is due to defluxion. The remainder of the volume of value which is discharged per unit of time flies
off to those who occupy the height represented by a5a’5.
If now it is asked where rent comes into this representation of distribution, the answer is to
be found in the theory that from the point of view of the entrepreneur the use of land appears in the
same light as the use of labourers,—as a factor of production. The idea of a steady cyclic flow which
we are striving to win becomes not much more complicated when we magma that those who, placed
on the heights, preside over the origination of productive streams, obtain the material that is to form
the current, the precious fluid which it is their office to start upon its downward flow, not solely from
a pumping proletariat, but also from the fortunate owners of springs which gush spontaneously.
There is, indeed, this difference between the labourer and the land-owner: that, whereas the former
(even in the present age and still more when the classical economists flourished) has to spend a great
proportion of his daily wage upon his daily necessaries, and therefore in respect of the bulk of his
income must be placed at the littoral line, the latter may save a great part of his income, when it is
greatly in excess of his daily necessaries, and in particular, with respect to that great portion, may
defer fruition until the stream shall have flowed down from the point at which his contribution is
applied to the point at which production becomes merged in consummation. Another difference
between land and labour in their relation to capital and enterprise arises from the circumstance that,
unlike the labourer (in a free country), land itself, as well as its use, is sold. Whence arises a well-
known correspondence between rent and interest in their relation to the capital value of land. This
similarity will not be mistaken for identity88 by those who find the essential attribute of rent in the
limitation of the objects for which rent is paid.89
To complete the analysis of the parties to Distribution, it may next be required to distinguish
the capitalist from the entrepreneur. They are both easily distinguished from the salaried manager
in that he is at the littoral, in that respect like the common workman, while they are both above that
line. But to draw a line in the series of shades which intervene between the employer of Walker's
type and the mere shareholder, to determine at what point the capitalist ends and the entrepreneur
begins, appears to defy analysis. As Thought and Emotion are inseparably blended, though one may
so far preponderate as to give its name to the state of consciousness at any time, such is the
inseparable connection, such the intelligible but not exactly definable distinction, between Enterprise
and Saving. The indefiniteness of the relation is illustrated by the shifting use in economic literature
of the term Profit.90
That profit other than remuneration for managerial work should be transmitted to those who
occupy a position on the heights—Often the easy position of a dormant shareholder—is certainly
invidious and difficult to justify to those who toil below. Yet it may be reflected that the condition
of those below would have been worse if those above, or those from whom they purchased or
inherited their position, had not been content to wait for future goods instead of grasping at
88. “The attempt of certain writers to refine away this traditional distinction between land and
capital, rent and interest, impresses me as a subtle obscuration of plain facts,” well remarked one of
the speakers at the recent banquet of the Massachusetts Single Tax League (1902).
89. Marshall, Principles, sub voce “Rent.”
90. As instructively pointed out by Mr. L. L. Price in his article on “Profit-sharing” published in the
Economic Journal, Vol. II (1892), and in his Economic Science and Practice, p. 75 and ante.