Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/49

 in which economists found separate “laws” to express rent, interest, profit, wages. In actual economic processes all the factors of production were required to co-operate, and that co-operation was an organic process which precluded the separate assignment of any part of the products to any one of them. Different kinds and quantities of land, capital, labour were needed for each of these acts of co-operative production. The calculation of how much of each factor was required in a given business was based on the conception of a factory, a workshop, or a retail store regarded as an organic whole.

In considering the parts played by the several sorts of land, capital, and labour, it seemed, however, necessary to attribute to them for their several units a measurable amount of productive utility for the various uses to which they might be put. Here I found that little had been done towards such measurement except in the case of land, and that even there the tendency had been to treat all land as if it were the: same sort of stuff differing only in the degree of fertility for a single purpose. There was “marginal” land, just worth cultivation on a no-rent or nominal rent basis, and better acres paid a “differential” rent, measuring the superiority of their yield over that of the marginal land. The dictum, that “rent” did not “enter into” cost of production and price, was based on this quite unwarranted assumption of a no-rent margin. For as soon as it was realized that there were