Depressed Culture

In Buffalo's Federal Court last week famed, 59-year-old Chautauqua Institution was gently laid to rest in the friendly hands of two receivers. Its New York neighbors have known for weeks that, with $700,000 in liabilities, its receivership was inevitable. Others, looking back a quarter century to the time when Chautauqua was the unquestioned summer capital of U. S. Culture, have long been apt to think of it in the past tense.

The times, in the shape of cinema and radio, have left behind the traveling chautauquas which once dotted the land with their tents, brought bell-ringers, acrobats and inspirational lecturers to brighten small-town summers. But Chautauqua Institution, though popularly confused with its peripatetic namesakes, has never had any connection with them. Last week its President Arthur Eugene Bestor was sure that Depression alone is responsible for its plight.

The years 1920 to 1929 set new highs for Chautauqua prosperity. Receipts never fell below $100,000, attendance averaged 50.000. By 1932 receipts and attendance had fallen off 40%. Brisk, earnest Dr. Bestor, who has been with Chautauqua since 1905, calls receivership a "breathing spell," has lost none of his faith in the gospel of adult education. Last week he was going ahead with plans for Chautauqua's 1934 season, hoping to finance it with contributions and the sale of $100,000 worth of receivership bonds.

Chautauqua's site, beside Lake Chautauqua in New York's southwestern tip, was once a Methodist camp-meeting ground. In 1874 a Methodist circuit preacher named John Heyl Vincent and a pious Ohio inventor named Lewis Miller held a two-week institute for Sunday School teachers there. Both men were self-edu-cated, hungry for knowledge, eager to spread it. Within 1 5 years they had added schools of languages and music, started the famed Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle for home reading. Thus arose a unique conglomeration of religion, culture and fun which the late Theodore Roosevelt once called "the most American thing in America."

The old camp-meeting ground is now a clutter of triple-porched cottages named Bideawee, Restawhile, Dewdrop Inn. There are several faintly classic concert & lecture halls, a huge wooden amphitheater, a miniature reproduction of the Holy Land. Chautauquans may study anything from basket-weaving to playwriting. Most cottagers, who return year after year, are elderly. Men have a Horseshoe Club, women a Bird & Tree Club headed by Founder Miller's daughter, Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison. Each day begins with community prayer. Chief social events are ice-cream-&-cake festivals. A ban on smoking has been lifted lately. Younger Chautauquans may boat, play golf or tennis, swim every day but Sunday. Revolt in Milwaukee

At Milwaukee State Teachers College one day last fortnight Professor John Clinton Lazenby waited until all 53 young men & women in his course in secondary education were seated. Then he rose and quietly announced that three-fourths of them were cheaters. He had discovered it by comparing their answers to a recent examination with a set of "key" answers. There would be. snapped the professor, a re-examination next day at 1:30 p. m.

Next day the whole class, including the college's football captain, descended in a menacing body upon small Professor Lazenby. "Certainly I cheated," cried one. "So did I," chimed others. "How else could we answer so many questions in 45 minutes? . . . The object of this course is 'reflective thinking,' isn't it? ... How can we think when it's a race just to get the answers down? . . . The course is too hard anyway."

Upshot of the matter was appointment of a committee by Professor Lazenby to investigate class and course. -"I feel that I am on trial," said he. "I will accept whatever report the student committee brings in."

Last week the committee reported. Out of 50 students, 33 admitted cheating. To make up for past sins, the committee recommended a fresh examination covering the year's work to date. It advised special precaution in mimeographing questions, plenty of time to set down answers.

"A splendid report, efficient and just," cried Milwaukee's popular President Frank E. Baker. "The most excellent handling of a student revolt I have ever seen." Connecticut College

Within the fortnight two pleasant things happened to Connecticut College for Women. Last week an examining committee recommended it, as one of four colleges out of 37 applying, for installation of a collegiate chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Week before Mrs. Edward Stephen Harkness gave it $150,000 to build a new dormitory.

When Mrs. Harkness' famed husband gave more than $34,000,000 to create "house plans" at Harvard, Yale and Phillips Exeter, nobody had to ask what the recipients were. But Connecticut College for Women has just attained its female majority. Its own students and alumnae blush at the "for women," prefer to call their alma mater simply Connecticut Col- lege. That makes people think they are talking about Connecticut Agricultural College at Storrs.

The late Morton F. Plant, rich New London railroad man, wanted Connecticut to have a college where its young women could be fitted for independent, well-rounded living. The late, famed Progressive Educator George Sykes, the College's first president, worked two years on the curriculum before five buildings on a windy hill two miles from New London were opened for students in 1915.

The original enrollment of 100 has now sextupled, the five buildings become 20. Along with a conventional Arts course, students get plenty of science, home economics, physical education. In 1929 trustees gave the college its first woman president, succeeding Benjamin Tinkham Marshall (1921-29). Katharine Blunt, 57, graduated from Vassar at 22, taught chemistry there until 1913 with three years out to get a Ph. D. at University of Chicago. During the War she helped Herbert Hoover conserve food, later wrote a book about it called Food and the War. As chairman of Chicago's home economics department from 1918 to 1929, she was chiefly responsible for developing its graduate division.

Dr. Blunt adorns her trim figure neatly, always snatches off her horn-rimmed spectacles when she looks up from reading. Years ago at Chicago a scandal that made students admire her all the more arose when a pack of cigarets was found behind a picture on her mantel. On a European trip in 1932 she got up nerve to bob her grey hair.

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