by showing that "saving," from the point
of view of the community, generally means producing something
incapable of present consumption, it proves that even if what is
"saved" is consumed, it is not consumed as quickly as what is spent.
Mill seemed to think that what was "saved" was necessarily food,
clothing, and so-called finished goods, because "saving" to him was
not a process, but a single negative act of refusing to buy. Because a
man who has "saved" has command of an extra stock of food, etc., which
he may hand over to labourers as real wages, he seems to think that a
community which saves will have its savings in this form. We see this
is not the case. Even where in a primitive society extra food is the
first form savings may take, it belongs to the act of saving that this
food shall not be consumed so soon as it was available for
consumption. In short, Mill's notion was that savings must necessarily
mean a storing up of more food, clothing, etc., which, after all, is
not stored, but is handed over to others to consume. He fails to
perceive that a person who saves from the social as opposed to the
individual point of view necessarily produces something which neither
he nor any one else consumes at once--_i.e._, steam engines, pieces of
leather, shop goods. A "saving" which is merely a transfer of spending
from A to B is obviously no saving from the point of view of the
community to which both A and B belong. If A, who is said to save,
pays wages to B, who makes a machine which would otherwise not have
been made, when this machine is made something is saved, not before.

Though Mill does not seem, in Bk. I. chap, v., to regard increased
plant, machinery, etc., as "savings," but rather as something for
which "savings" may be exchanged,[160] the more usual economic view of
"savings" embodies part of them in plant and raw material, etc., and
considers the working up of these into finished goods as a
"consumption." But though industrial usage speaks of cotton yarn,
etc., being consumed when it is worked up, the same language is not
held regarding machinery, nor would any business man admit that his
"capital" was consumed by the wear and tear of machinery, and was
periodically replaced by "saving." The wearing away of particular
material embodiments of capital is automatically repaired by a process
which is not saving in the industrial or the economic sense. No
manufacturer regards the expenditure on maintenance of ex