350 FEANCIS AMASA WALKER. 



vancing reputation of its author. Public opinion in the United States 

 was iu extreme confusion on the questions involved in the return to 

 specie payment ; there was a formidable agitation for the repeal of the 

 Eesumption Act, and Congress was entering upon its long series of 

 efforts to rehabilitate silver as a money metal. At this juncture, when 

 every part of the theory of money was the subject of warm discussion, 

 scientific and popular alike, General Walker, using the substance of a 

 course of lectures delivered by him in the Johns Hopkins University 

 in 1877, laid before the public an elaborate and broad-minded survey 

 of the whole field, claiming little originality for his work, but giving 

 material help in concentrating upon scientific lines a discussion which 

 was wandering in endless vagaries. On the general subject his views 

 had no doubt been formed early, under the influence of his father, to 

 whom, in more than one passage of this book, he makes touching 

 allusion, and later in life he found in them little to change, although 

 the long regime of paper money and its consequences suggested many 

 things to be added. In 1879 he published, under the title of "Money 

 in its Relations to Trade and Industry," what was in some sense an 

 abridgment of the larger work, made for use in a course of lectures in 

 the Lowell Institute ; and in his " Political Economy " he again con- 

 densed his arguments and conclusions as to money, as part of his dis- 

 cussion of the grand division, Exchange. 



When the International Monetary Conference met in 1878, by invita- 

 tion of the United States, General Walker went to Paris as one of the 

 commissioners for this country. His discussion of bimetallism had not 

 been carried in " Money " much beyond a careful statement of the ques- 

 tion and of the arguments on each side, but it was carried far enough to 

 show that international bimetallism, and not the simple remonetization of 

 silver by the United States, was, in his view, the proper method of secur- 

 ing what he deemed an adequate supply of money for this country and 

 for the commercial world. Great emphasis was laid, in " Money, Trade, 

 and Industry," upon the necessity for "concerted action by the civilized 

 states," and this ground was consistently held by him until his share in 

 the discussion ended with the publication of " International Bimetal- 

 lism " (1896), a few months before his death. In this book, which was 

 the outcome of a course of lectures delivered in Harvard University, 

 after reviewing the controversy over silver, which had more and more 

 engaged his attention as time went on, he declared more vigorously than 

 ever his opinion of the futility of the policy of solitary action, adopted 

 by the United States in the Act of 1878. " International Bimetallism" 



