A distinguished American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator, and military officer in the Union Army. Francis Amasa Walker was the third president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a prolific writer, especially on economic topics. The development of interest in economics in America is in a large measure the result of Walker's work.
Background
American soldier and economist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 2nd of July 1840. He was the youngest son of Hanna Ambrose and Amasa Walker, a prominent economist and state politician. The Walkers had three children: Emma, Robert and Francis.
Education
When Walker was seven years old, he began studying Latin at a school for boys. He completed his college preparation at the age of 14 and spent another year studying Latin and Greek at the Academy at Lancaster (New England Normal Institute). Entered Amherst College at the age of fifteen, although he had planned to matriculate at Harvard after his first year at Amherst, Walker's father believed his son was too young to enter the larger college and insisted he remain at Amherst
He graduated in 1860 with a degree in law. After graduation, he joined the law firm of Charles Devens and George Frisbie Hoar in Worcester, Massachusetts.
He was awarded both the Sweetser Essay Prize and the Hardy Prize for extempore speaking. After graduating, he joined the law firm of General Charles Devens and Senator George Frisbie Hoar to begin studying law, but eventually abandoned that endeavor to enlist in the Union Army.
Career
Francis Walker, graduated at Amherst College in 1860, studied law, and fought in the Northern army during the whole of the Civil War of 1861-65. As a soldier he excelled in analysis of the position and strength of the enemy. In 1864 he was captured and detained for a time in the famous Libby Prison, Richmond.
After the war he became editorial writer on the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, and in 1869 was made chief of the government bureau of statistics. He was superintendent of the ninth and tenth censuses (those of 1870 and 1880), and (1871-72) commissioner of Indian affairs. From 1873 to his death his work was educational, first as professor (1873-81) of political economy in the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, and then as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.
While superintendent of the census he increased the scope and accuracy of the records; and at MIT he enlarged the resources and numbers of the institution, which had 302 students when he assumed the presidency and 1198 at his death. In other fields he promoted common-school education (especially in manual training), the Boston park system, and the work of the public library, and took an active part in the discussion of monetary, economic, statistical and other public questions, holding many offices of honor and responsibility.
After his experience of statistical work, and under the tutelage of his father, he took up economics and became a chief figure in the discipline. He was concerned to establish economics as a science rather than a branch of practical politics. He developed his own distribution theory, vigorously repudiating the wages fund doctrine, argued for bimetallism and pioneered the use of graphic presentation of data.
He also encouraged the creation of permanent census staff and fostered the use of statistics by economists. Chief Treasury Bureau Stats, 1869-1870. Superintendent United States Censuses, 1870, 1880.
As an economist, he so effectively combated the old theory of the "wage-fund" as to lead to its abandonment or material modification by American students; while in his writings on finance, from 1878 to the end of his life, he advocated international bimetallism, without, however, seeking to justify any one nation in the attempt to maintain parity between gold and silver.
Walker's general tendency was towards a rational conservatism. On the question of rent he called himself a "Ricardian of the Ricardians." To his Wages Question is due in great part the conception formed by English students of the place and functions of the employer in modern industrial economics. A remarkable feature of his writings is his treatment of economic tendencies not as mere abstractions, but as facts making for the happiness or misery of living men.
General Walker died in Boston on the 5th of January 1897.
Professor, Yale University, 1872-1881. President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., USA, 1881-1897.