs and let the Disorgs take over. “One may hunt the world over,” Lawson once wrote with incontestable accuracy, “but can find no other animal strutting around with a lighted pipe or cigarette stuck in its face and using its mouth to suck in and blow out smoke, using at times the nostrils as human smoke-stacks. . . .” Lawson’s antipathy to smoke is further indicated by his invention in 1946 of the Lawson Smoke Evaporator. Patent rights for this device (which eliminates factory soot by means of Suction and Pressure) have been turned over to the University.4
Lawson places a high premium on bodily vigor, and recommends to his students an elaborate set of health rules. He believes in a diet without meat, consisting mostly of raw fruits and vegetables eaten “from covering to core,” including the seeds. “All salads,” he once wrote, “should contain a sprinkling of fresh cut grass.” The head should be dunked in cold water upon arising and before going to bed. He also believes in drinking lots of warm water, sleeping nude, and changing bed sheets daily.
He is against kissing. “Can you think of anything filthier than . . . a man and woman with their faces stuck together and spitting disease microbes into each other’s mouths?”
Lawson has never married.
From the University, he believes, will come forth the salt of the earth. As the principles of Lawsonomy spread, from generation to generation, eventually a new species will be created—a super race capable of communicating by telepathy (operating by Suction and Pressure) and with great longevity of life. (See Lawson’s book, A New Species, 1944.)
Today Lawson is a gaunt, lonely, silver-haired old man with shaggy white eyebrows overhanging steel-gray eyes. According to Oliver Rauch, treasurer of the University of Lawsonomy (as expressed in a personal letter), Lawson’s eyes possess a “kaleidoscopic effect that appears to change as he thinks and talks.” He feels himself surrounded by treacherous enemies. They are waiting for him to die so they can seize the holdings of his organizations. In recent years the conviction that he is a prophet of the Lord has increased ominously. One thousand Lawsonian Churches are currently being planned for cities in the Midwest. Since 1949, a Lawsonian Church in Detroit has been holding Sunday services, and a similar church has been built in Des Moines. His latest book, Lawsonian Religion, 1949, explains his religious views.5 They are little more than a misty blend of transmigration, Lawsonomy, and Christianity without Christ.
Key concepts in the Lawsonian decalogue are love and unselfishness. “Alfred Lawson never hated nor harmed a man, woman, or child in his life,” writes Lawson. “In days gone by when anybody struck harmfully at this writer, he merely took hold of the offender and threw him to the ground to show his superior strength and ingenuity, and then rose with a friendly smile to show there was no hatred in his system whatsoever. . . .”
Although the future of the earth looks black, as the Disorgs seem to gain the upper hand in the minds of men, Lawson is convinced the Menorgs will win the day. By the year 2,000, he predicts, all the races of the world will have accepted his principles. To usher in the Lawsonian Dispensation, however, will require millions of loyal disciples. “Therefore,” he writes, “professors of Lawsonomy for Lawsonian ecclesiastical colleges and teachers of Lawsonian Parochial Schools, Church Messengers, Secretarial Forces, Pulpit Sermoners, Foreign Missionaries and various high dignitaries will all have to be educated at the University of Lawsonomy in large numbers as quickly as possible.”
I know of no more inspiring close for this chapter than the last verse of a poem written by Lawson himself:
So come on, folks, the past is dead,
The future is alrighty,
And by the will, we’ll win the till,
With strength from the ALMIGHTY.