FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 353 



General "Walker's election to the Presidency of the Massachusc^tts 

 Institute of Technology, in 1881, placetl him at the head of an institution 

 badly in need of a vigorous, confident, and many-sided administrator, for 

 the development of its great possibilities. The plan on which it should 

 work had been prepared and its foundations laid broad and deep by 

 President Rogers, but the work itself was still languishing, endowment 

 and equipment were scanty, and the luunber of students declining. 

 General Walker's administration was signalized by a sudden revival of 

 the school. Funds were secured, new buildings were built, the confi- 

 dence of the public won, and at General Walker's death the school of 

 barely two hundred students, still maintaining the severe standard of 

 work set by its founder, had upon its register nearly twelve hundred 

 students and maintained a staff of one hundred and thirty professors 

 and instructors of different grades. Of the qualities as an educator and 

 administrator of a great technical school displayed by General Walker 

 in this brilliant part of his career, a striking description, made from 

 close observation, has been given by Professor H. W. Tyler of the 

 Faculty of the Institute, in the Educational Review for June, 1897. 



There was doubtless much in the circumstances attending the founda- 

 tion of the Institute of Technology which any disinterested friend of 

 scientific education must now regret. But time has healed wounds and 

 removed jealousies which divided a former generation, and none can 

 now be found to question either the practical or the scientific value of the 

 great institution conceived by Rogers, and brought to its present de- 

 served eminence under the successor of whose day he lived to see little 

 more than the dawn. 



At no period of General Walker's life did he fail to take an active 

 interest in the work of the community in which he lived. That he was 

 already charged with great responsibilities was a reason, both with his 

 fellow citizens and with himself, for increasing the load. An early in- 

 stance of this was his service as Commissioner of Indian Affairs for one 

 year while still in charge of the census of 1870, — a service marked by 

 an annual report remarkable for its thorough review of the whole subject, 

 and by the appearance of his book, " The Indian Question" (1874). At 

 different times, in New Haven and in Boston, he was a member of the 

 local School Board and of the State Board of Education. He was a 

 Trustee of the Boston Public Library and of the Museum of Fine 

 Arts, one of the Boston Park Commissioners, and an almost prescrip. 

 tive member of any more temporary board or committee. In some of 

 these capacities his labors have left their traces in his written works, 

 VOL. XXXII. — 23 



