But machinery has changed all this. Modern industrial nations are able to produce consumables far faster than those who have the power to consume them are willing to exercise it. Hence there is an ever-increasing margin of productive power redundant so far as the production of present consumptive goods is concerned. This excess of productive power is saved. It can only be saved by being stored up in some material forms which are required not for direct consumption but for assisting to increase the rate at which consumables may be produced in the future. In order to make a place for these new forms of saving it is necessary to interpose a constantly increasing number of mechanical processes between the earliest extractive process which removes the raw material from the earth and the final or retailing process which places it in the consumer's hands. New machinery, more elaborate and costly, is applied; special workshops, with machines to make this machinery--other machinery to make these machines; there is an expansion of the mechanism of credit, the system of agents and representatives is expanded, new modes of advertising are adopted. Thus an ever-widening field of investment is provided for the spare energy of machine-production. The change is commonly described by saying that production is more "roundabout."[112] A larger number of steps are inserted in the ladder of production. This increased complexity in the mechanism of production is not, however, the central point of importance. We must realise that the change is one which is essentially an increase in the "speculative" character of commerce. The "roundabout" method of production signifies a continual increase in the proportion of productive forces devoted to making "future goods" as Now future goods, plant, machinery, raw material of commodities, are essentially "contingent goods": their worth or waste depends largely upon conditions yet unborn: their social utility and the value based upon it depend entirely upon the future powers and desires of those unknown persons who are expected to purchase and consume the commodities which shall come into existence as results of the existence and activity of these future goods. The actual time which elapses between the extractive stage and the final retail stage of a commodity may not be greater and is in many cases far less under the new methods of industry. The raw cotton of South Carolina gets on the wearer's back more quickly than it did a century and a half ago. But when we add in the time-elements involved in the provision of the various forms of intricate plant and machinery whose utility entirely consists in forwarding these cotton goods, and whose existence in the industrial mechanism depends upon them, we shall perceive that the "roundabout" method signifies a great extension of the speculative or time-element in the market.[113]