Lyceum The heat of po litical opinion occasioned by the agitators pre ceding the outbreak of the Civil War and the years of the war itself destroyed fully 90 per cent of the lyceums throughout the land; and when the war was over there was little left of them but the material with which to begin building anew. Although the lyceums had fared badly they had left behind them a won derful abundance of high class talent which was to he found, for the most part, in the East. In 1867 the *Associated Western Literary Soci was organized for the purpose of bring ing west, through the mutual efforts of the Western lyceums, the best Eastern lecturers. The first year the organization, which con sisted of 110 lyceums, brought west 35 lecturers and gave them consecutive dates at much better pay than they had ever before received. The association was a success from the first, and after three years it joined hands with the Amer ican Literary Bureau of New York. The Boston Lyceum Bureau was already in the field in 1868, and the Williams Lecture and Musical Bureau began business the following year. The East had begun to outbid the West for the best lyceum talent and got it. The greatest names of the day appeared on the lyceum bureaus' bill of fare. The thorough organization of the lec ture field followed and the popular lyceum stars soon found themselves in clover. Early in his career as a lecturer Mark Twain received $300 a night and Beecher $500. Amon those who received $200 and upward for a single lecture were Barnum, Robert Collyer, Anna Dickinson and Gough. The Pond Bureau suddenly raised these high prices in order to secure the best talent in the field, paying Beecher $1,000 per lecture and Henry M. Stanley, just back from Africa, $100,000 for 100 lectures. Stanley's first lecture brought in almost $18,000. So great was the demand for good lecturers that there were not enough to fill the bill, and readers and mus ical entertainers were pressed into service. Some of the former, like Helen Potter, Mrs. Scott Siddons and Charlotte Cushman became immensely popular and were eventually as highly paid as the lecturers. Musical clubs, lyceum opera companies, concert companies and dra matic readers became a fixed part of the lyceum program; and the expenses of the bureaus arose to such high proportions that more organization was necessary to meet them. Then the advance
agent, the seller of lyceum talent, was put upon the road and scores of new bureaus for the handling of lyceum talent came into the field. By the end of the 19th century these numbered ever 100 and five years later they had reached 150, with thousands of entertainers of all kinds on their lists.
Chautauqua Societies came to intensify the life of the lyceum movement. By this time these societies had already neared the 500 mark, and they went on increasing rapidly and in so doing made further demands upon the efforts of the bureaus. The organization of talent into bands which gave their time, throughout the summer season, to the summer Chautauqua fol lowed, and the selling of bureau talent became the business of trained agents who completely covered the country.
Out of these Chautauqua courses sprang Uni versity Extension work with its many ramifica tions; and the free lecture courses furnished by schools, colleges, other institutions, cities and towns. Of these the most noted are the free lecture courses of the New York City board of education. Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and other large American cities have been active along this line. The natural result of all this activity wasthe organiza tion, in 1903, of the International Lyceum Association in Chicago, which has yearly, since that date, held meetings of several days' duration in some prearranged city, such as Philadelphia, Elkhart, Ind., Valparaiso, Ind., and Chautauqua. The lyceum movement early extended to Canada where it became very active, established talent-selling bureaus and perfected its own organizations. (See UNIVER SITY EXTENSION ; CHAUTAUQUA SOCIETIES ; LIT ERARY SOCIETIES; NEW YORK CITY FREE LEC TURES; INTERNATIONAL LYCEUM ASSOCIATION/. Consult the biographies of Beecher, Gough, Emerson and other noted lecturers mentioned in this article, Lyceum Magdzine, Lyceum World, and Wright, A. A. 'A Brief History of the Lyceum) (in (Who's Who in the Philadelphia 1906).