Chautauqua movement

Chautauqua movement development in adult education somewhat similar to the lyceum movement. It derived from an institution at Chautauqua, N.Y. There, in 1873, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller proposed to a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting that secular as well as religious instruction be included in the summer Sunday-school institute. Established on that basis in 1874, the institute evolved into an eight-week summer program, offering adult courses in the arts, sciences, and humanities. Thousands attended each year; for those who could not, there were courses for home study groups, and lecturers were sent out to supplement the material furnished from the organization's publishing house. Local reading circles flourished around the country.

Other communities were inspired to form local Chautauquas, and possibly 200-300 were organized, though few were so successful as the original. These local groups brought authors, explorers, musicians, and political leaders to lecture and furnished a variety of entertainment. The Chautauquas had something of the spirit of the revival meeting and something of the county fair. In 1912 the movement was organized commercially; lecturers and entertainers were furnished to local groups on a contract basis. This commercial endeavor was extremely successful, persisting until c.1924, after which automobile travel, motion pictures, and other forces rapidly diminished Chautauqua's appeal. The original Chautauqua site continues to draw summer visitors who attend varied programs.

Bibliography: See J. H. Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement (1886, repr. 1971); A. E. Bestor, Chautauqua Publications (1934); R. Richmond, Chautauqua: an American Place (1934); G. MacLaren, Morally We Roll Along (1938); V. Case and R. O. Case, We Called It Culture: The Story of Chautauqua (1948, repr. 1970); J. E. Gould, The Chautauqua Movement (1961).

Chautauqua Movement, an outgrowth of the lyceum movement, originated at Lake Chautauqua, N.Y., where annual Methodist Episcopal camp meetings had been held until they were reorganized (1874) as assemblies for religious study. The program was extended to include other branches of education, as well as musical and dramatic entertainments. The resulting Chautauqua Institution offered correspondence courses, published books, issued The Chautauquan (1880–1914), and held an annual summer school. Its success caused other communities throughout the U.S. to imitate the venture, and “chautauqua” became a generic name for programs given by troupes of lecturers and entertainers, operated in the manner of traveling theatrical companies, and performing in rural settlements.

Chautauqua Movement. Begun with the modest objective of training Methodist Sunday school teachers, Chautauqua soon emerged as a national movement with broad cultural implications. In 1874, Bishop John Heyl Vincent (1832–1920) and the industrialist Lewis Miller (1829–1899) converted a Methodist camp meeting on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in western New York into an “outdoor university” combining Bible study with courses in science, history, literature, and the arts. By the 1880s, Chautauqua had evolved into the foremost advocate for adult education. Its eight‐week summer program featured Social Gospel–minded academics, politicians, preachers, prohibitionists, and reformers. Embracing the summer vacation as a fact of modern life, Vincent and Miller adapted it to their broader mission of spiritual and social renewal.

Through correspondence courses, university extension, journals like The Chautauquan, and especially reading circles, Chautauqua's influence spread widely. In 1878, Vincent inaugurated the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC). Under the leadership of director Kate F. Kimball (1860–1917), 264,000 people—75 percent of them women—had enrolled in the CLSC by the century's end. Students completing the four‐year reading program received official (if symbolic) diplomas. Criticized by some as superficial, the CLSC nevertheless gave thousands of mostly white, Protestant, middle‐class women opportunities to develop stronger public voices and organizational experience. Many CLSC women established independent Chautauqua assemblies in their own communities. By 1904, more than one hundred towns, mainly in the Middle West, held assemblies on grounds patterned on the original Chautauqua. Local boosters, railroads, and interurban lines supported these assemblies as profitable (yet moral) tourist attractions.

In 1904, for‐profit lyceum organizers introduced a network of mobile Chautauquas, or “circuits.” Using aggressive sales tactics, one‐sided contracts, and a tightly scheduled booking system, circuit Chautauquas hastened the decline of the independent assemblies (many of which later became residential subdivisions). To modernists like Sinclair Lewis, the circuit Chautauqua, with its “animal and bird educators” (i.e., pet tricks), uplifting lectures, sentimental plays, and heavy‐handed wartime patriotism, symbolized the shallowness of middle‐class culture. Despite ridicule from the avant‐garde, however, the circuits launched the careers of many performers and linked some six thousand small towns to the larger world. In the mid‐1920s, the rise of commercial radio, movies, automobiles, and an expanded consumer culture signaled the end of the circuits' popularity in rural America. The last tent show folded in 1933. The original assembly on Lake Chautauqua still thrives.
See also Gilded Age; Leisure; Methodism; Popular Culture; Progressive Era; Protestantism; Social Class; Tourism; Twenties, The; Women's Club Movement.

Bibliography

Theodore Morrison , Chautauqua: A Center for Education, Religion, and the Arts in America, 1974.
Alan Trachtenberg , ‘We Study the Word and Works of God’: Chautauqua and the Sacralization of Culture in America, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village Herald 13.2 (1984): 3–11.

Andrew Chamberlin Rieser