commodities or services that minister to them--as we see, for
example, in the case of tobacco, of the telegraph, and of the bicycle;
but, when once the demands have been elicited, they are essentially
democratic in their nature. Each customer is like a voter who
practically gives his vote for the kind of goods which he desires to
have supplied to him. He gives his vote under no compulsion. He is under
the manipulation of no party or wire-puller; and the men by whose
ability the goods are cheapened and multiplied are bound to determine
their character by the number of votes cast for them.[15]

Thus, while--so long as the productivity of labour is intensified, as it
is in the modern world, by the ability of the few who direct labour--the
labouring majority can never be free in their technical capacity of
producers, they are free, and must always remain free, in respect of
their tastes as consumers. In other words, demand is essentially
democratic, while supply, in proportion to its sustained and enhanced
abundance, is essentially oligarchic.

Now, that demand is essentially democratic, and depends on the tastes
and characters of those by whom the demands are made, nobody will be
inclined to deny. But if we turn our attention from society, taken as a
whole, to the exceptionally able minority on whom the business of supply
depends, we shall find that these men, in their turn, form similarly a
small democracy in themselves, and make, as suppliers, their own demands
also--a demand for an economic reward, or an amount of personal wealth,
not, indeed, necessarily equal to the amount of wealth produced by them,
but bearing a proportion to it which is, in their own estimation,
sufficient. This demand made by the exceptional producer rests on
exactly the same basis as does that of the average customer. It rests on
the tastes and characters of the men who make it; and it is just as
impossible for the many to decide by legislation that the few shall put
forth the whole of their exceptional powers for the sake of one reward,
when what they want is another, as it is for the few to make the many
buy snuff when they want tobacco, or buy green coats when they want
black.[16]

That such is the case will, to those who may be inclined to doubt it,
become more evident if they consider with more attention than they are
generally accustomed to exercise what the main attraction of great
wealth is for the men who in the modern world are the pr