The old quarrel with which this paper deals is of significance for the light it sheds on the authorship of the marginal productivity theory in its modern mathematical form. The locus classicus of the quarrel is Léon Walras's “Note sur la réfutation de la théorie anglaise du fermage de M. Wicksteed” (hereinafter referred to as his “Note”), published in the 3rd edition (1896) of his Eléments d'économie politique pure as Appendix III. What did Walras mean by the charge, at the close of his “Note,” that Mr. Wicksteed “might have been better advised had he not persisted in appearing ignorant of the work of his forerunners”? Did Walras mean to include himself among the forerunners he thought were deliberately ignored in Philip H. Wicksteed's Essay on the Coordination of the Laws of Distribution? If so, what did Walras conceive his contribution to be? The answers to these questions thus far given have been contradictory and at times heated. Fortunately, several hitherto unpublished documents and letters preserved in the Fonds Walras of the Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire de Lausanne illuminate the issues involved.

The most important of these documents is, undoubtedly, Enrico Barone's review article, “Sopra un recente libro del Wicksteed,” originally written for the Economic Journal, but rejected by Edgeworth in 1895 and then lost from sight.