Pat Gunning writes, in part:  
  
"I am not an expert on Wicksteed, but all of the obvious first hand   
sources of which I am aware seem to contradict these (Gaffney's) views --  
most   
especially that he believed that land deserved special treatment as a   
factor of production and that supported anything resembling a single   
tax."  
  
Here are some of my sources.  
  
Wicksteed's devotion to George is documented in Charles A. Barker's bio of  
George.  Wicksteed, upon first  reading Progress and Poverty, wrote George,  
it "has given me light I vainly sought for myself."  You have opened "a new  
heaven and a new earth," he continued, and thanked George for a "freshly  
kindled enthusiasm" (Barker, p.381).  He sat with Michael Davitt, the  
radical Irish land reformer, on the platform during one of George's major  
addresses in England (Barker, p.397).    
  
See also Lawrence, Elwood P.  1957.  *Henry George in the British Isles*.  
E. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.    
  
Wicksteed's acceptance of Ricardo is documented in Shaw, George Bernard,  
1889.  "Bluffing the Value Theory."  Orig. *Today*, May.  Rpt. 1930, Bernard  
Shaw and Karl Marx.  New York: Random House, pp. 175-200.  Shaw engaged  
Wicksteed to tutor him in Ricardian economics, to upgrade the thinking of  
his fellow Fabians.  
  
What Wicksteed showed is simply that residual imputation of land rent gives  
the same result as finding land rent as the marginal productivity of land.  
The same result is found in Alonso, William, Location and Land Use; and in  
Gaffney, M., "Land and Rent in Welfare Economics", in Clawson, Marion, and  
Marshall Harris (eds.), 1960, *Land Economics Research*, Baltimore: Johns  
Hopkins Univ. Press.  Rather than refute George it rather complements and  
formalizes George's insistence that the laws of distribution are harmonious.  
  
"... (the logic) ... so far from weakening the position of those who regard  
rent as a surplus, by showing that the use of land is paid for in accordance  
with the marginal utility of the service rendered by it, shows what is  
indeed Mr. Wicksteed's object to prove, that the two views are essentially  
contained, each in the other" (Flux, A.W., 1894.  Review of K. Wicksell and  
P.H. Wicksteed.  Economic Journal IV:305-13, at p.312).    
  
The idea of land's having a meaningful marginal product is somewhat  
counterintuitive, since in many cases the revision of land boundaries is so  
sticky and slow a process that it takes some imagination and "virtual"  
thinking to envision adding small increments of land.  Still, if we allow  
that that might be possible, or can be simulated, Wicksteed's model is  
allowable.  It does not imply, however, that land OWNERS per se are  
productive, simply because land is.  
  
Mason Gaffney