Chapter 10 - Page 2

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.

But the design was, to its author's astonishment,