216 
POLITICAL ECONOMY 
no other fund exists out of which it can be 
paid. But this is not denied. By “ entering 
into price ” is meant entering as a determining 
factor into price. That all rent which is 
incurred in connection with producing does 
not exert a direct influence on the prices of 
things—though, as we shall discern shortly, it 
may be involved indirectly in the settlement 
of price—can be deduced instantly from the 
theory of price already expounded. Take 
the case of wheat. From the supply side its 
price is fixed by the costs of the marginal 
producer on marginal land. Into these costs 
ex hypothesi differential rent does not enter ; 
and though the farmer of marginal land would 
reckon any scarcity rent among his costs, its 
remission would not cause an increased supply 
of wheat (and so an alteration of price) 
because, were a scarcity rent ever to appear, 
there would be no more land to bring into 
cultivation. Another and more exact way of 
putting the proof is to apply the marginal 
method of analysis intensively and point out 
that price is settled by the cost of the marginal 
return (whether from marginal land or not) 
which should, in strict theory, be the same 
on every field, and that no kind of rent figures 
in this cost. 
All farmers, though producing at different