In the 18th century, the term box lobby lounger came into vogue in England, referring to a person who would show up to a play

at the theater, but not attend the play. They would hang out in the lobby for the sole purpose of

chatting with actual attendees before, after, and during the play's intermission. The idea was that

folks who had box seats at the theater

were often high society, well-to-do, influential people, and thus, spending time with them

put you in a position to perhaps shake the right hand, maybe even grease the right palm,

and in any case get your face known, so that if you encountered those

people again, there was a chance you'd be remembered, which could be useful in future dealings,

whether those dealings were of the business, social, or political variety. This term crossed

the Atlantic to the U.S. soon after, as did the practice of hanging around theaters and other such

venues, to attain adjacency to influence and power. And by the 1810s, the term had expanded

to include those who hung around the lobbies of political institutions, like statehouses and

congressional campuses, even to the point where some

influential non-politicians became known as lobbyist members of the government, because they

influenced policy and made deals, much like politicians, but from the lobbies of these

institutional buildings, rather than from the traditional seats of government power.

In the earliest days of lobbying in the United States, much of the activity stayed at the local level,

which made sense both because travel and communication was a more ponderous exercise back then,

but also because there was more power

at the state level in those days. Lobbying was also, notably, still more of a small and

independent endeavor, with interest groups and representatives of businesses and industries

petitioning their political representatives for certain measures and

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