the brewer and the publican. Similarly the motor-car and
the golf links have spoilt the trade in the fine china ornaments such as
used to be common in expensively furnished drawing-rooms. People sit
less in their rooms, so spend less on decorating them. The members of
the household always retain ultimate control over their economic life,
if they care to exercise it. 'Whoso has sixpence,' as Carlyle said, 'is
sovereign (to the length of sixpence), over all men; commands Cooks to
feed him, Philosophers to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him,'--to
the length of sixpence. Passive resistance and the boycott are always
open to the public in the last resort against any of their servants who
has abused the powers of his position. A good instance of this occurred
in the events which led to the so-called Tobacco riots in Milan in 1848.
The Austrians thought they could force the Italians in their Lombard
provinces to pay for a government they hated by putting a heavy tax on
tobacco. But the Italians, with more self-control than we have shown in
the present war, with one accord gave up smoking. Here was a plain
competition between a monopoly and the consumer, between tobacco and
patriotism: between a united household and an unpopular servant: and the
household won, as it always can unless its members are incapable of
combined action or have been deprived by governmental tyranny of all
power to associate and to organize.

We are faced then with a community or household which has certain wants
that need to be supplied. The individual members of the community are
justified, within the limits of general well-being,[67] in deciding what
are their own wants and how to satisfy them. They claim the right to
_demand_, as the economists put it, the goods and services they require,
bread and cheese, poetry, tobacco, motor-bicycles, china ornaments. In
order to meet those demands, which are stable in essentials but subject
to constant modification in detail, there is ceaseless activity,
rivalry, competition, on the part of the purveyors--on the side of what
economists call _supply_. The business of housekeeping, or what is
called the economic process, is that of bringing this demand and this
supply into relation with one another. If the members of the household
said they wanted to eat the moon instead of sugar, their demand would
not be an economic demand: for no housekeeper could satisfy it.
Similarly on the supply side: if the baker ins