Born to Scottish parents in Pennsylvania in 1871, Lawson was raised in a union household by a father who was at various times part of the Knights of Labor and United Mine Workers. At age 10, Lawson began work as a "trapper boy," preventing the build-up of dangerous gases in the enclosed spaces of a mine. Lawson was sent to Philadelphiaat 17 to aid his brother in stone-working. After working at mines in Rosenburg, Oregon and Rock Springs, Wyoming, Lawson moved to Walsen, Colorado with his father in 1896. After moving to another CF&I owned and operated town–New Castle–he joined the UMWA when a local chapter was founded there in 1898. Lawson would be elected to the International Executive Board of the UMWA in 1906 and serve as a board member through 1917. Lawson participated in strikes in 1900, 1903-1904, 1910, and in the major 1913-1914. During the Cripple Creek Strike–on the night of 17 December 1903–Lawson's family home was among those of other strikers that were dynamited in what some historians believe was an attack executed by mine operators. His daughter Fern was not injured in the explosion, but is reported to have been thrown from her crib by the force of the blast. Local minor mine owner Perry C. Coryell, had previously shot and seriously injured Lawson five months prior with a shotgun in New Castle, near where Coryell owned a mine in Garfield County. During the 1913-1914 strike against CF&I, Lawson was involved in activities both pertaining to organizing peaceful elements of the UMWA strike as well as formally ordering armed striking miners to attack targets, such as the Colorado and Southern Railway that passed near Ludlow. Following years of strikes which ended in relative failure, Lawson joined the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company as Vice President, serving in that position from 1927 to 1939.
In 1915 Lawson testified before the Commission on Industrial Relations castigating John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for his ignorance regarding conditions at his coal mines and camps in Colorado describing local elections in the Rockefeller-controlled company towns in Colorado where election judges counted the votes of sheep, mules, and even box cars. He also testified that on the night of December 17, 1903 his home in New Castle, Colorado, and those of 4 other union organizers had been dynamited.
