Meet the Troupe	America the Bountiful	Chautauqua History
Kirkwood 6/5-6/10	Maryville 6/12-6/17	Cape Girardeau 6/19-6/24

 

Mary Elizabeth Lease
as portrayed by
Glenna J. Wallace, Seneca, MO

Glenna is newly retired after teaching 35 years at Crowder College in Neosho, MO. She currently serves as tribal secretary to the Eastern Shawnee. Glenna spoke on the heritage of the Shawnee Tribes as part of the Missouri Humanities Council Chautauqua in 2003-2004.

Mary Elizabeth Lease (1853-1933), American lecturer, writer, and later political activist who championed diverse public cases including the plight of the farmer, would take issue with the phrase "America, the Bountiful". She and her husband spent ten years trying to make a living farming, but lost everything in the financial panic of 1873, which was anything but a "bountiful" time or experience.

Later she became the voice of the Farmers' Alliance, making more than 160 speeches in Kansas alone, achieving world-wide fame and attracting national attention with what has been described by her enemies as "radical utterances."

The most famous quotation attributed to her, which she denies having ever said, supposedly encouraged farmers of Kansas to "raise less corn and more hell." Lease didn't make a big issue of the misquoted comment because she believed it to be "a right good piece of advice." Always known for her powerful voice, both physically and influentially, she has been described as hurling sentences "as Jove hurled thunderbolts."

Born Mary Elizabeth Lease, her detractors referred to her as Mary Ellen Lease or "Mary Yellin" whereas her supporters referenced her as Queen Mary. While simultaneously being accused of being a "virago" and "petticoated smut-mill," Mary Lease was known to be able to influence hundreds of votes wherever she spoke, and the opposition did not want her in their area near or during election time. As one source stated, regardless of whether Mary Elizabeth Lease did or did not explicitly call for more"hell raising, Lease was a powerful voice of the agrarian crusade."

Click here for an essay on Mary Elizabeth Lease, written by Scholar Glenna J. Wallace

 

Theodore Roosevelt
as portrayed by
Doug Mishler, Reno, NV

Professor of history at University of Nevada-Reno. He has served as Artistic Director for the High Plains Chautauqua in Greeley, CO, since 2000. Doug portrayed Henry Ford for the Heartland Chautauqua in 2001-2002.

It seemed that from his first days this remarkable New York City boy was destined to be a naturalist. Though sickly and with miserable eyesight, his fascination with the natural world was clear in his first essay, "The Foregoing Ant," written at age seven. Over the next 54 years Theodore Roosevelt's love of nature never wavered. From ants to finches to Buffalos and Sequoias, Theodore spent millions of hours studying, writing about, and worshiping wild places and creatures. More important for us, he devoted prodigious energy to nurturing and protecting America's environment for the benefit of future generations. At age 10, Theodore precociously launched the Roosevelt Natural History Museum in his bedroom. He secured hundreds of specimens, later remembering that,

"My scientific pursuits caused the family a good deal of consternation as I collected industriously, and enlivened the house with squirrels, hedgehogs, and other small beasts and reptiles which persisted in escaping from my room."

It was during his remarkable Presidential career from 1901-1909 that Roosevelt's environmental legacy became most profound. Even while taking on corporate greed and demanding a "Square Deal" for society, he allotted huge tracks of land for public use. In the face of a hostile business controlled Congress, TR utilized his Bully Pulpit to deftly create a stronger social conscience in America towards its people and its wild places. Roosevelt's passionate first annual message set his conservationist objectives, to utilize nature but not eradicate it.

"Forest reserves should afford perpetual protection for the native fauna and flora—and free campgrounds for the men and women who find rest, health, and recreation there. The forests must be set apart forever, for the use and benefit of our people as a whole, and not sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few."

He established wildlife preserves, national parks, reclamation projects, wetlands, and natural monuments at a rate no political leader in our history has equaled.

"We are not building this country of ours for today. It has to last through the ages. . . I recognize the right and duty of this generation to use the natural resources, but I do not recognize the right to waste them. Conservation of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation and our first and greatest task."

By the time he left office, TR set aside 230 million acres for 51 bird sanctuaries, 150 national forests, 18 national monuments, and 5 national parks.

John James Audubon
as portrayed by
Richard Johnson, Claremont, CA

Dick is a Professor of History at California State University, Pomona, where he specializes in 19th century American History. Dick portrayed John Dos Passos for the Heartland Chautauqua in 2001-2002.

Artist, explorer, hunter, he was filled with stories about America's natural abundance. His stories of the hordes of passenger pigeons, of golden plovers, and the giant herds of buffalo captivate our thoughts and take us back to a time almost unimaginable. By the time he sat down to write his Ornithological Biography in 1831, Audubon had already come to realize that America's abundance was vanishing under the onslaught of European immigrants to America. He clearly sounded a warning, that unless these animals were somehow protected, they would become extinct. Even the Native American faced a similar fate in Audubon's eyes. Audubon's journal of his trip up the Missouri River in 1843 repeatedly contrasted the abundance perceived by Lewis and Clark forty years earlier with the stark barrenness that haunted many of the same sites in Audubon's day.

Thanks to the Audubon Society, almost everyone knows of Audubon and associates the name with the preservation of wildlife habitats. Audiences will be shocked, however, to hear Audubon brag about the number of birds he has killed. When the famous artist was in Florida in the early 1830s, he wrote boastfully that he felt incomplete if he had not killed at least 100 birds in a day. For audiences, the marked contrast between Audubon the wanton hunter and Audubon the preservationist provokes substantial questioning and a reconsideration of what it means to live in the midst of a dwindling American natural abundance.

Arriving in America as an immigrant in 1803, he saw the country with fresh and unusual eyes. We learn something new about America when we are asked to see it through the eyes of others. His own life story of riches to rags (and more rags!) and finally back to riches parallels other American stories, that can again be traced back to the opportunities with which America has beckoned to much of the world. He was a passionate, loving character whose admiration for nature is unexcelled.

 

Dr. George Washington Carver
as portrayed by
Paxton Williams, Diamond, MO

A graduate of Iowa State University, Paxton holds a master's degree in Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Last year he was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom).

Carver received his earliest education in his native Missouri—a moral upbringing that profoundly influenced the rest of his remarkable life as scientist and educator. Born the son of a slave, "about the close of the Great Civil War," in Diamond Grove (Newton County) and attending his first school in Neosho, he is best known for his work as a scientist and botanist at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Carver's work with peanuts made him a national hero. Through experiments in his laboratory, he discovered nearly 300 valuable uses for the peanut. During his lifetime the once negligible crop rose to the status of a $200 million product cultivated on some 5 million acres each year. Carver was also known for his development of practical farming methods and his success at communicating these ideas to area farmers through personal visits, and simply written bulletins that included cultivation techniques and recipes for nutritious meals.

Carver, a charismatic speaker with a gentle manner, could also be considered a true renaissance man—a painter (one painting received an honorable mention at the 1894 World's Fair in Chicago), a musician (he once played concerts to raise money for Tuskegee), a marketing whiz (his strategies for increasing the use of the peanut should be required reading for any business program), a researcher, an inventor, and a most creative teacher—who overcame many obstacles that even today seem unfathomable. His work was based on a profound religious faith to which he attributed all his accomplishments.

Carver left a valuable and continuing legacy to us all. He summed it up modestly when he commented,

"I am no great person. I am no great scientist. I have only been able to point the way in a few things. After me will come those who read and interpret the signs, the great of the world. I am only the trailblazer."

Read an essay on Interpreting George Washington Carver, by Scholar Paxton Williams

Fred Harvey
as portrayed by
William Worley, Kansas City, MO

Bill presently serves as a consulting historian for Union Station, Kansas City, Inc. and is an adjunct Doctoral Faculty member in the History Department for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Bill has been an active presenter in the MHC's Program Bureau and portrayed Harry S. Truman in the 2001-2002 Heartland Chautauqua.

Fred Harvey immigrated to the United States in 1850. Over the next decade he worked in a variety of restaurants from New York City to New Orleans, and finally in St. Louis. During the Civil War he married and became a ticket agent for the Missouri River packet boat line and relocated to Leavenworth, Kansas.

By the end of the war he worked for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad as a freight agent. Starting in the mid 1870s, he established small lunchrooms along the Kansas Pacific line west of Kansas City. These made money but did not meet his growing high standards for appearance and service. In 1876, he negotiated a contract with the fledgling Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad to operate a "high class" lunch room at the Topeka, Kansas depot. Over the next six years the business grew as more lunchrooms and at least one hotel sprung up along the Santa Fe route. In 1882, at the suggestion of one of his managers, he began advertising for young women to become "Harvey Girls" or waitresses in the far-flung operation. Interviews and dispatches were made from the Kansas City offices primarily. In the 1890s, the Harvey Company added dining car service on the Santa Fe and lunch room operations on the Frisco Railroad.

In order to supply the needs of this wide-ranging operation, Fred Harvey bought food and other supplies in bulk. Chefs bough food locally but some had to be brought in by refrigerated cars. The company established ranches for raising beef, dairies for producing milk, butter and ice cream.

Special meals and menus were devised to offer 19th Century train passengers the opportunity to eat finely prepared meals, excellently served in spotless restaurants. These were often located in towns so small there were no other restaurants in the locale. By Harvey's death in 1901, the company operated 15 hotels, 47 restaurants and 30 dining cars.

"A Harvey House Homepage"