lviii. 



Annual Report of the Council. 



It may have been to some extent merely in consequence 

 of the influences of these early associations that the younger 

 Walker remained an avowed member of the Republican 

 party to the close of his life, notwithstanding the fact that, 

 though far from being an extreme advocate of the doctrine 

 of laissez-faive, but on the contrary, admitting, with Jevons, 

 the beneficial influence in economics of State regulation in 

 certain directions, he was certainly not in sympathy with 

 the purely Protectionist beliefs of the Republican party. 

 We may assume also that his personal connection with the 

 Civil War, and, therefore, with the slavery problem which 

 was solved by the war, and his father's anti-slavery teaching, 

 were not without influence in directing his attention to the 

 question of wages. It was a treatise on the " Wages 

 Question,' 1 published in 1876, which first won for him an 

 international reputation as an economist, and, as Professor 

 Foxwell said on the occasion of Walker's last appearance 

 in this country in the summer of 1896, " brought about 

 a revolution in the opinion of the world." In this work 

 Walker deals with wages as a question in the distribution 

 of wealth. Amongst the most special features of the 

 treatise are the overthrow of the " wages fund " theory, 

 which for so long a time tyrannised over all thought on 

 the subject ; the examination of the conditions which make 

 for the permanent degradation of labour under free com- 

 petition unrestrained by the State, and in the absence of 

 an effective mobility of labour ; the demonstration of the 

 influence of the habits of the community and of the general 

 standard of living in promoting, on the one hand, such 

 economic degradation or, on the other hand, the elevation 

 of labour, and the effects on the efficiency of labour in the 

 production of wealth ; the assertion of the doctrine that 

 wages are paid out of the product of present industry and, 

 hence, that production, and not pre-existing capital, fur- 

 nishes, in a philosophical view of the subject, the true 

 measure of wages ; the elucidation of the truth that the 

 labourer provides a considerable portion of the capital 



