page_title: Thomas W. Lawson (businessman)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas W. Lawson (businessman) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Boston financier Thomas Lawson's residence in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, when he was promoting the town as the next great steel-making center, to rival Pittsburgh and Birmingham. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 78001378
context_page_description: Thomas William Lawson was an American businessman and author. 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.
context_section_description: 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 Dreamwold in Scituate, Massachusetts at a cost of $6,000,000.
  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.
  Lawson was an independent candidate for the United States Senate in 1918. He finished a distant third with 5.26% of the vote.
  Lawson died in poverty in February 1925. He was buried beside his wife.
caption: Boston financier Thomas Lawson's residence in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. He promoted the town as the next great steel-making center to rival Pittsburgh and Birmingham.
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