Salary

A reward or recompense for services performed. It is usually applied to the reward paid to a public officer for the performance of his official duties. (Adopted in 24 Fla. 29.) Salary is also applied to the reward paid for the performance of other services; but if it be not fixed for each year it is called honorarium. Pothier, Pand. According to M. Duvergier, the distinction between honorarium and salary is this. By the former is understood the reward given to the most elevated professions for services performed; and by the latter the price of hiring of do- There is this difference between salary and price; the former is the reward paid for services or for the hire of things; the latter is the consideration paid for a thing sold; Leg Elem. § 907. Salary seems to denote a higher degree of employment and is suggestive of a larger compensation for more important services than wages, which indicates inconsiderable pay; Meyers v. New York, 69 Hun 291, 23 N. Y. Supp. 484. See also 42 Alb. L. J. 332; Com. v. Butler, 99 Pa. 542; where salary is regarded as a per annum compensation, while wages are defined as compensation paid or to be paid by the day, week, etc. “Wages and salary seem to be synonymous convertible terms, though use and general acceptation have given to the word ‘salary’ a significance somewhat different from th© word ‘wages’ in this, that the former is understood to relate to position or office, to be the compensation given for official or other service as distinguished from ‘wages,’ the compensation for labor;” Bell v. Live Stock Co. (Tex.) 11 S. W. 344, 3 L. R. A. 642. Wages and salary have also been held to be synonymous in other cases; Com. v. Butler, 99 Pa. 535, 542; Morse v. Robertson, 9 Hawaii, 195, 197; White v. Hayden, 126 Cal. 621, 59 Pac. 11S; there is no substantial difference in the application of exemption acts; Freem. Ex. § 234, where the subject is discussed, at length, giving the language of state statutes. It has been held that the salary of a public official is in no fair sense wages; People v. Myers, 11 N. Y. Supp. 217; and is not exempt from garnishment under a statute exempting wages; Mc Lellan v. Young, 54 Ga. 399, 21 Am. Rep. 276. Salary is suggestive of a larger compensation or higher degree of employment than wages, which indicates inconsiderable pay, in an act providing that no honorably discharged Union soldier receiving a salary shall be removed except for cause shown; Meyers v. New York, 69 Hun, 291, 23 N. Y. Supp. 484; People v. Brookfield, 13 Misc. Rep. 566, 34 N. Y. Supp. 674, where a laborer receiving $2 per day was held not to receive a salary. “Wages of laborers” means earnings of a laborer by manual toil; Smith v. Brooke, 49 Pa. 147; “wages of employees” in an order authorizing payment of wages by a receiver does not cover services of counsel for special purposes; Louisville, E. & St. L. R. Co. ▼.

Wilson, 138 U. S. 501, 11 Sup. Ct. 405, 34 L. Ed. 1023.