Pat Gunning quotes from a translation of Carl Menger:  
  
"In the early stages of civilization and even later in the case of  
small manufactures, entrepreneurial activity is usually performed  
by the same economizing individual whose technical labor services  
also constitute one of the factors in the production process.  
With progressive division of labor and an increase in the size of  
enterprises, entrepreneurial activity often occupies his full time.  
For this reason, entrepreneurial activity is just as necessary a factor  
in the production of goods as technical labor services."  
  
Menger, Carl. (1981) Principles of Economics. Translated by James   
Dingwall and Bert Hoselitz. New York: New York University Press.    
Originally published in German in 1871.  
  
In the translation, the translators refer to "factors in the production   
process."  
  
  
  
        THE PROBLEM here is, we don't have the original German.  If it reads  
"Faktoren", it looks as though Menger wins the horse-race; otherwise, not.  
  
        Meantime, Henry George (1879) seems to have won the race among  
Anglophone writers.  As Pat says, the idea's more important than the word;  
and yet, the word carries and implies an idea (Semantics 101).  Adam Smith,  
for example, writes about the FLOW of payments and its distribution among  
wages of labor, profits of stock, and rent of land, but does not use a GROUP  
name (as in "An Exaltation of Larks") for labor, stock, and land together.  
  
        George in 1879 makes a big point of this in his section on  
Distribution, where he insists that the laws of distribution - the  
determination of rent, wages, and interest among land, labor, and capital -  
must jibe with one another.  Philip Wicksteed, an avowed fan and supporter  
of George, borrowed the title of a George chapter, "The correlation and  
coordination of these laws (of distribution)" for his more sophisticated  
work on distribution among the factors of production.  The mathematics is  
Wicksteed's and Euler's, but the inspiration came from George - along with  
the word, "factor".  
  
        I mention this not to win a race, but because the contributions of  
George have been overlooked or denigrated over the years.  Wicksteed, a  
George fan, has been touted as one who replaced the residual concept of rent  
with factor symmetry, and thus somehow undercut George.  J.B. Clark, who  
used Wicksteed's ideas as a club to beat George, tried to give that  
impression.  That is not what Wicksteed said, though, unless you cherrypick  
his words and give them a certain spin he clearly did not intend.  
  
Mason Gaffney