Background
David Ames Wells was born at Springfield, Massachussets, the son of James and Rebecca (Ames) Wells, and a descendant of Thomas Welles, governor of Connecticut, 1655-59.
David Ames Wells was born at Springfield, Massachussets, the son of James and Rebecca (Ames) Wells, and a descendant of Thomas Welles, governor of Connecticut, 1655-59.
David graduated from Williams College in 1847, having already become engaged in literary work by assisting in the preparation of Sketches of Williams College, published that year. In 1848 he joined the staff of the Springfield Republican, in connection with which he displayed mechanical ingenuity by inventing a device for folding paper, to be attached to power presses. He graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge in 1851, where he was a special pupil of Louis Agassiz.
While at Cambridge he began the publication with George Bliss, in 1850, of The Annual of Scientific Discovery, which he continued until 1866. In 1856 he made important improvements in the method of manufacturing textiles. He was a special partner in the publishing firm of G. P. Putnam & Company, 1857-58, and during this period he compiled The Science of Common Things (1857) and Wells's Principles and Applications of Chemistry (copr. 1858). Later he published Wells's First Principles of Geology (1861) and Wells's Natural Philosophy (1863), the latter going through fifteen editions. In 1864 Wells came into wide prominence through the issuance by the Loyalty Publication Company of his first economic work, a pamphlet entitled Our Burden and Our Strength. Two hundred thousand copies of this brochure were distributed, and it was translated into French, German, Dutch, and other languages. At that time a lack of confidence in the ability of the United States government ever to discharge its mounting debts had caused the fall of greenbacks and bonds to half their face value. Wells in his pamphlet reassured foreign investors and the people of the North by demonstrating the dynamic character of economic life in the North, with its rapid accumulation of capital and constant introduction of labor-saving devices. Brought by this publication to the attention of Lincoln, Wells was appointed in 1865 chairman of the national revenue commission and in 1866 signed its report making recommendations which became laws. That same year the post of special commissioner of the revenue was created for him, and soon the bureau of statistics was established, of which he put Francis A. Walker in charge. The Reports of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue, 1866-69, set forth the whole subject of indirect taxes, and recommended the use of stamps in the collection of revenue on liquor and tobacco. In 1867, Wells went to Europe as a member of a commission to investigate costs of industrial production there. As befitted his New England background he was a staunch protectionist, but finding that high wages in America made for efficiency as compared with the backward methods of competing countries, he was converted to free trade, became a member of the Cobden Club, and thereafter for thirty years was a leading advocate of abolition of the tariff. He was a counselor of his close friend, President Garfield, on tariff matters, and later of Grover Cleveland. The extreme free-trade point of view in Wells's report of 1869 prompted President Grant to abolish the office of special commissioner the following year. Wells, however, was promptly made chairman of the New York state tax commission, and published as one of its reports Local Taxation (1871), the earliest really competent study of the subject. His chief problem in New York was to remedy a situation made critical by the increase of the tax burden in that state while contiguous states were attracting capital and enterprise through lenient laws. In 1876 he was named one of the receivers for the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, and helped rescue its property. He was one of the trustees of the bondholders who bought in and reorganized the Erie Railway in 1875, and in 1878 he became a member of the board of arbitration of the Associated Railways, deciding on questions of pooling. He took an active interest in politics and was several times a delegate to the Democratic national conventions. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress from Connecticut in 1876 and 1890, and he made many speeches in each of Cleveland's campaigns. Wells wrote a large number of books, pamphlets, and articles, always with a current problem uppermost in his mind. His chief interests were the tariff, the theory of money and the currency question, and taxation. His discussion of all of these took character from his inspection of American economic life, which was marked in his period by progressive lowering of costs of production through the application of science. He, more than others, was the expositor of the nature and consequences of "the machine age. " The new economics of production required in his judgment abolition of protective tariffs in order to furnish wide markets, and he was convinced that industrial depressions, with falling prices, were due not to insufficient circulating media, but to sudden and rapid increase in commodities. Some of his most effective writing was in opposition to fiat money or depreciated monetary standards. An excellent example of his work in this field is his Robinson Crusoe's Money, issued first in 1876 when resumption was in doubt, and again in 1896 when the "free silver" advocacy was in full swing. Wells was among the earliest to appreciate the importance of what has since been known as "technological unemployment, " the displacing of men by machines. He urged the substitution of trained personnel for political hangers-on in tax bodies, sought to bring system into taxation, and was the inveterate foe of the general property tax as applied to intangibles. He accepted the diffusion theory of taxation; his opposition to the faculty theory led him to fight against income taxes. He was an out-and-out apostle of laissez faire, and thus missed the later implications of many of the tendencies in American economic life which he discovered and expounded. His writing and speaking was marked by simplicity, candor, and extraordinary facility in the popular adaptation of statistics. His aptness in illustration was as charming as it was effective; it is evidenced in his True Story of the Leaden Statuary (1874). Wells died at Norwich, Connecticut, which had been his residence since 1870.
Among his most significant works, beside those mentioned, are The Relation of the Government to the Telegraph (1873); The Cremation Theory of Specie Resumption (1875); The Silver Question (1877); Why We Trade and How We Trade (1878); Our Merchant Marine (1882); A Primer of Tariff Reform (1884); Practical Economics (1885); Recent Economic Changes (1889); The Theory and Practice of Taxation (1900).
He was married, May 9, 1860, to Mary Sanford Dwight, by whom he had one son; a second wife and a son survived him.
