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might be a bad idea. [ 14 ] The resulting contradiction causes much of what’s wonderful
    and horrible about America. I suspect many of you jumped right to this
    chapter because of its title, or noticed it first when you skimmed through
    the table of contents. Not because you’re evil, but because we’re
    simultaneously fascinated and revolted by money, especially regarding work
    that seems superficial, like public speaking. I know I’m paid for
    something that, in the grand scheme, is not Work. It’s work, with a little w , but it’s not shoveling coal, building houses, or
    fighting in wars, which earn the capital W . I will
    never hurt my back, ruin my lungs, or get shot (unless I give a lecture at
    the next gang fight in the South Bronx). And despite the many questions
    that come to mind when Julie hands me that check, I cram it into my bag
    and head for the lectern where I can get to work.
    I’m worth $5,000 a lecture and other speakers are worth $30,000 or
    more for two reasons: the lecture circuit and free market
    economics. [ 15 ] People come up after I give a lecture and ask, “So when did
    you get on thelecture circuit?” And I respond by asking, “Do you know what
    the circuit is?” And they never have any idea. It’s a term they’ve heard
    before, despite the fact that it’s never explained, and it somehow seems
    to be the only reasonable thing to ask a public speaker when you’re trying
    to seem interested in what he does for a living. Well, here’s the primer.
    Public speaking, as a professional activity, became popular in the U.S.
    before the Civil War. In the 1800s—decades before electricity, radio,
    movies, television, the Internet, or automobiles—entertainment was hard to
    find. It explains why so many people sang in church choirs, read books, or
    actually talked to one another for hours on end:
    there was no competition.
    In the 1820s, a man named JosiahHolbrook developed the idea of a lecture series calledLyceum, named after the Greek theater where Aristotle
    lectured his students (for free). It was amazingly popular, the
American Idol
of its day. People everywhere wanted
    it to come to their town. By 1835, there were 3,000 of these events spread
    across the United States, primarily in New England. In 1867, some groups
    joined to form the Associated Literary Society, which booked speakers on a
    singular, prescribed route from city to city across the country. This is
    the ubiquitous lecture circuit we hear people refer to all the time. Back
    then it was a singular thing you could get on. “Bye, honey, I’m going on
    the circuit…be back in six months,” was something a famous lecturer might
    have said. It took that long to run the circuit across the country on
    horses and return home. Before the days of the Rolling Stones or U2, there
    were performers who survived the grueling months-long tours without
    double-decker tour buses, throngs of groupies, and all-hour
    parties.
    At first there was little money for speakers. The Lyceum was created
    as a public service, like an extension of your local library. It was a
    feel-good, grassroots, community-service movement aimed at educating
    people and popularizing ideas. These events were often free or
    inexpensive, such as 25 cents a ticket or $1.50 for an entire
    season. [ 16 ] But by the 1850s, when high-end speakers like Daniel
    Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain dominated the circuit, prices
    forlectures went as high as $20 a ticket—equivalent to about
    $200 a seat in 2009. Of course, free lectures continued, and they always
    will, but the high end reached unprecedented levels for people giving
    speeches. In the late 1800s, it was something a famous person could do and
    earn more than enough money to make a comfortable living, which is exactly
    what many famous writers did.
    Soon the free market took over. Air travel, radio, telephones, and
    everything else we take for granted today made the idea of a single
    circuit absurd.