Passage V: Few living Americans have attended a Chautauqua and many especially i
ID: 3452477 • Letter: P
Question
Passage V: Few living Americans have attended a Chautauqua and many especially in the Midwest are sometimes puzzled by the local names of Chautauqua hill, or Chautauqua Park or Chautauqua camp ground. The Chautauqua institution was a kind of traveling cultural and educational institution that brought education, entertainment and culture to an eager constituency before radio, television, or efficient transportation. Chautauqua began in 1874 when the Reverent John Vincent, a Methodist minister and Luis Miller, an Akron Ohio businessman decided to setup a Sunday school for Sunday school teachers. Their initial encampment, Lake Chautauqua in New York, rapidly expanded to include a school of languages, a summer school for school teachers, school of theology, and a large number of special interest group for music, fine arts, reading, and so on When these were successful, the movement went national from 1903 to 1930 with "advanced sales" signing up local business people as underwriters and supporters to guarantee seats for a Chautauqua season in their local area. Moving much like a circus, carnival, or other traveling tent show, the Chautauqua would spend perhaps a two-week season in one city and then move to the next to repeat its performances. These included the leading orchestra, revivalists, educators, politicians and intellectuals. The people who could never have traveled to the centers of culture "nor could have enjoyed their resources from the airwaves," received entertainment, education and culture in their own cities. The Chautauqua were so important in the national life at the time that Russell Conway founded Drew university in Philadelphia with the earnings he made delivering a single speech entitled "Acres of Diamonds." The secretary of state William Jennings Bryan left the Paris peace talks, which may have delayed WW 11, to appear on a Chautauqua circus. Even though the original Chautauqua group existed in western New York State the national movement had its day and departed. With improved communications, people could hear the symphonies and lecturers on radios and later see them on television; with improved transportation, they could journey to the centers of culture. Some social observers say that the final blow to the Chautauquas came when the Federal Government decided to tax Chautauqua tickets as entertainment. Audiences, who formally had considered their tickets as educational and cultural, were shocked to have discovered that they had been attending entertainment-and stopped coming. So Chautauqua, like vaudevilles and burlesque, is a memory-but a vital memory of an important influence on the culture of our nationExplanation / Answer
With improved communications, people could hear the symphonies and the lectures on radio and later see them on television; with improved transportation, they could journey to the center of culture.
D. The influence on our culture of Chautauquas
Passive could be best described as the tone of this passage