WALKER, Francis Amasa.
Discussions in Economics and Statistics.
New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1899.
2 volumes, 8vo, pp. [ii], v, [2], 454, [2]; iv, 481, [3]; with a frontispiece portrait of the author; a very good copy, unopened, in the original publisher’s cloth, spine direct-lettered gilt.
First edition of this collection edited by Professor Dewey of more than fifty articles by Francis Amasa Walker, some published here for the first time, classified under the heads of Statistics, National Growth, Social Economics, Finance and Taxation, Money and Bimetallism, and Economy Theory.
‘As an economist, President Walker stands for three ideas. He was a conservative and consistent advocate of international bimetallism; he was a successful critic of the wage fund doctrine; and, while contemplating with equanimity any reorganization of industrial relations that might take place under the form of agreement or contract, he was a strong opponent, both as a moralist and as a scientist, of any measure that looked like confiscation of property or forcible change’ (Henry C. Adams on the Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 8, No.3, pp.412-413).
Francis Amasa Walker (1840-1897), former General of the Union Army and later President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was ‘internationally the most widely known and esteemed American economist of his generation, [with] a varied and distinguished public career … At home Walker was primarily known as an outstanding educational administrator and statistician, for he permanently raised the standards of government statistics, helped to create a permanent Bureau of the Census, and served as the President of the American Statistical Association from 1882–97. Abroad, he was recognized more as an economic theorist, especially for his work on wages, money and current policy.’ (The New Palgrave, IV, p. 850).
