[9] Having moved from South Africa to Australia, "where he represented London newspapers" (Hogate, 1929), he migrated to New York, and joined the staff of the Wall Street Journal in 1899.

[citation needed] On January 1, 1908, when Sereno S. Pratt, who had been WSJ's editor since late 1905, and the author of The Work of Wall Street (1906), replaced George Wilson (1868-1908) as the secretary of the New York Chamber of Commerce, Hamilton was promoted — directly at the behest of Barron's wife, Jessie Maria Barron (1852-1918), née Barteau, née Waldron[10] — to the position of editor of the Wall Street Journal, where he eventually became a strong advocate of Dow Theory (see: "The six basic tenets of Dow Theory).

[citation needed] Apart from twenty-or-so excerpts from his forthcoming The Stockmarket Barometer published sequentially between 1921 and 1922, his Barron's contributions included: He was renowned for the concise precision of his editorials.

In his obituary, the journalist, newspaper publisher, and financial editor of The New York Times from 1896 to 1906, Henry Alloway (1856-1939) spoke of "the logic, force and pungency of [Hamilton's] Wall Street Journal editorial declarations" (Alloway, 1929).

For instance, in Hamilton's WSJ obituary it was noted that: In his extended 1922 Editor & Publisher interview, Hamilton directly addressed what he felt was the significant difference between a "real editorial" and others that were "merely lengthy dissertations":[18] He died at his Brooklyn, New York home of pneumonia on December 9, 1929.