“Our constituency is as broad as are the aims of the institution: Sunday-school and other Christian workers, day school teachers, students of language, ministers of the gospel, citizens who mold the nation, mothers who mold citizens by making homes—these all, and all beside who seek knowledge, character and usefulness, are the people for whom Chautauqua was organized. “With this wide reach of purpose it was necessary that Chautauqua should project the lines of its intention in plans and departments, that the world might see its magnitude, and that the full territory it proposes to occupy might be preëmpted. Until this projection was made, the Chautauqua Idea was irrepressible. And now Chautauqua with its variety of departments is not like a mere pile of buildings, with additions, lean-tos, unrelated edifices, and other after-thoughts, the results of unmanageable ingenuity. It is a growth and development, a provision according to the highest law, to meet the necessities which called it into existence. “In this growth of twelve years there have been no unnecessary additions. To have omitted any of them would have made Chautauqua less than it is; and to have made Chautauqua less than it is would have been a mistake—almost a disaster. Because of the broad and varied provisions now included in the Chautauqua movement, it will be greater and stronger for all time to come. “It would not have been easy to organize these departments at first under a single charter. The separate schemes under separate constitutions came into being. Each is stronger to-day because of the relative independence of its origin. The time may have come, I think the time has come, for an external union of departments which have all along been practically one. No antagonism between them has ever seemed to me possible, but there is a way of preventing even the seeming or fear of such antagonism. “At the first meeting of the Board of Trustees of Chautauqua University, I proposed the appointment of a committee whose business it should be to bring into complete external unity all departments of Chautauqua. This committee has never acted. I now renew the proposal, with some practical hints looking toward this result.” Dr. Vincent then presented several suggestions designed to harmonize the various Chautauqua interests. The report continues: “The financial condition of Chautauqua is a subject to which I have heretofore given little attention. I trusted implicitly to the wisdom of the Board, whose large ideas of the Chautauqua work, whose enthusiasm in it, and whose generous courtesy toward me, have caused them to give me the largest liberty, and to treat with great gentleness what they have sometimes felt to be excessive expenditure.