Some days later, when gossip on the subject was subsiding, a fresh
scandal revived it. A literary friend of Mr. Jansenius’s helped him
to compose an epitaph, and added to it a couple of pretty and touching
stanzas, setting forth that Henrietta’s character had been one of rare
sweetness and virtue, and that her friends would never cease to sorrow
for her loss. A tradesman who described himself as a “monumental mason”
furnished a book of tomb designs, and Mr. Jansenius selected a highly
ornamental one, and proposed to defray half the cost of its erection.
Trefusis objected that the epitaph was untrue, and said that he did not
see why tombstones should be privileged to publish false statements. It
was reported that he had followed up his former misconduct by calling
his father-in-law a liar, and that he had ordered a common tombstone
from some cheap-jack at the East-end. He had, in fact, spoken
contemptuously of the monumental tradesman as an “exploiter” of labor,
and had asked a young working mason, a member of the International
Association, to design a monument for the gratification of Jansenius.
The mason, with much pains and misgiving, produced an original design.
Trefusis approved of it, and resolved to have it executed by the hands
of the designer. He hired a sculptor’s studio, purchased blocks of
marble of the dimensions and quality described to him by the mason, and
invited him to set to work forthwith.
Trefusis now encountered a difficulty. He wished to pay the mason the
just value of his work, no more and no less. But this he could not
ascertain. The only available standard was the market price, and this he
rejected as being fixed by competition among capitalists who could only
secure profit by obtaining from their workmen more products than they
paid them for, and could only tempt customers by offering a share of the
unpaid-for part of the products as a reduction in price. Thus he
found that the system of withholding the indispensable materials for
production and subsistence from the laborers, except on condition of
their supporting an idle class whilst accepting a lower standard
of comfort for themselves than for that idle class, rendered the
determination of just ratios of exchange, and consequently the practice
of honest dealing, impossible. He had at last to ask the mason what he
would consider fair payment for the execution of the design, though he
knew that the man could no more solve the problem than he, and that,
though he would certainly ask as much as he thought he could get, his
demand must be limited by his poverty and by the competition of the
monumental tradesman. Trefusis settled the matter by giving double what
was asked, only imposing such conditions as were necessary to compel the
mason to execute the work himself, and not make a profit by hiring other
men at the market rate of wages to do it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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