New-York tribune., 1906-06-14
WAGES.

General Corbin was correct from one point
! of view when he reminded the West Point cadets
| that their pay as officers of the American army
would be less than that of bricklayers and
pasterers. similar statement might be made
concerning many of the employees in the Civil
| Service of the nation Successful men Of affairs
| In business or professional life secure larger
pecuniary returns for their efforts than men of
} like ability and perhaps more arduous labors in
! public life. Cabinet officers at $4,000 year,
assistant secretaries at S4,5OO, bureau chiefs at
/ from $4,000 to $1,000 and other men in places of
trust and grave responsibility at even lower sal
aries seem much underpaid in comparison with
the officers of many private corporations.
The inequality is not, however. confined to
the contrast between public and private service.
Similar contrasts are found among the various
| callings of private life. Secretary Taft was
| quite right when he also at West Point, touched
upon the subject from another point OF view,
and reminded the cadets that many clergymen,
physicians and lawyers would be rejoiced to be
| assured of receiving for life such an income
as the wages" of an army officer. That means,
then, that considerable proportion of our pro-
fessional men, who were prepared for their
duties by years of earnest study and whose
work is Of the most responsible and important
character. receive smaller wages than artisans
in manual trades. The school teacher, for edII-
eating the minds and developing the characters
of successive generations of youth, may get
smaller wages than did the bricklayer who built
the walls of the schOOlhouse The physician,
in whose hands are so largely the issues of life
and death, may not be as well paid a plaS-
terer. That does not even accord with the
socialist doctrine of equal pay for equal time,
under which the surgeon who trepans a skull
or eXcises tumor would at least get as large a
stipend by the hour as the workman who lays
the tiles of the hospital floor. To those who
gauge payment by the difficulty and Importance
of the work it seems incOngruOuS.
IncongruOus and inequitable though it may
be- it may also be to some extent inevitable. If
So there may be, to those who from the material
point of view are underpaid, some consolation in
the reflection that c0mpensatiOns are not, after
all, entirely material and pecuniary. Wages are
not all in dollars and cents. The brlcklayer
gets s. or Sc a day. and that Is practically
his whole reward for his labor. The teacher
may get only half as much in money, but there
is reserved for him an intellectual and spiritual
reward in the knowledge of his abiding influ-
ence upon many minds for many years to come
The soldier and the statesman may be i'll paid
in money, when compared with the artisan, but
they have, in the realization Of public service
we'll performed a reward which he knows not
of. 1t would be monstrous, of course, TO use
this consideration as an argument for grinding
down the laborers in these higher fields to a
beggarly pittance. Their pecuniary wages
should be nearly as possible commensurate
with the Importance of their work But fully
commensurate they can probably never be made
and it is to chat unavoidable discrepancy that
the consolation of non-material rewards must
apply.