When these special faculties are applied to the direction of average labour, the output of wealth increases.

When their application is interfered with or ceases, the output of wealth declines; and in the only practical sense of the words "cause" or "producer," these faculties of direction, or the exceptional persons who exercise them, are the true causes or producers of the whole of that portion of wealth which comes into being with their activity, and disappears or dwindles with their inaction.
The practical validity of this method of computation has been formally recognised, though not completely understood, by some of the later socialists themselves.

Mr.Webb, for example, and his associates, have admitted that, of the wealth of the modern world a considerable part consists of "the rent of business ability."[19] This way of expressing the matter is true so far as it goes.

It expresses, however, one-half of the truth only.

Mr.Webb and his friends mean that, if we take the world as it is, the products due to ability in any given industry consist of the quantity by which the products of one firm, because it is managed by a man of superior talent, exceed the products of another firm which differs from the first only in the fact that it is managed by another man whose talent is not so great.