FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 0-19 



of Amherst College, July 8, 1874, and he further developed the subject 

 in an article contributed to the North American Review for January, 

 1875. Few books in political economy have taken a place in the fore- 

 ground of scientific discussion more (juickly than " The Wages Question." 

 Many economists followed the author's lead with little delay, and those 

 who were slower to admit that the object of his attack was in fact the 

 wages fund of the older scliool, recognized his assault as by far the most 

 serious yet made. Unquestionably it compelled an immediate review 

 of a large body of thought by the great mass of economic students in the 

 English speaking countries. 



In "The Wages Question," General Walker drew the line clearly be- 

 tween the function of the capitalist and that of the employer, or entre- 

 preneur, and between interest, which is the return made to the former, and 

 profits, which are the reward of the latter. It was however in his 

 " Political Economy" (1883), that he worked out his theory of the source 

 of business profits and of the law governing the returns secured by the 

 employing class. This enabled him to lay down a general theory of distri- 

 bution, to be substituted for that associated with the wages fund theory, 

 which he regarded as completely exploded, and indeed "exanimate." 

 Of the four parties to the distribution of the product of industry, three, 

 the owner of land, the capitalist, and the employer, in his view, receive 

 shares which are determined, respectively, by the law of Ricardo, by the 

 prevailing rate of interest, and by a law of business profits analogous to 

 the law of rent. These shares being settled, each by a limiting prin- 

 ciple of its own, labor becomes the " residual claimant," be the residue 

 more or less, and any increase of product resulting from the energy, econ- 

 omy, or care of the laborors " goes to them by purely natural laws, pro- 

 vided only competition be full and free." So too the gains from invention 

 enure to their benefit, except so far as the law may interfere by creating 

 a monopoly. This striking solution of the chief problem of economics 

 attracted wide attention, and was further expounded and defended by its 

 author in the discussions which it provoked, as may be seen by reference 

 to the earlier volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Indeed, 

 in his last published work, " International Bimetallism " (page 283), he 

 prefaces a statement of his theory by saying, " I have given no small 

 part of my strength during the past twenty years to the advocacy of 

 that economic view which makes the laborer the residual claimant 

 upon the product of industry." 



General Walker published his treatise, " Money " (1878), at a mo- 

 ment sino-ularly opportune for the usefulness of the book and the ad- 



