advocating aviation, he built his first airplane, the Lawson Military Tractor 1 (MT-1) trainer, and founded the Lawson Aircraft Corporation. The company's plant was sited at Green Bay, Wisconsin. There he secured a contract and built the Lawson MT-2. He also designed the steel fuselage Lawson Armored Battler, which never got beyond the drafting board, given doubts within the Army aviation community and the signing of the armistice. After the war, in 1919 Lawson started a project to build America's first airline. He secured financial backing, and in five months he had built and demonstrated in flight his biplane airliner, the 18-passenger Lawson L-2. He demonstrated its capabilities in a 2000-mile multi-city tour from Milwaukee to Chicago-Toledo-Cleveland-Buffalo-Syracuse-New york City-Washington, D.C.-Collinsville-Dayton-Chicago and back to Milwaukee, creating a buzz of positive press. The publicity allowed him to secure an additional $1 million to build the 26-passenger Midnight Liner. The aircraft crashed on takeoff on its maiden flight. In late 1920, he secured government contracts for three airmail routes and to deliver ten war planes, but owing to the fall 1920 recession, he could not secure the necessary $100,000 in cash reserves called for in the contracts and had to decline them. In 1926, he started his last airliner, the 56-seat, two-tier Lawson super airliner. In this phase of his life, he was considered one of the leading thinkers in the budding American commercial aviation community, but his troubles with getting financial backing for his ideas led him to turn to economics, philosophy, and organization. Lawsonomy (1929–1954) In the 1920s, Lawson promoted health practices, including vegetarianism, and claimed to have found the secret of living to 200. He also developed his own highly unusual theories of physics, according to which such concepts as "penetrability", "suction and pressure" and "zig-zag-and-swirl" were discoveries on par with Einstein's theory of relativity. He published numerous books on these concepts, all set in a distinctive typography. He later propounded his own philosophy, Lawsonomy, and the Lawsonian religion. He also developed, during the Great Depression, the populist economic theory of "Direct Credits", according to which banks are the cause of all economic woes, the oppressors of both capital and labour. Lawson believed that the government should replace banks as the provider of loans to business and workers. He predicted the worldwide adoption of Lawsonian principles once "everybody understands this subject". His rallies and lectures attracted thousands of listeners in