cture and in transport. The
multiplication of productive power under the new machinery has in many
branches of industry far outstripped the requirements of present known
consumption at remunerative prices, while increased knowledge of the
widening market has given a basis of calculation which leads
manufacturers to utilise their spare productive power in providing
against future wants. So long as industry was limited by the labour of
the human body, assisted but slightly by natural forces and working
with simple tools, the output of productive energy could seldom
outstrip the present demand for consumable goods.

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