The most important change which has been made in the volume consists of the survey of the problem of distribution and exchange which occupies the first two chapters of book vi. One returns from this excursus with an added security against errors which beset the theory of exchange and distribution. Another misconception which has been for ever dispersed relates to the response which the supply of labour makes to the demand for it. Exception has been reasonably taken to the terms in which some economists have expressed the analogy between wages and the price of commodities, e.g., the Ricardian 'hats,' as if the motives governing supply were exactly similar in both cases. Land differs from the other factors of distribution in not responding in any way by an increased supply to an increase of demand.
Land is but a particular form of capital from the point of view of the individual manufacturer.
And the same is substantially true of the individual cultivator. Professor Marshall retains it. He is less conservative with respect to the definitions of capital. But it would be impossible here to discuss in detail all the passages which have been altered in the third edition. The author, unlike so many of that irritable genus, instead of deriding those who have misinterpreted him, instead of standing out for every iot and tittle which he had written, has complacently altered expressions which experience had proved to be liable to misconstruction.