Before passing to the next subdivision of Distribution, it may not be a diversion to direct attention to the most remarkable distortion of technical Economic terms that has yet harassed Economic thought with confusion. This is the attempt of some Economists to identify Rent with Wages, by ascribing extraordinary compensation for extraordinary human service to “rent of ability.” As a subclassification of Wages there could hardly be any objection to this assignment except its tendency to mix Rent for Land with Wages for Labor in the minds of students. As a fundamental classification, however, its absurdity is manifest. Can anybody “rent” his ability, however great it may be, without putting it at work? Could the ablest physician, for instance, get a fee unless he offered to work with his ability? Could the most brilliant author command royalties unless he wrote books? Of course not. It is only as one works or promises to work that he is compensated for any degree of ability. Although Landownership may command compensation in Rent for such special opportunities as the Land offers to Labor, regardless of whether it is utilized or not, Man cannot rent his ability without obligating himself to use his ability; and the man who obligates himself, though he may call his compensation “rent” if that pleases either his vanity or his love for confused thinking, gets for his ability no rent whatever. What he gets is Wages for making his ability serviceable as a Labor unit. Nor is such compensation any the less Wages or any the more Rent, if it be (as with lawyers) a retainer for pledging future service which in the end has not been required of him. Compensation for work, or for a contract to work, is Wages whether the contract be in consequence of the worker’s ability or regardless of it. All compensation for service units, from lowest grades of ability to highest, is in Economic terminology and analysis, not Rent for Land but Wages for Labor. The bricklayer, contrasting his Wages with the Wages of an apprentice, might call his larger income “rent of ability,” if that flattered him; but his doing so, though it might enhance Economic confusion, would not alter the Economic relationship of Wages for Labor and Rent for Land. If Economic thinking is to be done with definite terminology instead of word-juggling, all compensation for human service must be expressed by a technical term different from the technical term for premiums for varying grades of Natural Resources. The accepted technical terms are Wages for Human service and Rent for Natural Resource advantages. Though “rent of ability” be picturesque in dramatics, it is farcical in Economics.