In the magazine _The World To-Day_ (September, 1911), I read the following by George L. Flude: A few years ago I saw Senator Robert M. La Follette address a crowd of eight thousand people at Waterloo, Iowa. For two hours and a half he jammed insurgent Republicanism into that crowd. He was at that time the only insurgent in the party and had not been named yet. The crowd took it all in. They were there to be instructed, not to hear a partisan speech. Hence their attitude, regardless of party affiliation, was a receptive one. He absolutely converted that crowd into insurgents and they did not know it. For five years La Follette crammed and jammed "non-partisan" talks into Chautauqua crowds through Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska, and Kansas. The average audience was probably about four thousand and he met sixty or more audiences each summer; 240,000 people inoculated with insurgency by one man. Occasionally an audience finds that the lecture is not what was looked for. Some years ago a Western Assembly engaged Senator La Follette, and from the list of his subjects chose "The World's Greatest Tragedy," expecting a sensational attack upon the greed of capitalists. A great crowd assembled to see "Senator Bob jump on the trusts." He gave his well-known literary lecture on _Hamlet_, a critical appreciation, without a word on current affairs. The crowd sat, first puzzled, then baffled, and at last went away dejected. A newspaper of wide circulation, _The Christian Science Monitor_, said: By far the most active and keenly interested voters of the country, with their leaders, forceful in shaping progressive legislation, have come during the last decade from States where this Chautauqua method of cultivation of the adult population has been most steadily used, and the end is not yet, since now the system is being organized in a thorough-going way never known before. Public men, educators, artists, authors, pioneers in discovery of unknown lands or of secrets of nature, who get the ear of this huge audience season after season, come nearer to the heart of the nation and observe its ways of living better than by any other method. The old mother Chautauqua by the Lake would not like to be held responsible for all the utterances under the tents of her ten thousand daughters. For that matter, she would not endorse everything spoken upon her own platform in the Amphitheater, where "free speech" is the motto and the most contradictory opinions are presented. But she must recognize that her daughters have wielded a mighty power in forming the political and moral convictions of the nation.