l land. Ricardo called this surplus earned on non marginal land "rent." Ricardo thought that the consequence of this relationship was that, as the population expanded and less fertile land was brought under cultivation, profits became squeezed by an increasing proportion of total output that was allocated to rent, and the basic minimum level of subsistence that was allocated to labor wages.
A third major contributor to classical economic thought was John Stuart Mill. Mill is remembered especially for his recantation of the wage fund doctrine. The wage fund theory was developed by Adam Smith and it became a cornerstone of classical economic theory (Ekelund and Hebert, 1993, pp. 97-98). The wage fund doctrine held that, at the end of a production period, "a given stock of circulating capital is advanced to laborers to tide
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