Signal-OS · Issue 021 · Living Income
On this date in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross — at age 59, after three decades of doing work that was unambiguously valuable and chronically undercompensated. She didn't wait to be paid what she was worth. She built the institution that changed the container. The mechanism that held her rate low still operates in most practices today.
On May 21, 1881 — 145 years ago today — Clara Barton signed the charter of the American Red Cross. She was 59 years old. She had spent her thirties nursing soldiers in the Civil War, often without pay. She had spent her forties running the Office of Missing Soldiers, a U.S. government bureau she essentially invented and ran for free until Congress formalized it. She had spent her fifties lobbying for the Geneva Convention's adoption in the United States.
At every stage, her work was unambiguously valuable. At every stage, the rate attached to it was wrong. The moment the rate changed was not the moment her work changed. It was the moment the container changed.
This issue is about that gap — the distance between the value of your work and the price of your work — and what the research shows about why that gap persists even when the practitioner is excellent.
"I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay." — Clara Barton, 1854
She said that at 32. It took her another 27 years to close her own gap.
Open any case file to go deeper. Start with the Evolutionary Psychologist if you want the mechanism. Start with the ICU Nurse if you want the practitioner parallel. Start with the Devil's Advocate if you want to be challenged.