Mason Gaffney writes the following about Wicksteed: > 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". and > 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. > I am not an expert on Wicksteed, but all of the obvious first hand sources of which I am aware seem to contradict these views -- most especially that he believed that land deserved special treatment as a factor of production and that supported anything resembling a single tax. Let me just refer Mason to two primary sources. First, Wicksteed summarizes Book 2, Chapter 6 of his Common Sense of Political Economy. His chapter is entitled "THE DIAGRAMMATIC EXPOSITION OF THE LAW OF RENT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS." Summary.�/The current exposition of the law of rent, based on a diagram of "decreasing returns" to labour, for a constant of land, mistakes the characteristics of the constant for those of land. Hence many errors in nomenclature and in thought have arisen. It is equally easy and equally legitimate to represent the same facts in the form of a diagram with labour for the constant and land for the variable. This will shew that both rent and wages are shares in the product determined by marginal efficiency; and that when all the factors have received their share in this marginal distribution there is no surplus or residuum at all. / One would be wise to also check Book 1, Chapter 9./ /http://www.econlib.org/library/Wicksteed/wkCSContents.html/ /Second, let me refer Mason to Wicksteed's Scope and Method of Political Economy/ On the present occasion severe selection and limitation is, of course, necessary, and I think we cannot do better than take up a few of the current phrases, or conceptions and diagrammatic illustrations connected with the phenomenon of rent. Antecedently we must expect that as there is no theoretical difference between the part played by land and that played by other factors of production (or more direct ministrants to enjoyment), so there can be no general assertion about rent and land which is at once true and distinctive; for, if true, it must be based on that aspect of land which expresses its function in a unit common, say, to capital, and which brings its differential significance, upon which all depends, under the same law; and therefore it cannot be distinctive of land. Let us test the truth of these anticipations. Ricardo's celebrated law of rent really asserts nothing except that the superior article fetches the superior price, in proportion to its superiority; and it is obvious that all "superiorities" in land, whether arising from "inalienable" properties or from expenditure of capital, tell in exactly the same way upon the rent. /http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/wicksteed/scope.html There is not a great deal of difference between Wicksteed and Davenport on fundamental issues, in my view. Of course, if one were interested in the history of word "entrepreneur," she might miss Wicksteed entirely; whereas if she were interested in the history of the word "undertaker," she might miss Davenport. Words are words. Speaking for myself, if I wanted to hire cherry-pickers, I would send my foreman to Camp George. With humble respect, Pat Gunning