[Between 2009 and 2011, I maintained a TypePad blog, “More Fiends,” intended to update my book Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines. Those posts can still be found in the archive.org Wayback Machine, but I stopped updating that site in 2011. Because this WordPress site promotes and updates all my books, I’d like to republish some of those earlier posts.]
Posted 4/1/2010:
As mentioned in the previous post, George Lawson and his wife fielded a slate of candidates in the 1925 New Jersey election season. Their Constitutional Liberty ticket espoused the following tenets:
- Opposition to the Ku Klux Klan
- Repeal of Sunday Blue laws prohibiting recreational activities such as baseball games, football games, golf tournaments, or movie theater screenings.
- Repealing Prohibition to allow sale of light wines and beer.
Lawson was quoted: “I favor light wines and beer because every working man deserves a stimulant after laboring by the sweat of his brow. The bloated plutocrats of the country enjoy their champagne and scotch highballs in Cuba and on packet boats, so I think the honest toilers should be allowed to have 4 per cent beer and wine, which I think are essential to health and longevity.”
George’s idea of healthy diet was quite different than the tee-totaling vegetarianism regimen proscribed by his brother, Alfred Lawson.
However, they both shared an obsession with overcrowded public transportation. Alfred’s answer was a seat compartment patent. George took a more practical approach: one of his election slogans was ‘No Seat, No Fare.’ George explained: “The practice of common carriers of packing men and women like sardines in conveyances is detrimental to common decency and should be made contrary to law.”
George’s platform also mentioned:
- Suspending taxes on abandoned farms and unprofitable tracts in order to encourage young farmers
- Abolition of capital punishment
- Equal hours and pay for women and men doing the same job and producing the same
- More laws favoring labor unions
- Harsher penalties for hit-and-run drivers
Personally, I think I’d take up the banner of George’s Constitutional Liberty party before I’d join Alfred’s Direct Credits Society!