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proximately as thorough an education as was given in the first two years of my college course. And the public school system is so firmly rooted in the public esteem that nothing but the grossest mismanagement or some radical revolution can ever overthrow it. The difference between the incidental institutions of culture, such as the libraries, art galleries, concert halls, and museums, is illustrated by the difference between Barnum's American Museum, with its "woolly horse" and its "Japanese mermaid," and the Metropoli. tan Museum and the Natural History Museum in Central Park, each of which is worthy to be described as one of the great museums of the world. The recently created "Town Hall" is itself a testimony to the determination of the American people to maintain the right of free assembly and an open public discussion of all questions which concern the community's welfare. When a group of would-be advocates of Ireland's independence gather in a meeting to howl down a speaker who does not agree with them, they are quite unwittingly furnishing to the American people a stronger argument against Irish independence than any which its most intense opponent could possibly offer.

Is the religious life of the community

waning? Are the institutions of religion losing their usefulness? If so,

one who regards, as I do, religion as the life-blood of the community will regard the loss as incalculable.

It is said that people do not go to church as much as they did seventy years ago. That is probably true. But the churches are going to the people much more. Then the churches were worshiping assemblies which met on one day in each week to unite in prayer and praise and to listen to sermons. There were few or no mission chapels or mission Sunday schools, no parish houses, no men's clubs, no church forums, no social settlements, no gymnasiums for boys, no sewing or cooking schools for girls. There were weekly meetings for prayer, but few or none for work. The Young Men's Christian Association was just born and was hardly out of its cradle, and the churches quite generally looked on it with disfavor as a rival. There was no Young Women's Christian Association, no Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The churches were largely theological schools. The sermons were largely theological discussions. The statement of a gentle critic in the fifties that Theodore Parker denied the divinity of Jesus Christ but emphasized his

precepts, and the orthodox ministers denied his precepts but preached his divinity, was too epigrammatic to be quite true. But it is true that charity and missionary sermons were reserved for special occasions, that temperance sermons were rare, and that in most churches any reference to American slavery was prohibited by an unexpressed but very effective law. If to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the suffering and the handicapped, is to do Christ's work, then we may say that the churches are talking about him less and working for him more than they did seventy years ago. There is less preaching of Paul's Epistle to the Romans; there is more practicing of Christ's Sermon on the Mount.

Great cities are the strategic points in the world's great battlefield. There the forces of good and evil meet each other face to face for a hand-to-hand battle to the death. The good soldier who believes in his cause and in his Leader asks nothing better. A backward glance over seventy-five years in the history of America's greatest city confirms my lifelong faith that the forces of selfish indulgence and selfish ambition are no match for the forces of sobriety and righteousness, of purity, reverence, and loyal love.

I

THE FIFTH LINK

BY SHERMAN ROGERS

INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE OUTLOOK

WAS finishing a speech before a men's club in Boston when one of the industrial captains of New York City walked into the hall. Speaking on the labor problem, I had assured my audience that the solution of that problem rested in the hands of the employer. I had declared: "You employers will have labor troubles as long as you are indifferent to a settle ment on a basis that will be mutually desirable to all elements of American society. You have the power in your hands to command the respect and earnest co-operation of ninety-nine per cent of the workingmen in America if you really desire it. Without even raising your hand you can also gain the suspicion and distrust of a majority of the workmen. But just remember one thing and I am talking to employers: If you have trouble with your workmen, the fundamental cause lies underneath your own hat." I closed my address with the demand for personal-contact relationship based on a whole-hearted desire on the part of the employer to give every workingman in America all that he was entitled to, and at the same time to let him know what the employer is fairly entitled to by placing the industrial cards on the table face up.

The industrial captain referred to was led. He frankly said so. He ed me his card and asked me to

I call on him at his New York office the following day. I did so. This great captain, whom for present purposes I will call Mr. Jones, looked me over patronizingly, and then paralyzed me with astonishment, not to say indignation, by bluntly stating:

"Rogers, I couldn't help thinking last night what a great work you could do if you would put as much energy and sincerity into a sane proposition as you do into your chimerical, fatuous theory. Now keep cool," he blurted out as he noticed my face flush. "I didn't mean to hurt you; but I do think it is a pity that you should hypnotize yourself and then others with an idea so wholly devoid of merit. You made a statement that the heart of labor was absolutely square. Do you realize how big the word 'absolutely' is? Whether you do or not, I want to ask you one question which I think will explode your socalled 'solution.' If the heart of labor is square, why do they follow the leadership blindly and whole-heartedly of men like Bill Haywood on one side, and paid disturbers of industrial peace on the other who win their leadership by such malicious falsehoods and gross misrepresentation as to actually make a normal average intelligent man weep? Yet they drink in the idiotic promises of these crack-brained radicals the way a Sahara desert wanderer drinks a can

teen full of cool water. My workmen don't know anything about the company apparently; and that isn't allthey don't seem to want to know the truth. They certainly don't take any trouble to get at the facts. We are in a terrible depression. Hundreds of factories are operating at an actual loss, thousands of others without a cent of profit. Millions of dollars of proposed contracts are awaiting an honest declaration from labor that they will do a dollar's worth of work for a dollar's worth of pay, and the building boom alone will give work to a million men at once if the public can be convinced that they are going to get a run for their money. In the face of all this, labor has absolutely refused, even though millions of their fellow-men are suffering, to give the slightest cooperation to bring conditions back to normal. If that's square, then I'd like to know how you figure it out. I would also like you to enlighten me where the employer is all to blame for a condition of affairs that is caused mainly at the present time by labor itself refusing to accept the slightest responsibility in bringing prosperity to the millions who are now out of work. You say the trouble is under our own hat,' and I want to have the pleasure of telling you to your face that you don't know what you are talking about. I want to fur

ther add that if you are sincere you are pathetically blind."

"All right, Mr. Jones," I coolly answered, although every nerve in my body was tingling with suppressed anger; "in the next ten minutes I am going to prove to you that I am neither blind nor foolish. I do not speak on theoretical ideas. I have no ‘theory.' I have no illusion about the causes of unrest, neither do I have illusions about the present unreasonable attitude of millions of workingmen. But before I enter into a lengthy explanation, I want you to give me the four principal reasons for the present success of your company."

"Well," answered the industrial captain, "every large successful manufacturing concern builds permanent success on what I usually term a four-link industrial chain.' When I first started in business, I never fooled myself. I placed this company on a strong foundation, a foundation of confidence. Confidence of the banker, the wholesaler, the retailer, and the consuming public. The confidence of these four elements was gained by selling the personality, the integrity, and the ability of the executive officer of this company to them. I was a salesman at one time. It made no difference how good an article I had, I couldn't sell it to a retailer until I had first sold the personality and the integrity of 'Jones.' After I had established confidence in my integrity through my personality, I had little trouble in consummating a sale. I have applied the same principle to all my business dealings since starting this company. I firmly established, or rather welded, link No. 1 by selling the personality of 'Jones' to the banker. I never made a statement to my banker in all my business experience that was untrue. I realized that to be successful I had at all times to maintain the confidence of the banker. I maintained that confidence by meeting my banker face to face as often as was necessary, and when we started this company there were times that I was in the bank president's office a dozen times a week. Whenever he wavered, I immediately went right down, fully explained every minor detail of our business, and, as a result, I can truthfully say that this firm always has had, and still has, the absolute confidence and respect of the Iman who helped finance the company. I then went out personally, remember, and sold the same personality, integrity, and sincerity to the wholesaler. wholesaler was a big man in our line. His good will and confidence meant success or failure, so I personally visited most of the big wholesalers east of the Mississippi River. When I got through with these men, they knew beyond a doubt that they were perfectly safe in dealing with Jones & Co. simply because they knew that Jones personally would make good any defective material or any loss that could be laid to the doors of our company. I therefore welded link No. 2 by making every possible effort at all times to keep in the closest personal touch with the wholesaler. I

The

could not of course reach the retailer, and yet we knew it was necessary to have the retailer's confidence in our goods. We knew that if the retailer demanded the Jones line, Jones & Co. would always get his order. So I welded link No. 3 by getting together the highest-class sales force-men of personality-that money could buy. We didn't stop there. We spent a million dollars over a period of years in advertising to gain the confidence and good will of the consuming public. We have always taken great care to maintain that confidence, thereby welding the fourth link in the industrial chain of success. Does that answer your question?"

"It does, sir, and proves my 'theory.' You have correctly analyzed four necessary rules to follow to gain success in great industrial enterprise, or, as far as that is concerned, in any kind of enterprise; but you have left out the fifth, and because you have left out the fifth the industrial foundation of this country is being badly shaken today, and get me correctly-the main reason for that is because you totally ignored the fifth link. With all the force of your being, with all the power of your personality, you put the cards on the table to your banker, you sold him Mr. Jones's sincerity, you sold him Mr. Jones's honesty; you then went to work and used that same power of personality and sincerity in gaining the good will and confidence of the wholesaler. Good work. You didn't stop there; you welded the next link in your chain and sold your personality, your integrity, to the retailer, and you still preserved and sold Jones & Co. and their integrity to the consumer, thereby gaining the good will and confidence of the fourth great link in your chain. But the thing that puzzles me, Mr. Jones, is what could possibly have prevented you from going ahead and completing your industrial chain by welding the fifth link, a link that would have completed an unbreakable circle. But, somehow or other, you failed entirely even to try to sell your personality or your honesty to the men who would eventually make or break you the fifth-link men-the men who make your goods. The same Jones sincerity that sold the banker, the wholesaler, the retailer, and the consumer would have had mighty little trouble in selling itself to your workmen if you had applied the same methods in the same vigorous, sincere manner you employed with the other four link men; no trouble at all. If you hadn't tried to sell your personality and integrity and sound judgment to your banker, he never would have backed you up. If you hadn't tried to sell the same three elements to the wholesaler, he never would have bought your goods in the first place. If you had failed to follow up with the retailer and the ultimate consumer, they never would have heard of Jones & Co. It is incomprehensible to me that you could spend the million dollars that you have spent in advertising and in making good defective material to gain the

men.

good will of the dealer and the public, and yet not one single dollar have you spent to get the good will of your workAnd then you wonder why those who have established personal contact, who have sold their personality and their sincerity, the agitator and organizer, can beat you out with your own workmen. Let me tell you one thing, Mr. Jones, and I'm telling you the biggest truth you have ever heard in your life if you had used one-half the energy in selling your personality, your sincerity, and your fairness to the men who make your goods that you have to the men who have financed you and bought your goods, there would be no trouble in your plant to-day, because your workingmen would believe in you just as your banker does, just as the wholesaler does, just as the retailer and the ultimate consumers do; and it wouldn't take half the effort to reach the workingmen that you used to reach the business man. Mr. Jones, you welded a fairly strong chain as far as you went. The trouble is, you didn't go far enough; and just remember one thing all the time, that so soon as you have sold Jones & Co. through direct personal contact to the men who make your goods, just as you have sold Jones & Co. to the other four elements of society, you will find you will have reached a solution to the one thing that is putting gray hairs in your head right now-trying to find efficiency, confidence, and good will in the men in the workshop."

"But suppose I got in touch with my men," Jones suggested. "Do you sup. pose they would have believed me when I did put my cards on the table?"

"It has been proved in hundreds of plants," I answered, "that men are eager to follow the leadership of the employer wherever personal-contact relations have been established on a sincere, whole-hearted basis. There are several hundred plants operating to-day where the employer and employee are basking in the sunlight of perfect understanding and confidence. The sunlight is so strong that no cloud of suspicion blown from the fanatical mouths of rattleheaded opportunists can obscure it.

"Mr. Jones, any man that can sell a banker should hang his head in shame to believe that he couldn't sell himself to a warm-hearted worker. My ten minutes are up. Do I win?"

"You certainly do," replied the manufacturer; "you have completely sold me your idea, and I really believe that it is a common-sense, workable way out of the present industrial muddle. I am so much impressed that I want you to meet our superintendent. I'll send for him in a few days and have you meet him."

"Never mind your superintendent," I answered. "You didn't send your superintendent to sell your banker; you went down there yourself. And that's what you must do with your workingmen, no matter whether it takes a couple of weeks or a month; if teamwork in your factory isn't worth two weeks or a month of your time, it i

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CHAUTAUQUA lecturer must talk to his audience just as fast as he can move his mouth. Don't give them time to think. If you do, they'll begin to think about those preserves on the back of the stove, or that girl waiting on the corner, and you'll lose your audience. As for your message to them, they'll have all the next day to think about that!"

This blunt advice, given to me by the circuit manager of a Western Chautauqua, I can recommend to all other lecturers. A man may be a seasoned speaker with an unbroken record of triumphs at after-dinner speaking or lyceum platform oratory, and yet fail flatly when it comes to talking under the big tent.

The first and main reason for this is the tent. Open at all sides, it offers the members of the audience views of various distractions which compete with the lecturer for their attention. The pranks of small boys at one side, at another side the appearance of the Hollister family rolling up the street in their new car which every one knows they cannot afford, and the sight of a cool grassy nook beneath large elms in the rear of the tent, all invite the memhers of the audience to wander from the nvas hall either in mind or in body.

The mixed nature of the Chautauqua audience is the second reason for the difficulties of those who attempt to "put the talk in Chautauqua." A more heterogeneous audience you could not find than the crowd which sits under the average brown tent. The ninety-yearolds are there and the nine-month-olds. There is probably no Chautauqua circuit in this country which would succeed if you barred babies from the tents. For Chautauqua is essentially a family institution, and the farmer's wife cannot leave the house unless she takes her baby with her.

Since he is taking to a mixed audience, the speaker must confine himself to a "popular lecture," of which the old definition is still, perhaps, the best one, namely, "five parts of sense and five parts of nonsense." The Chautauqua is no place for a lecturer with an involved technical subject. Neither is it any place for a lecturer with a weak voice. The acoustics of a building of canvas are naturally inferior to those of a building of wood or stone. And with the building of canvas, open on all sides, no speaker can succeed unless he has a voice capable of competing with the cries of the children who are always playing in the rear of Chautauqua tents and the honking of automobiles and the

whistling of passing railway trains. Finally, no man or woman of sensitive feelings should ever attempt to address a Chautauqua audience, which has less regard for etiquette than any other in the world. Rare, indeed, is the occasion when a few persons do not leave during the discourse, and the old saying that the test of the success of a lecture is "whether more of the audience remain than go home" may almost be applied to the Chautauqua in all seriousness. Children circulate freely through the audience while the "show" is going on, whispering loudly to each other or to their parents, and often taking liberties with the speaker. Once when I was standing very close to the footlights, a small boy, who had become fascinated with my white shoes, reached over the lights and untied a shoe lace. Babies become hungry and vociferous, and must be taken out of the tent to be quieted and fed. In fact, there is a general atmosphere of movement in the audience. On one occasion when I was speaking one of two young girls returning to the tent was heard to say to the other, "I wonder if it's any more interesting now than when we went out." No, the Chautauqua platform is not a place for a sensitive person.

I trust that by this time all my

readers are aware that Chautauqua is not the name of a patent medicine or of a breakfast food, as one old lady I have heard of thought it was. "Chautauqua," originally the name of an Indian tribe, was borrowed for a lake in western New York the banks of which became the location of an annual summer gathering for entertainment and instruction. This was the first Chautauqua, a permanent, fixed institution. Later, the traveling Chautauqua, as we know it to-day, was developed. This is simply an arrangement for giving a series of towns in succession a programme of combined entertainment and education. Chautauqua is merely the lyceum in the light, pongee costume of summer.

Millbury, Massachusetts, has the honor of being the site of the first American lyceum, which was founded there in 1826, by Josiah Holbrook, of Derby, Connecticut. The movement grew so rapidly that by 1834 there were nearly three thousand lyceums in the United States. Mr. Holbrook borrowed the word lyceum from the spot where Aristotle used to lecture to the young men of Greece. Ralph Waldo Emerson is generally credited with being the first professional American lyceum lecturer, and nearly all of Emerson's famous essays were first written as lectures. Fees were small in those days. It is on record that when the town of Waltham offered Emerson five dollars for a lecture the great philosopher accepted only after stipulating that there must be thrown in "four quarts of oats for my horse."

Emerson later attained twenty dollars as a regular fee, which was five dollars more than most other lecturers were content with. Fees grew like everything else in the movement, however, and it was not long before Starr King I was able to answer an inquiry with the statement that he lectured for "F. A. M. E. -Fifty and my expenses." To-day the highest-priced speakers in lyceum work get for a single lecture fifteen times that fee of Starr King's and more than thirty-five times the price generally paid Emerson. Henry D. Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Daniel Webster, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Wendell Phillips are a few of the intellectual giants whose work lent distinction to the programmes of the early lyceums.

The Chautauqua, then, is a summer lyceum, held under a canvas tent instead of in a hall of wood or stone. Some of the features of the organization of Chautauqua are peculiar to it alone, however. There are three, four, five, six, and seven day Chautauqua circuits. For example, take the simplest case; a three-day circuit. Suppose the first three towns are Green Meadows, Carp River, and Alfalfa Center. Very likely the population of no one of them exceeds five hundred souls. It is now June, and these towns have been "booked" for the circuit the preceding fall or winter. The "advance man" has visited them and thoroughly advertised the attractions which are to come. Now arrive two "crew boys." Their job is to erect the tent, the stage, and the

SCENE FROM BENJAMIN CHAPIN'S DRAMA "LINCOLN AT THE WHITE HOUSE" Chapin, who died two years ago, was a familiar figure at Chautauqua benches of unfinished boards for the audience. On the morning of the first of the three days the children of Green Meadows come to the tent for a "hike" and picnic under the supervision of a young woman termed the "Junior Supervisor." (Nearly every good Chautauqua circuit now has attractions planned for the entertainment and instruction of children alone.) In the afternoon the attraction consists of a band of Tyrolean yodlers (some of the yodlers may have been born in Milwaukee or Terre Haute or Harper's Landing, but generally a fair percentage are really im

WILLIAM J. BRYAN

Probably the best-known lecturer of Chautauqua "talent"

ported from the Tyrol). In the evening the yodlers again entertain for half an hour, being followed by the pièce de résistance of the day, a lecture by Mrs. Z. B. Wuggins entitled "America First, Last, and All the Time."

The second day Green Meadows enjoys outdoor games and sports for the children in the morning, and an Italian vocal and instrumental musical troupe in the afternoon, followed by a lecture "Community Engineering" by a young college professor whose ideas for improving the village school, the village church, and the village business life are distinctly worth hearing. In the evening there is a grand concert by the Italians.

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The third day begins with a costume party for the children, prizes being given for the best costumes. After dinner-which of course is a noonday meal in Green Meadows-every one who can get away from farm or store goes to the big tent to hear the singing and the jokes of the Lightfoot Male Quartette. Green Meadows goes home to face three hundred and sixty-two days of normal humdrum existence, after an evening divided between these Lightfoot boys and the Hon. J. I. B. Mower, of the Louisiana State Legislature, whose lecture on "Post-War Duties of the United States to Europe" is heard with a surprising amount of attention and real understanding.

All performers on a Chautauqua platform, whether they be yodlers, cartoonists, or lecturers, are described by the generic term "talent." Well, in the case of our three-day circuit the talent which was in Green Meadows on Monday will be opening the three-day programme at Alfalfa Center on Wednesday, while the talent which closes in Green Meadows on Wednesday does not reach Alfalfa Center until Saturday. As the three-day programme is finished in each village the tent is taken down by the "crew boys" and shipped to the next town allotted to them.

During the past season nearly nine thousand towns and nearly ten million persons were reached by Chautauqua in this country and Canada alone. It was with good reason that Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America." It is as fundamentally American as Indian corn or jazz. American promoters have already carried it to several other parts of the Anglo-Saxon world, however. England, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are all now reached by one large American Chautauqua Association, which sends American talent to these British countries and imports British talent in return. The interchange of ideas thus brought about is making Chautauqua one of the strongest forces now working for the unity of the Anglo-Saxon world.

Mr. Louis J. Alber, President of the Affiliated Lyceum and Chautauqua Association, to whom I am indebted for not a little of the information in this article, well says that, "not only is Chautauqua 'the most American thing in America,' but it is the most demoChanta cratic thing in democracy."

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