RENT 
217 
costs per unit raised, get the same price per 
unit for their produce in the market, and 
this is the price which it is necessary to pay 
to cause the production of the wheat raised 
at the margin. Rents, instead of settling 
price, are caused, as we have seen, by the 
fact that when all farmers get the same price, 
some of them (or all of them under condi 
tions which give rise to scarcity rent) would be 
left, in the absence of rent, with a handsome 
surplus over normal profits, and that com 
petition for their farms compels them to 
surrender it to the landlord. High rents do 
not make high prices any more than the 
height of the barometer governs the state of 
the weather. On the contrary it is the high 
prices that make the high rents. 
In qualification of this statement it must 
be added that a rent charge comes into play 
in settlement of price when the marginal 
land for a given purpose can only be obtained 
by buying out somebody who requires it for 
another purpose. The marginal factory in 
the outskirts of a town has had to win its site 
from agriculture in all probability, and to do 
so it has had to pay for the land a charge equal 
at least to its rentable value for agriculture. 
This charge, in being incurred at the margin, 
is an unavoidable element in marginal cost,