Profile Major Works Resources

Walter Francis Willcox, 1861-1964.

American Institutionalist, statistician and demographer at Cornell. 

Walter Francis Willcox was born in Reading, Massachusetts, the son of a Congregationalist minister. Willcox was educated at the Philips Academy in Andover, and went on to obtain his B.A. from Amherst College in 1884, an LL.B. from Columbia in 1887 and an MA from Amherst in 1888. Like many Americans of the post-bellum "new generation", Willcox went for graduate study abroad in Germany, spending 1889-90 at the University of Berlin.  Originally intending to study philosophy and law, it was in Berlin,  then a bastion of the Historical School, that Willcox first encountered statistical methods and converted to empiricism (the work of the French statistician Jacques Bertillon is often cited as his main influence),

Upon his return, Willcox received a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1891, with a dissertation on the demographics of divorce in the United States.  Walter F. Willcox subsequently joined the faculty of Cornell University as philosophy instructor, but was promptly appointed assistant in social science and statistics. In 1892, Willcox introduced one of the first courses in statistics at an American university - initially under the title of "Applied Ethics", later "Social Statistics" - which would became a mainstay for several generations of Cornell students. 

Willcox served a stint (1899-1901) as one of the chief statisticians of the US Bureau of the Census.  He helped conduct the 1899 censuses of Puerto Rico and Cuba, and the Twelfth Census of the United States in 1900. 

Some of Willcox's work has not dated well.  Most notably, Willcox's dubious studies on African-Americans, replete with statistics and the appearance of scientific objectivity, gave wind to the sails of notorious white supremacists like Alfred Holt Stone (to whom Willcox was close),  William B. Smith and Mississippi governor James K. Vardaman.  Much cited were Willcox's claims on the "Negro's liability to criminality" and his "extinction hypothesis" (that the Black race was so decrepit, its population would decline and eventually become extinct). Willcox's methods and hypotheses were famously disputed by W.E.B. DuBois, and a blistering correspondence between the two men ensued, in which Willcox declared himself "agnostic" on the causes of the predicament of Blacks in America.

Willcox becoming full professor of economics and statistics at Cornell in 1901. He would remain at Cornell for the remainder of his career,  until his retirement in 1931. Willcos was still a regular presence on the Cornell campus and active in political debates for decades thereafter   He died at the advanced age of 104.

 

  

top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Major Works of Walter F. Willcox

  • The Divorce Problem: A study in statistics, 1891
  • "The Relation of Statistics to Social Science", 1894, Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction, p.86.
  • "Methods of Determining the Economic Productivity of Municipal Enterprises", 1896, J of SS, p.162
  • "Area and Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census", 1897,   AEA Econ Studies, v.2 p.199,
  • "Density and Distribution of Population in the United States at the Eleventh Census", 1897, AEA Econ Studies v.2, p.377[offp]
  • "Report of the Committee on the Scope and Method of the Twelfth Census (with abstracts)", 1899, AEA Econ Studies (Feb), p.45  (committee: W.F. Willcox, R. Mayo-Smith, C.D. Wright, R.P. Falkner & DR Dewey)
  • "Report of the Committee on the Scope and Method of the Twelfth Census", 1899, Pub AEA (ns 2, Mar), p.1 [js]{av]
  • "Area, Population, Birthplace, Migration and Conjugal Condition", 1899, Pub AEA (ns 2, Mar), p.8 [js]
  • "Negro Criminality", 1899 J of SS.(Dec), p.78 [offp], [repr in Stone, 1908, p.443]
  • "Address to Montgomery Conference, - session on the Negro in Relation to Religion", 1900, Race Problems of the South, p.152
  • Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899, with J.P. Sanger and H. Gannett, 1900 [bk]
  • Report on the Census of Porto Rico, 1899, with J.P. Sanger and H. Gannett, 1900,   [bk]
  • Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United State, 1900, 1902 [bk]
  • Negroes in the United States,  with W.C. Hunt and W.E.B. DuBois, 1902 (Bureau of Census Bulletin No.8) [bk]
  • "Preface", 1902, to J.A. Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America: Pub AEA (May), p.i, [js]
  • "Negro Education is Not a Source of Crime", 1904, Leslie's Weekly (Mar 17), p.252 (reply to Vardaman)
  • "Review of Elwang's Negroes of Columbia, Mo", 1904, Pub ASA (Sep-Dec),  p.132 [js]
  • "Census Statistics of the Negro", 1904, Yale Review, (Nov), p.274 [repr in Stone, 1908, p.476]
  • "Census Statistics of Teachers", 1905, Bureau of Census Bulletin, [bk]
  • "Death-Rates of the United States in 1900", 1906, Pub ASA (Sep), p.137 [js]
  • "The Probable Increase in the Negro Race in America", 1905, QJE, p.xx [repr. in Stone, 1908 p.496]
  • "Introduction" in A.H. Stone, editor, Studies in the American Race Problem,  p.xv
  •  "The Outlook for American Statistics", 1910, Pub ASA (Mar) p.43 [js]
  • "The Change in the Proportion of Children in the United States and in the Birth Rate in France During the Nineteenth Century"., 1911, Pub ASA (Mar)  p.490 [js]
  • "Expansion of Europe in Population", 1915, AER (Dec) p.737 [js]
  • "Fewer Births and Deaths - What do they mean?", 1916, J of Heredity (Mar), p.119
  • "The Population of China in 1910", 1928, JASA.
  • "A Westerner's Effort to Estimate the Population of China, and its Increase since 1650", 1930, JASA (Sep), p.255
  • "Census", 1930, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, v.3
  • Introduction to the Vital Statistics of the United States, 1900-1930, 1933 [bk]
  • Studies in American Demography, 1940

 
HET

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Resources on  Walter Willcox

  • Walter F. Willcox publications at the NBER
  • "A Governor Bitterly Opposes Negro Education", by James K. Vardaman, 1904, Leslie's Weekly (Feb 4), p.104
  • The Color Line: a brief in behalf of the unborn, by William Benjamin Smith, 1904 [ample citations of Willcox, e.g. p.225, p.249ff]
  • "The Future of the Negro Race in America" by W.E.B. DuBois, 1904, The East and the West, v.2 (Jan), p.4
  • "Review of Willcox et al, Negroes in the United States", by C.R. Edgerton, 1905, Pub ASA, (Mar) p.182  [js]
  • Walter F. Willcox obituary at NY Times, 1964
  • "Walter F. Willcox, Statist",  by William R. Leonard, 1961, American Statistician  [online at Amstatnews]
  • Walter F. Willlcox entry at Encyclopedia of Mathematics
  • Walter F. Willcox papers archive at Cornell [guide]
  • Walter Willcox entry at IESS (enc.com)
  • "Progressive Economists and Scientific Racism: Walter Willcox and Black Americans, 1895-1910", by Mark Aldrich, 1979, Phylon, p.1
  • Wikipedia

 

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca