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]

Sec. 7. The growing interdependency of trades and markets, the ever
closer sympathy which exists between them, the increased rapidity with
which a movement affecting one communicates itself to others, is
another striking characteristic of modern trade. This interdependency
is in large measure one of growing structural attachment between
trades and markets formerly in faint and distant sympathetic
relationship. Formerly, agriculture was the one important foundational
industry, and from the feebleness of the transport system the vital
connections and the unity it supplied was local rather than national
or international. Now the agricultural industries no longer occupy
this position of prominence. The coal and iron industries engaged in
furnishing the raw material of machinery and steam-motor, the machine
manufacture, and the transport services, are the common feeders and
regulators of all industries, including that of agriculture. They form
a system corresponding to the alimentary system of the human body, any
quickening or slackening of whose functional activities is directly
and speedily communicated to the several parts. Any disturbance of
price, of efficiency, or regularity of production in these
foundational industries is reflected at once and automatically in the
several industries which are engaged in the production and
distribution of the several commodities. The mining and metal