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Abstract
The contribution of Charles Wickens to Australian economics has been overlooked for too long. As well as his distinguished service as Commonwealth Statistician, and high reputation as an actuary, he was a key economic adviser to government for many years. He was effectively the first Australian government economist. He was the man to whom other public servants turned with economic problems. Along with Douglas Copland, he had a major role in the establishment of the Economic Society. He was a major contributor to its journal, the Economic Record. He challenged the then economic orthodoxy, giving proto-Keynesian advice on responding to the great depression, which influenced the plan developed by Ted Theodore. He chaired the committee of Australian economists which produced a globally significant report on tariffs. He did pioneering work on estimating a national balance sheet for Australia and in other areas of economics. He should be better remembered.
Notes
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Bruce Hockman and Domenic Parisi from the Australian Bureau of Statistics; Peter Monteith, Assistant Archivist at King’s College, Cambridge; archivists at the National Library of Australia, University of Melbourne and the Noel Butlin Archives Centre; and participants at the History of Economic Thought Society conference, Canberra, 27 September 2017.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Canberra Times, 2 August 1939, 3.
2 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives (Hansard), 27 November 1930, 824–825.
3 Canberra Times, 2 August 1939, 3. See also Anonymous (Citation1932, 4).
4 Peter Charles Wickens, around 1973, cited by Lancaster (Citation1974, 73).
5 National Library of Australia MS 3800, Copland to Keynes, 1 April and 21 June 1927, Douglas Copland Papers.
6 NLA, Copland to Clay, 1 April 1927, Douglas Copland Papers.
7 Goodwin (Citation1966, 581).
8 The others were Copland, Giblin, Fraser, Bennett, McKay and Watson.
9 The others were Copland, Dyason, Lemmon and Church.
10 The others were Copland (New Zealand), Mills (New South Wales), Brigden (Tasmania), Ashworth (Victoria), Lemmon (Queensland), and Holmes and Stewart (South Australia).
11 University of Melbourne Archives, Minutes of Victorian branch of the Economic Society.
12 The others were Shann, Mills, Copland, Melville, Giblin and Brigden. They all have entries in King (Citation2007).
13 The Age, 11 February 1926, 15.
14 NLA, Copland to Keynes, 1 April 1927, Douglas Copland Papers. Copland also wrote to Gregory to arrange meetings for Wickens at the London School of Economics.
15 The King’s College archives contain no correspondence between Keynes and Wickens and there are no references to Wickens in the biographies of Keynes or in his collected papers published by the Royal Economic Society.
16 NLA, Wickens to Fenton, 24 October 1930, Joseph Lyons Papers.
17 Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1930, 9.
18 NLA, Wickens to Copland, 20 November 1930, Douglas Copland Papers.
19 Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 1930, 12.
20 Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November 1930, 8.
21 Sydney Morning Herald, 1 December 1930, 8.
22 Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1931, editorial, 12.
23 NLA, Wickens to Copland, 20 November 1930, Douglas Copland Papers.
24 Hansard, 27 November 1930, 803–804.
25 Hansard, 27 November 1930, 818.
26 Hansard, 27 November 1930, 831.
27 University of Melbourne archives, Edward Dyason diary entry for 12 November 1930.
28 Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1931, editorial, 12. McFarlane (Citation1966, 20) argued former University of Sydney professor Robert Irvine was more influential on Theodore than was Wickens. See also Hawkins (Citation2017, 120–123).
29 Hansard, 17 March 1931, 305–306.
30 Roe (Citation1995, 91).
31 Hunter (Citation2018, 33).
32 University of Melbourne Archives, Minutes of Victorian branch of the Economic Society.
33 NLA, Copland to Mills, 16 February 1927, Douglas Copland Papers.
34 NLA, Brigden to Copland, 29 March 1929, Douglas Copland Papers. Brigden was enthusiastic about the proposed volume, writing he ‘jumped at the idea’.
35 NLA, Wickens to Copland, 8 September 1928, Douglas Copland Papers.
36 Tweed Daily, 1 May 1929, 5.
37 NLA, Wickens to Copland, 26 August 1930, Douglas Copland Papers.
38 Hansard, 27 November 1930, 831.
39 Coleman, Cornish, and Hagger (Citation2006, 120) referred to an ‘epileptic fit’; Anonymous (Citation1932, 5) and Forster and Hazlehurst (Citation1988) to a ‘cerebral seizure’; an interview with his son Peter, Lancaster (Citation1974, 71), Gani (Citation1976, 5), Hazlehurst and Kerley (Citation1990) and ABS (2005, 249, 287) to another stroke; an anonymous note in the ABS files to ‘a paralytic stroke’; an anonymous obituary writer (1939, 625) to a ‘complete breakdown’ and Millmow (2010, 112) to an ‘incapacitating illness…caused by overwork and the controversy his views had embroiled him in’. The Canberra Times (2 August 1939, 3) also claimed his hard work was ‘directly responsible’ for the collapse, which some of the Wickens family also believed. His son referred to him having a ‘cardiovascular thing’ and a history of high blood pressure.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
John Hawkins
John Hawkins, assistant professor in the Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society at the University of Canberra, became interested in Charles Wickens when researching on Edward Theodore for his PhD thesis on the Australian treasurers.