Note 1158 — Chapter II · : THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS

Walker is one of the first of the English-speaking economists to make this distinction and to employ the term “profit” in a narrow sense, distinguishing it from interest on the one hand and wages on the other. He even went so far as to subtract the wages of superintendence and direction because this work of supervision could be delegated to others (Wages Question, 2nd ed., 1891, pp. 230, etc.), while the special function performed by the entrepreneur, namely, the adaptation of supply to demand, requires special remuneration, which he proposes to call profit. It is a little odd that a writer who seemed completely isolated should be shown, after all, to share the views of other economists. Walker declares that save his own father, Amasa Walker, he knew of no economist who had distinguished between capitalist and entrepreneur. But J. B. Say had already made the same distinction, which had been adopted by all Continental economists even as far back as the beginning of the nineteenth century.