prompt, and allowing for loss of time in effecting sales, cannot be realised much within five months, while another period of five months will have previously elapsed (on an average) between the time of purchase in India and of delivery in the English warehouse. We have here a period of ten months, whereas the bill drawn against the goods does not live beyond seven months." ( Ibid. , June 30, 1866.) On July 2, 1866, five big London banks dealing mainly with India and China, and the Paris Comptoir d'Escompte , gave notice that "from the 1st January, 1867, their branches and agencies in the East will only buy and sell bills of exchange at a term not exceeding four months' sight." ( Ibid. , July 7, 1866.) However this reduction miscarried and had to be abandoned. (Since then the Suez Canal has revolutionised all this.)It is a matter of course that with the longer time of commodity circulation the risk of a change of prices in the market increases, since the period in which price changes can take place is lengthened.
Differences in the time of circulation, partly individual between the various separate capitals of the same branch of business, partly between different branches of business according to the different usances, when payment is not made in spot cash, arise from the different terms of payment in buying and selling. We shall not dwell any longer here on this point which is of importance to the credit system.
Differences in the turnover time arise also from the size of contracts for the delivery of goods, and their size grows with the extent and scale of capitalist production. A contract of delivery, being a transaction between buyer and seller, is an operation pertaining to the market, the sphere of circulation. The differences in the time of turnover arising here stem therefore from the sphere of circulation, but react immediately on the sphere of production, and do so apart from all terms of payment and conditions of credit, hence also in the case of cash payment. For instance coal, cotton, yarn, etc., are discrete products. Every day supplies its quantum of finished product. But if the master-spinner or the mine-owner accepts contracts for the delivery of such large quantities of products as require, say, a period of four or six weeks of consecutive working-days, then this is quite the same, so far as the time of advancement of capital is concerned, as if a continuous working period of four or six weeks had been introduced in this labour-process. It is of course assumed here that the entire quantity ordered is to be delivered in one bulk, or at least is paid for only after total delivery. Individually considered, every day has thus furnished its definite quantum of finished product. But this finished quantum is only a part of the quantity contracted for. While in this case the portion finished so far is no longer in the process of production, still it lies in the warehouse as potential capital only.
Now let us take up the second stage of the time of circulation, the buying time, or that period in which capital is reconverted from the money-form into the elements of productive capital. During this period it must persist for a shorter or longer time in its condition of money-capital, hence a certain portion of the total capital advanced must all the time be in the condition of money-capital, although this portion consists of constantly changing elements. For instance, of the total capital advanced in a certain business, n times £100 must be available in the form of money-capital, so that, while all the constituent parts of these n times s £100 are continually converted into productive capital, this sum is nevertheless just as continually replenished by the influx from the circulation, from the realised commodity-capital. A definite part of the advanced capital-value is therefore continually in the condition of money-capital, i.e., a form not pertaining to its sphere of production but its sphere of circulation.
We have already seen that the prolongation of the time for which capital is fettered in the form of commodity-capital on account of the distance of the market results in direct delay of the return of the money and consequently also the transformation of the capital from money-capital into productive capital.
We have furthermore seen (Chapter VI) with reference to the purchase of commodities, that the time of buying, the greater or smaller distance from the main sources of the raw material, makes it necessary to purchase raw material for a longer period and have it available in the form of a productive supply, of latent or potential productive capital; that in consequence it increases the amount of capital to be advanced at one time, and the time for which it must be advanced, if the scale of production remains otherwise the same.