FtiANCIS AMA^A WALKER. 647 



he should at a very early age turn his attention to economic con- 

 siderations. In view of his familiarity with his father's life, and 

 impressed by his strong, original, and far-seeing mind, it would have 

 been strange if the keen, receptive qualities of the younger man were 

 not affected. The elder Walker, as already intimated, was an honored 

 and trusted authority in the perplexing problems of political and 

 social science. * * * 



There are two classes of political economists — those belonging to 

 what is popularly known as the orthodox school and those adhering 

 to the so-called new school of political economy. General Walker did 

 not belong exclusively to either. He upheld the theorist's views, and 

 yet he understood the pressing influences of environment, of the con- 

 stitution of human nature, in affecting human economic conditions; he 

 did not hesitate to attack well-grounded assumptions and theories or 

 to uphold those which had not the weight of the culture of the past to 

 support them; he was orthodox enough to insist that ethics could not 

 displace economics; he was just and fair enough to recognize that 

 economics could not displace ethics, and his well-balanced mind taught 

 him that, economic conditions once established, the relationship of men 

 under them became ethical. This fair-mindedness, of course, subjected 

 him to attacks from both schools. When his invaluable work on wages 

 (one of the most positive contributions to economic and social sciehce 

 that has been published in the last half century) appeared, in which he 

 made his brave and democratic attack upon the settled wage-fund 

 theory of the great economists of Europe, he called down upon him- 

 self attacks which might have staggered a less courageous fighter, but 

 with his human and humane instincts Walker kept on his course. He 

 placed manhood at the center of his economic system. He recognized 

 not only the power but the good of the organization of labor, and 

 insisted that wages were to be determined, not by any arbitrary rule 

 under which wage earners have no voice and no concern, and are mere 

 physical elements of production, but by conditions of i)roduction, and 

 that the receivers of them had some rights; for, as he expressed it, no 

 class is fit to be the trustee of the interests of any other class. He did not 

 occupy the position in America that must be given to fimile de Laveleye, 

 of Belgium, although there is much in common in their writings; he 

 can be classed more truthfully, probably, with Leslie and Marshall, of 

 England. He recognized that political economy must deal with vital 

 things; that it has something more to do with the world's affairs than 

 to teach the accumulation of wealth. * * * 



His chief studies as an economist have related to wages, theory of 

 distribution, money, and social economics. Adopting the historical 

 method. President Walker very naturally turned to statistics for his 

 arguments and illustrations, and, while many economists may differ with 

 him in many of his positions, the general student feels that he came 

 nearer the truth than many of his contemporaries. He did not waste 

 his efforts in quarreling over definitions; his economic work was some- 



