What concertmasters earn

Colin R. Wrubleski says:

Having been a principal, a co-principal, and a tutti / section player in a large variety of (admittedly much lower-tier) orchestras, i can safely say from personal experience that unbowed parts are essentially unusable, as virtually every string player has a different idea about what works not only for him / herself and personal technique, what is comfortable and consistently applicable, but also what works better for an individual section versus what is best for the entire string section as a whole. Historically, many of the major composers of the past have seemed to be surprisingly or even shockingly cavalier about bowings— e.g., J.S. Bach, to my knowledge at least, never printed a single up-bow or down-bow in ANY of his string parts— or consistency throughout the various string parts (e.g., Mozart’s gripe about the famous “coup d’arche” bowings of the renowned Mannheim orchestra, which supposedly accounted for their accuracy and precision; “The devil! I cannot hear if they are starting up or down”, or the supposed anecdote attributed to composer / conductor Richard Strauss when guest-conducting with American orchestras—“You play too many of the notes!”). The environment nowadays, by contrast, is extraordinarily different. With virtually every performance now preserved for posterity in some format or another, particularly in video, VISUAL conformity / consistency has been made a huge deal by conductors, grumpy audience members, and section leaders and tutti players alike, with perhaps Leopold Stokowski the most prominent exception to this general rule. As a Polish guest conductor with whom i have often worked frequently says: “Nowadays, most audience members listen with their eyes…”
It is difficult to think of a specific example right now, but it is very common in a passage where all five string sections are playing more or less the same type of material, still for the first violin part to have the most notes per measure, the second violin part to have the same or less, the viola part to be simpler yet (perhaps exactly half as many notes as the violins, e.g., eighth notes when the violins have sixteenth-notes), the ‘cello line to be as florid as the violins, and the contrabassi to be the simplest of all. Coordinating all that so the (most) critical notes are in EXACTLY the same direction is a huge ordeal. Nothing is as ungratifying as being a principal violist (a post i have held both in an educational institution in my native Canada, as well as here in Bangkok, Thailand^^) in that or a similar environment, with the ‘celli arguing for one type of bowing, the second violin principal advocating for another, the concertmaster often preferring to over-rule everybody (as an aside, and in his / her defence, there is usually far too much information to process, at least in complicated passages, for the fearless string leader, not having a score at disposal as the conductor does, to know exactly what every other section is doing moment by moment) and the second-chair stand-partner and / or the rest of the viola section sniping grievances regardless of what has been chosen anyway (and i openly confess to having grumbled too when in the section. Sorry, Captain.^^). Absolute uniformity has to be adopted on the fly, and if rehearsal time is at a premium, marking bowings to make sure the part is exactly correct for performance(s) often temporarily takes precedence over playing all the notes… Ideally, the orchestra librarian(s) will have “correctly” (perhaps “uniformly” is a better word) marked everything in advance, but conductors and concertmasters understandably reserve the absolute right to change things, often dramatically, if a particular musical or technical effect is sought, and they may have to adapt to exigencies such as a change in acoustics (e.g., for an orchestra on tour in many different halls, or in situations where the orchestra only has the dress / general rehearsal on the main stage after rehearsing in a different venue).
Even in regards to comments about the classical cannon [sic! canon], it is surprising how differently two conductors can view what effect needs to be chosen in a given passage, and in fact playing a work again (or again and again^^) but under (a) different conductor(s) can actually open up more cans of worms, as it were, not less.
Not trying to be “persnickety” in writing this riposte to the original question, but hopefully it has been made clear that ensuring roughly 40-60 string players are all bowing “correctly” at any given moment is logically then a huge deal, and the concertmasters and string section leaders who can quickly, efficiently, and with minimum of fuss and stress, guarantee this are, to my mind, definitely worth the premium in income they may receive.