Abstract
“Mr. Lawrence was a model man,” wrote William M. Thayer in his book The Poor Boy and Merchant Prince. “Men like him are ‘few and far between.’ From childhood to old age, his career was adorned with the brightest virtues. His life disproves that oft-repeated sentiment, that the highest success in business cannot be achieved, while strict regard to morality and religion is observed.”1 Written just five years after the death of Amos Lawrence and designed as a handbook for young men and boys, Thayer outlined what it meant to be successful, the character traits that were needed to triumph in business and in life. He described the various steps necessary to succeed in business: hard work, sobriety, attention to detail, religious devotion, and self-control. Thayer writes, “If a man lays up a fortune in a series of busy years, while he has dwarfed his soul, and ignored every moral and religious obligation in the effort, he has been successful only in part. ... If he has a million of dollars and no character, he is not worth much.” Mr. Lawrence was the epitome of the successful man.2 Thayer was not alone in that assessment. Reverend Theodore Parker eulogized Lawrence as “The Good Merchant” and a man who “knew the true use of riches.”3
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Notes
Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 65.
William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence with Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888), 23.
Betty Farrell, Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth Century Boston (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 139.
Thomas O’Connor, Lords of the Loom: The Cotton Whigs and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Scribner, 1968), 69.
The material for this paragraph was taken from Barbara M. Tucker and Kenneth H. Tucker, Jr., “The Limits of Homo Economicus: An Appraisal of Early American Entrepreneurship,” in Whither the Early Republic: A Forum on the Future of the Field, ed. John Lauritz Larson and Michael A. Morrison (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 62–63; Amos Lawrence to William Lawrence, Boston, April 29, 1835, Letter book 9, Amos Lawrence Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. Hereafter cited as Amos Lawrence Papers. In this letter, Amos, Sr. told William that he purchased shares in the new Boott Company for him. He requested that he later share the shares with his brother. “It will be a good concern.”
Statement of Assets, c. September 1857, Box 11, AA Lawrence MSS; Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, 51–52; and Michael French, “CoOrdinating Manufacturing and Marketing: The Role of the Selling Agent in US Textiles,” Textile History 25 (1994): 227–28.
Lawrence and Company, The Story of Lawrence and Company (Boston: Walton Advertising and Printing Company, 1913), 3–13. This short book provides a chronology of Lawrence and Company; from 1843 to 1890, the name of the firm and the partners in the firm changed many times. See also Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, 247–49.
Hansjorg Siegenthaler, “What Price Style? The Fabric Advisory Function of the Dry Goods Commission Merchant,” Business History Review 41 (1967): 55–59.
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 71–72.
This specialized selling house was patterned after those established earlier by such firms as A & A Lawrence or J. W. Paige and Company. The latter company had been formed in 1828 by stockholders of the Waltham, Merrimack, Hamilton, and Appleton Companies to dispose of their cloth. The firm dealt directly with jobbers and retailers often located in the large coastal towns. With its booming regional market, access to the western trade via railroads and canals, and foreign commerce, New York appeared the ideal point for distribution. This certainly was true for Mason and Lawrence. About 85 percent of their goods went to jobbers and firms in that city. See Glenn Porter and Harold C. Livesay, Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth-Century Marketing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 22–28; and Chandler, Visible Hand, 71–72. The firm of Mason and Lawrence went through several name changes. See Lawrence and Company, Story of Lawrence and Company, 11–13.
Donald B Cole, Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 31.
B. P. Raymond, In Memory of Hon. Amos A. Lawrence: Discourse (Appleton: Post Publishing Company, 1886), 7.
Resolves and Private Laws of Connecticut, 1836–1857, 3:303. For a discussion of the confusion surrounding the incorporation of the company, see Samuel A. Johnson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The New England Emigrant Aid Company in the Kansas Crusade (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1954).
Amos A. Lawrence to Rev. Lum, November 28, 1854, quoted in Richard H. Abbott, Cotton and Capital: Boston Businessmen and Antislavery Reform, 1854–1868 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 30; and Amos A. Lawrence to James Blood, February 16, 1855 in Abbott, Cotton and Capital, 30. See also Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, 80–81.
John Greenleaf Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works of John Green-leaf Whittier, Household Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), 391–92.
Ibid., 123–25, 140–41; and Crouch, “In Search of Union,” 171–73. Lawrence and Brown’s relationship is somewhat clouded. Eli Thayer believed that Brown abused Lawrence’s support. While Lawrence gave him money to pay his way to Kansas and provided $1000 to pay the mortgage on his New York home, Lawrence criticized the man saying that he deceived everybody. “He was always ready to shed blood, and he always did shed it without remorse.” See Eli Thayer, A History of the Kansas Crusade: Its Friends and its Foes (New York: Harper, 1889), 190–93.
John R. Mulkern, The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People’s Movement (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 137–53; and Crouch, “In Search of Union,” 173–74.
Richard F. Miller, “Brahmin Janissaries: John A. Andrew Mobilizes Massachusetts’ Upper Class for the Civil War,” New England Quarterly 75 (June 2002): 225.
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© 2008 Barbara M. Tucker and Kenneth H. Tucker, Jr.
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Tucker, B.M., Tucker, K.H. (2008). Amos and Abbott Lawrence. In: Industrializing Antebellum America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230614642_7
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