Across the country, new inventions began to "let the air out of the tires" for many Chautauqua parks. Sports, especially baseball, increased in popularity. With this, roads and automobiles allowed people to travel to these games throughout the nation. "Americans were no longer bound to their home communities but, independent of railroad schedules, could travel at will over their continent."¹¹ Folks now had the option to leave their areas of residency. Money they earned now was beginning to be invested in summer vacation areas. They started to stretch away from the normalcy life of small town Iowa.

    Radio also was "a thorn in the side" of the Chautauqua movement. It would become the new "social device" of the 20^th century. The radio was "a comprehensible pattern of human voices and musical sounds, the ultimate material components of a Chautauqua program."¹² Unfortunately, the radio along with movies and libraries began to eat away the profits of and interest in this distinguished movement. Another movement occurred in the Waterloo area that also took interest away from Chautauqua Park. This movement was local and it developed Electric Park. Electric Park would become popular enough to prematurely end the Chautauqua movement in Waterloo around 1915.

Written and edited by Andy Grove, Fall and Spring 1998-1999