FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 649 



at home and abroad did more to give the association its great impetus 

 and to establish its right to exist than any other single intiuence. 



His works, his doctrines, his public positions growing out of them, 

 contribute to makehim the foremost figure among the political economists 

 of America. 



As a statistican the life york of our friend conies nearer to us in this 

 association than any other feature perhaps. For nearly a generation 

 General Walker's name has been associated with the statistics of the 

 United States Government. His first experience was as Deputy Com- 

 missioner of Internal Revenue and Chief of the Bureau of Statistics 

 of the Treasury Department. His experience here, however, was so 

 brief that he did not have the opportunity of stamping his individu- 

 ality upon the work of the office. In 1870 he was appointed Superin- 

 tendent of the Mnth Census, and he entered upon the work of that 

 office with all the enthusiasm of his nature and tlie consecration of his 

 science as a i)olitical economist. Like every other statistician m this 

 country who has been called to take charge of statistical enterprises, 

 General Walker came to his work untrained, yet with a vast advantage 

 over every other man in the country who has undertaken like work. 

 He was a political economist by inheritance, by endowment, and by 

 painstaking equipment, and so an economist adopting the historical 

 method, he had been a student of the statistics of other countries and 

 of this, as far as they existed. 



As a census taker he was obliged, in almost every expansive respect, 

 to blaze the way. The censuses of the past had been of a fragmentary 

 nature, those of 1850 and 1860 being creditable departures from the old- 

 time Federal enumeration. It was General Walker's ambition to have 

 the census of 1870 taken on a broader basis than that of any preceding 

 it. The country was approaching its interesting centennial period. In 

 1876 there Avas to be a great exposition of the resources, the wealth, and 

 the character of our people. The General foresaw all this, and his desire 

 was to make the census of 1870 encyclopedic in its nature, comprehend- 

 ing all the great features of social and economic conditions. He wanted 

 to show not only the character, the composition, the movement, and 

 the growth of the people, but the character and composition of its indus- 

 tries, its transportation systems, its accumulation of wealth, its socio- 

 logical elements — everything, in fact, that goes to make up a great and 

 growing nation. In this he had Gen, James A. Garfield, then in the 

 House, as an able coadjutor. General Garfield was chairman of the 

 House Committee on the Ninth Census, and he made a deep study of 

 the census methods of the world. With the aid of General Walker and 

 the advice of Dr. Edward Jar vis, at that time president of this associa- 

 tion, he projected a system of census taking on a broad and compre- 

 hensive basis. The bill * * * ^as defeated, the result being that 

 General Walker was obliged to take the census of 1870 in accordance 

 with the law of 1850. Nevertheless, he made it, through the support 



