Chautauqua

Chautauqua (/ʃ ə ˈ t ɔː k w ə / shə-TAW -kwə) was an adult education and social movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day.[1] Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America."[2]

In 1873, the first Chautauqua, Lakeside Chautauqua on Ohio's Lake Erie, was formed by the Methodists. The next year, 1874, the New York Chautauqua Assembly, was organized by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in the state of New York.[3] Two years earlier, Vincent, editor of the Sunday School Journal, had begun to train Sunday school teachers in an outdoor summer school format. The gatherings grew in popularity. The organization founded by Vincent and Miller later became known as the Chautauqua Institution. Many other independent Chautauquas were developed in a similar fashion.[4]

The educational summer camp format proved to be a popular choice for families and was widely copied by several Chautauquas. Within a decade, "Chautauqua assemblies" (or simply "Chautauquas"), named for the location in New York, sprang up in various locations across North America. The Chautauqua movement may be regarded as a successor to the Lyceum movement earlier in the 19th century.[citation needed ] As the Chautauqua assemblies began to compete for the best performers and lecturers, lyceum bureaus assisted with bookings. Today, Lakeside Chautauqua and the Chautauqua Institution, the two largest Chautauquas, still draw thousands each summer season.

Independent Chautauquas (or "daughter Chautauquas") operated at permanent facilities, usually fashioned after the Chautauqua Institute in New York, or at rented venues such as in an amusement park.[5][6] Such a Chautauqua was generally built in an attractive semi-rural location a short distance outside an established town with good rail service. At the height of the Chautauqua movement in the 1920s, several hundred of these existed, but their numbers have since dwindled.[7][8]

"Circuit Chautauquas" (or colloquially, "Tent Chautauquas") were an itinerant manifestation of the Chautauqua movement, founded by Keith Vawter (a Redpath Lyceum Bureau manager) and Roy Ellison in 1904.[9] Although Vawter and Ellison were unsuccessful in their initial attempts to commercialize Chautauqua, by 1907 they had found a great amount of success in their adaptation of the concept. The program would be presented in tents pitched "on a well-drained field near town".[10] After several days, the Chautauqua would fold its tents and move on. The method of organizing a series of touring Chautauquas is attributed to Vawter.[11] Among early Redpath comedians was Boob Brasfield.[12]

Reactions to tent Chautauquas were mixed. In We Called it Culture, Victoria and Robert Case wrote of the new itinerant Chautauqua:

The credit–or blame–for devising the Frankenstein mechanism which was both to exalt and to destroy Chautauqua, the tent circuit, must be given to two youths of similar temperament, imagination, and a common purpose. That purpose, bluntly, was to 'make a million'.[13]

Frank Gunsaulus attacked Vawter:

"You're ruining a splendid movement," Gunsaulus roared at Keith Vawter, whom he met at a railroad junction. "You're cheapening Chautauqua, breaking it down, replacing it with something what [sic] will have neither dignity nor permanence."[14]

In Vawter's scheme, each performer or group appeared on a particular day of the program. "First-day" talent would move on to other Chautauquas, followed by the "second-day" performers, and so on, throughout the touring season. By the mid-1920s, when circuit Chautauquas were at their peak, they appeared in over 10,000 communities to audiences of more than 45 million; by about 1940 they had run their course.[15]

Lectures were the mainstay of the Chautauqua. Prior to 1917, lectures dominated the circuit Chautauqua programs. The reform speech and the inspirational talk were the two main types of lecture until 1913.[16] Later topics included current events, travel and stories, often with a comedic twist.[citation needed ]

The most prolific speaker (often booked in the same venues with three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was Russell Conwell who delivered his famous "Acres of Diamonds" speech 5,000 times to audiences on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, which had this theme:[16]

Get rich, young man, for money is power and power ought to be in the hands of good people. I say you have no right to be poor.[17]

Maud Ballington Booth, the "Little Mother of the Prisons", was another popular performer on the circuit. Booth's descriptions of prison life would move her audiences to tears and rouse them to reform. Jane Addams spoke on social problems and her work at Hull House. Helen Potter is another notable woman in the Chautauquas. Potter performed a variety of roles, including men and women. As Gentile notes: "Potter's choice of subjects is noteworthy for its variety and for the fact that she was credible in her impersonations of men as well as of women. In retrospect, Potter's impersonations are of special interest as examples of the kind of recycling or refertilization of inspiration that occurs throughout the history of the one-person show."[18] On a lighter note, author Opie Read's stories and homespun philosophy endeared him to audiences. Other well-known speakers and lecturers in Chautauqua events of various forms included Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Champ Clark from Missouri, Missouri Governor Herbert S. Hadley, and "Fighting Bob" La Follette (governor of Wisconsin at the time).[16]

Christian instruction, preaching, and worship were a strong part of the Chautauqua experience. Although the Chautauqua movement was founded by Methodists, nondenominationalism was a Chautauqua principle from the beginning, and prominent Catholics like Catherine Doherty took part. In 1892, Lutheran Church theologian Theodore Emanuel Schmauk was one of the organizers of the Pennsylvania Chautauqua.[citation needed ]

Early religious expression in Chautauqua was usually of a general nature, comparable to the later Moral Re-Armament movement. Later on, in the first half of the 20th century, Fundamentalism was the content of an increasing number of Chautauqua sermons and lectures. However, the great number of Chautauquas, as well as the absence of any central authority over them, meant that religious patterns varied greatly among the different Chautauquas. Some were so religiously oriented that they were essentially church camps, while more secular Chautauquas resembled summer school and competed with vaudeville in theaters and circus tent shows with their animal acts and trapeze acrobats.

One example, Lakeside Chautauqua, is privately owned but affiliated with the United Methodist Church. In contrast, the Colorado Chautauqua is entirely nondenominational and mostly secular in its orientation.[citation needed ]

In the 1890s, both Chautauqua and vaudeville were gaining popularity and establishing themselves as important forms of entertainment. While Chautauqua had its roots in Sunday-school and valued morality and education highly, vaudeville grew out of minstrel shows, variety acts, and crude humor, and so the two movements found themselves at odds. Chautauqua was considered wholesome, family entertainment and appealed to middle classes and people who considered themselves to be respectable or aspired to respectability. Vaudeville, on the other hand, was considered by many to be vulgar and appealed to working class men. There was a stark distinction between the two, and neither generally shared performers or audiences.[citation needed ]

At the turn of the 20th century, vaudeville managers began a push for more "refinement", as well as a loosening of Victorian-era morals from the Chautauqua side. Over time, as vaudeville became more respectable, Chautauqua became more permissive in what they considered to be acceptable acts. The boundaries between the two began to blur.[19]

Music was important to Chautauqua, with band music in particular demand. John Philip Sousa protégé Bohumir Kryl's Bohemian Band was frequently seen on the circuit. One of the numbers featured by Kryl was the "Anvil Chorus" from Il Trovatore with four husky timpanists in leather aprons hammering on anvils shooting sparks (enhanced through special effects) across the darkened stage. Spirituals were also popular. White audiences appreciated seeing African-Americans performing something other than minstrelsy. Other musical features of the Chautauqua included groups like the Jubilee Singers, who sang a mix of spirituals and popular tunes, and other singers and instrumental groups like American Quartette, who played popular music, ballads, and songs from the "old country". Entertainers on the Chautauqua circuit such as Charles Ross Taggart, billed as "The Man From Vermont" and "The Old Country Fiddler", played violin, sang, performed ventriloquism and comedy, and told tall tales about life in rural New England.[citation needed ]

Opera became a part of the Chautauqua experience in 1926 when the American Opera Company, an outgrowth of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, began touring the country. Under the direction of Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing, the AOC presented five operas in one week at the Chautauqua Amphitheater.[20] By 1929, a permanent Chautauqua Opera company had been established.[21]

Chautauquas can be viewed in the context of the populist ferment of the late 19th century. Manifestos such as the "Populist Party Platform"[22] voiced a disdain for political corruption and championed the plight of the common people in the face of the rich and powerful. Other favorite political reform topics in Chautauqua lectures included temperance (even prohibition), women's suffrage, and child labor laws.[citation needed ]

However, the Chautauqua movement usually avoided taking political stands as such, instead inviting public officials of all the major political parties to lecture, assuring a balanced program for the members of the assembly. For example, during the 1936 season at the Chautauqua Institution, in anticipation of the national election held that year for president, visitors heard addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt, his Republican challenger Alf Landon, and from two third-party candidates.[23]

A route taken by a troupe of Chautauqua entertainers, the May Valentine Opera Company, which presented Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado during its 1925 "Summer Season," began March 26 in Abbeville, Louisiana, and ended September 6 in Sidney, Montana.[24]