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