The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-02-28
PROFESSIONAL AND LITERARY
INCOMES.

The Clergyman, the lawyer, the
physician, the editor, the teacher, and
the writer of books, in order to excel
in their respective professions,
are all obliged to go through the same
amount of preliminary study. It costs
as much of time, money, and labor to
thoroughly fit one for his work as the
other; and we may add that it requires
just as much talent and genius to be a
teacher as to be an author, to be an
editor as to be a clergyman or lawyer.
The special adaptation of natural gifts
and dispositions is just as important
and valuable to the community in one
profession as IN anOther. Each requires
a whole man, who shall be man out
side of his special wOrk--a man of
culture, large acquaintance with men
and things, a well-furnished and clearly
working intellect, high character, and
superlative devotion to the work from
which he wins his living. In thenature
of things, in the character of the work
done, and In the amount and kind of
preparation required, there is no reason
why one should be better paid than the
other; yet there is no field of human
effort which presents a wider variety
and contrariety Of pecuniary rewards
than that presented by professional and
literary labor.
There are two forms of income attach
ed to this variety of work viz, that
! Il,
which arises from fees. The former is
fixed by the community for which the
work is done, and the latter by those
who do the work. The salaried man
enters the market and sells his services
at the highest rate which they Will
command in competition with others.
The man of fees combines with his
| brethren to fix a compensation for his
| services, which compels the community
/ to take them at his valuation or to do
without them. To say that the lawyer
and the physician have the advantage of
| all the other professions, is simply
to repeat a notorious fact. The lawyer
and the physician who are thoroughly
prepared for and fitted to their work can,
| and do, get rich The clergyman, the
teacher, the editor, and the author can
not, and do not, get rich by their work.
The brightest author In America, though
he produce books of universal accepta-
ton, can never get rich and hardly one
author in one hundred can realize
enough from his labor at the present
rates of copyright to rear family in
comfort. The teacher gets just enough
to live on, and no more, while the
clergyman and the hired editor, save in
rare instances, are men who are Obliged
to practice the most rigid economy in
order to live within their income.
We are not among those who believe
that the salaried man gets enough for
his work. We should be glad to see
him better paid, in all departments OF
his labor. 1t so happens that he works
at the very foundation of society, and
has his Office of ministry all through its
superstructure. He has to DO with the
morality, the education, theinformation,
the opinion, and the culture OF the
social mass. Take away his work, and
society would degenerate into barbarism.
I The importance of his work cannot be
calculated he is the inspirer, instruc-
tor and conservator of our civilization +;
and he is as powerless to-day to win a
competence for his old age, while all
around him are getting rich, and
receiving the results of his labor, as if
he were a child. The sUperannuated
clergyman ekes out his life in the
humbiest way the exhausted teacher
peddles books or drifts into some petty
clerk-ship; the editor breaks down or
becomes hack and the author writes
himself out, or runs into drizel that