PREFACE In the many positions which Mr. Walker held, official and academic, he was called upon to present the results of his experience and thought in various forms,-official report, address, lecture, or essay. The mass of material from which to draw, the product of a quarter of a century of intense intellectual activity, is extremely large; and it is therefore natural that in so much public contribution on the platform and in the magazine there should be repetition, both in description and in argument. In the preparation of the following volume, a number of Mr. Walker's essays and addresses have been set aside, and others have been used only in part as explanatory notes, appended to the principal articles reprinted. Further condensation would be easily possible, if preservation of fact and outline of argument were the only objects in making this collection; but it is believed that the value and interest of Mr. Walker's writings lie not only in the content of his thought, but also in the spirit which characterizes his work. Mr. Walker was always candid, direct, and vital in utterance; in his writings, as in his conscientious devotion to the daily work in hand, he never stinted himself, and often had difficulty to compress the full measure of his thought within narrow limits. His political economy was not merely a profession; he felt it and lived in it. The significance of this life of conviction and philosophy can only be gained by taking Mr. Walker's writings as he left them. The reader will therefore find familiar illustration reappearing in articles widely differing in subject-matter, and occasionally he will even note a repetition of paragraph. When omissions have been made, the fact is clearly indicated. Mr. Walker left a considerable number of lectures in man uscript form. The substance of nearly all of these has been published; a small part of this material, however, has been utilized for this collection and now, for the first time, it is believed, is printed. Here especially may be noted a portion of a lecture on "Private Property "; a brief article, "Is Socialism Dangerous?"; and a long paper on "Savings-banks." The papers have been grouped under the following subjects: Finance and Taxation, Money and Bimetallism, Economic Theory, Statistics, National Growth, and Social Economics. Within the limits of these several subjects, the papers, as a rule, are arranged chronologically. Brief notes have been inserted at the beginning of the several articles to indicate the occasion of the lecture or address. A complete bibliography of Mr. Walker's writings may be found in Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. 5 (1897), pp. 276-290. Passages quoted by the author have been carefully compared with their originals and in many instances page references have been inserted. Periodicals which hold copyright privileges have cheerfully granted permission to reprint, and in each case due credit is given to the magazine from which the contribution is taken. DAVIS R. Dewey. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, |