American Economic Association

Francis Amasa Walker: First President of the American Economic Association, 1886-92Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Jun., 1941)Published by: American Economic AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/354 .

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FRANCIS AMASA WALKER First President of the American Economic Association, 1886-92

Born in Boston, July 2, 1840, son of Amasa Walker. Died January 5, 1897. Graduated at Amherst, A.B., 1860 and began to study law; lieutenant colonel and brevet brigadier general in the Civil War. Taught Latin and Greek at Williston Seminary 1865-68; on staff of the Springfield Reptublican, 1868; director of the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department, 1869; super- intendent of the Ninth Census, 1870; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1872. He was professor of political economy and history at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, 1873-81; lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, 1877-79; represented the United States at the Monetary Conference in Paris, 1878; superintendent of the Tenth United States Census, 1880; and from 1881 until his death he was presi- dent of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Walker Memorial, a stu- dents' clubhouse and one of the new Technology buildings on the Charles, was dedicated in 1916. From 1882 to 1897 he served as president of the American Statistical Association. President Walker was one of the foremost advocates of international bimetallism. In economic theory he was regarded as an original and powerful thinker, and his treatment of wages and profits has had a profound influence upon economic theory. Indeed, the development of interest in economics in America is in a large measure the result of his work. His principal writings are: The Indian Question, 1874; The Wages Question, 1876; Money, 1878; Money in Its Relation to Trade and Industry, 1879; Political Economy, 1883; Land and Its Rent, 1883; History of the Second Army Corps, 1886; Political Economy (3rd ed. 1888); Life of General Hancock, 1894; The Making of the Nation, 1895, International Bimetallism, 1896.

Number s of a series of photographs of past presidents of the Association.

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