Men, capital, and labour furnish what Say refers to as productive services. These services, when brought to market, are given in exchange for wages, interest, or rent. It is the _entrepreneur_, whether merchant, manufacturer, or agriculturist, who requires them, and it is he who combines them with a view to satisfying the demand of consumers. “The _entrepreneurs_, accordingly, are mere intermediaries who set up a claim for those productive services which are necessary to satisfy the demand for certain products.” Accordingly there arises a demand for productive services, and the demand is “one of the factors determining the value of those services.” “On the other hand, the agents of production, both men and things, whether land, capital, or industrial employees, offer their services in greater or less quantities according to various motives, and thus constitute another factor which determines the value of these same services.”[272] In this fashion the law of demand and supply determines the price of services, the average rate of interest, and rent. Thanks to the _entrepreneur_, the value produced is again distributed among these “various productive services,” and the various services allotted according to need among the industries. This theory of distribution is in complete accordance with the theory of exchange and production. Say’s very simple scheme of distribution constitutes a real progress. In the first place, it is much more exact than the Physiocrats’, who conceived of exchange as taking place between classes only, and not between individuals. It also enables us to distinguish the remuneration of the capitalist from the earnings of the _entrepreneur_, which were confounded by Adam Smith. The Scotch economist assumed that the _entrepreneur_ was very frequently a capitalist, and confused the two functions, designating his total remuneration by the single word “profit,” without ever distinguishing between net interest of capital and profit properly so called. This regrettable confusion was followed by other English authors, and remained in English economic theory for a long time. Finally, Say’s theory has another advantage. It gave to his French successors a clear scheme of distribution which was wanting in Smith’s work, just at the time when Ricardo was attempting to overcome the omission by outlining a new theory of distribution. According to Ricardo, rent, by its very nature and the laws which give rise to it, is opposed to other revenues, and the rate of wages and of profits must be regarded as direct opposites, so that the one can only increase if the other diminishes—an attractive but erroneous theory, and one which led to endless discussion among English economists, with the result that they abandoned it altogether. Say, by showing this dependence, which becomes quite clear if we regard wages and profits from the point of view of demand for commodities, and by his demonstration that rent is