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In this podcast I discuss Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940 (Yale University Press, 2013) with author Nicholas R. Parrillo, professor of law at Yale University. Parrillo\u2019s book was winner of the 2014 Law and Society Association James Willard Hurst Book Prize and the 2014 Annual Scholarship Award from the American Bar Association\u2019s Section on Administrative Law. Per the book jacket, \u201cin America today, a public official\u2019s lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently provided for officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a percentage of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. Numerous other officers were likewise paid for \u2018performance.\u2019 This book is the first to document the American government\u2019s for-profit past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officialdom\u2019srelationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers\u2013by ultimately banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary\u2013transformed that relationship forever.\u201d Parrillo\u2019s intricate analysis adds nuance to the American story of government compensation and explains why government officials made money in ways that today would be deemed necessarily corrupt. Some of the topics we cover are: \u2013The ways American lawmakers made the absence of a profit motive a defining feature of government \u2013The two non-salary forms of payment for government officials that initially predominated in the US \u2013How these two forms of payment tended to give rise to very different social relationships between officials and the people with whom they dealt \u2013Why the flight to salaries was an admission of law\u2019s weakness and failure\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law