Charles Howard Plattenburg: popular lecturer

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Charles Howard Plattenburg
POPULAR LECTURER


Charles Howard Plattenburg
Editor-Lecturer
THE public today requires that its lecturers not only have the gift of oratory, but the brains back of the spoken word to think worth while and originally.  The successful lecturer must be not only an orator and thinker, but he must be a doer.  Thoughts and words without action are as chaff without the kernel.

For the past fifteen years Mr. Plattenburg has occupied a prominent place on the Lyceum and Chautauqua platform.  He has lectured in every state in the Union and several Canadian provinces and given universal satisfaction.

Before he went on the platform he was a successful editor of a weekly newspaper in a leading Iowa town, and there came in daily contact with people, lived their lives, studied and helped solve their problems.  He is a college graduate, has traveled abroad, and made a life study of Community Building.

He has lectured in the following cities: New York, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Ashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, Lexington, South Bend, Jackson, Battle Creek, Flint, Chicago, Springfield, Milwaukee, Racine, Des Moines, Sioux City, Cedar Rapids, Sioux Falls, Kansas City, Wichita, Dallas, Topeka, Pueblo, Denver, Omaha.

Mr. Plattenburg has lectured on ten Redpath chautauqua circuits, three out of Kansas City, four out of Cedar Rapids, two out of Chicago and one out of Columbus, and is booked to appear on Vawter's big seven day circuit in 1924.

He has four lectures: Worms Beneath the Bark, (a popular lyceum lecture given over 1200 times); Loyalty to the Home Town, (for smaller towns); The Old Town in a New World, (given last season on Redpath's Chicago Circuit); and a new one in preparation for 1924, A Modern Tale of Two Cities.

After hearing his lecture at the Memphis chautauqua the summer of 1923 the Goodwyn Institute booked Mr. Plattenburg for two lectures in their great course, the largest in the South.  After his lecture at Greenville, Tenn., the same season, Mr. Lancaster, president of the Rotary Club, ordered 5,000 copies of the lecture for distribution in the homes of the county.

Charles Howard Plattenburg will leave your town with its people thinking broader, cleaner thoughts.  His personality and words will be impressed on their minds.  Any lyceum course or chautauqua program will take on new dignity and standing in the community after he has spoken from its platform.




The New Plattenburg Lectures

A MODERN TALE OF TWO CITIES
An Inspirational Community Building Talk
The main idea of this lecture comes from the true story of two towns in the Central West, one with wonderful environments and great natural resources, but an indigent people, that failed in the larger sense.  The other town, less favorably situated, and lacking natural resources, but populated by a people with indomitable will.  It grew great and waxed fat.

What makes a city great?  Not climate, not fertility of soil, not natural resources.  It is the spirit of the people.

Other points developed are why and when men began to build cities; the old and new idea of a city; the development of the Community Spirit.  The story of a mountain boy who built a great city among his native mountains.  How he induced great concerns like the Eastman Kodak Co. and the J. J. Little Publishing Co. to locate in his town.  A classic in American city building.  How to build city character, a great plea, not for larger, but for better cities.  The part played by the lyceum and chautauqua in giving character to a town.  A great man seldom takes the place of some other great man, but starts with a new idea of his own and builds a great place for himself.  So cities often grow because of the dream of some genius with a new idea.



THE OLD TOWN IN A NEW WORLD
Taking the Play Out of the Community Gears
Your town is the same old town, as far as most of its buildings and people are concerned; but the world outside—the world that must come inside to you—is entirely changed.  If your town is to even stay on the map, have the trains stop and the mail thrown off each day, to say nothing of advancing and taking its place in the sun, it must wake up and get in step with the big outside world.

Mr. Plattenburg is a Community Building expert, and has made a special study of the small town and its problems.  He has won a national reputation with his lecture, Loyalty to the Home Town, and now offers a new and up-to-the-second community lecture for those towns who want to awake.

This new lecture will point out YOUR TOWN'S duty in the solving of the great national and community problems that now confront our state and nation.

GEO. D. HAMILTON, Pres. Becker Co. Agr. Ass'n, Detroit, Minn.:—The merchants of Detroit were greatly pleased with your lecture given at the Chautauqua.  * * * The business men of Detroit have asked me to write you to see if we can get you to repeat the lecture, or make a similar talk at our county fair, Sept. 24.  * * * We are all agreed that your talk along the line of supporting the home town is the most convincing we have ever heard.  You certainly give the straight goods.  (Mr. Plattenburg returned to Detroit as requested and repeated the same lecture he gave on Chautauqua.)





Lectures

Worms Beneath The Bark
Isn't that a striking subject?  It suggests a condition that threatens; that needs immediate attention.  It also suggests the operation of silent and unseen forces of evil, whose presence may not be suspected.

Leave it to Charles Howard Plattenburg to find the pests.  He has an eye as keen as an eagle's, and for many years has been scouting around in many countries studying humanity, its strength and its weakness.

This lecture has been given more than twelve hundred times.  Its deals sledge-hammer blows at existing evils in modern society.  It reveals to the audience a new conception of the vices which surround us.


Burlington, Iowa, Hawkeye:
—Mr. Plattenburg has a great message and it should be delivered in every town in the state of Iowa.


Battle Creek, Mich., Sunday Journal:
—It was a profound discourse, and so graceful withall in its allusions and descriptions, so entertaining with its humorous anecdotes, that it had the effect of a powerful stimulant.



Loyalty To The Home Town
6,956 towns and cities in the nine leading states, including 215 county seats, actually lost in population from 1900 to 1910.  564 of these towns, including 40 county seats, were in the great agricultural state of Iowa.  At least 7,000 more towns in these nine states barely held their own.  Meaning that in those ten years nearly 14,000 towns either stood still or lost ground.

Mr. Plattenburg shows that this tremendous loss in population, and the enormous depreciation in real estate values resulting therefrom, were brought about: (1) by lack of civic pride, community loyalty, and local co-operation; (2)  By the tremendous inroads made by the mail order houses; (3)  By the constant stream of young men and women from the smaller towns to the great centers.

In this lecture Mr. Plattenburg tells how these tendencies can be counteracted.

Loyalty to the Home Town has been given before many Commercial and Advertising Clubs and conventions of retail merchants.

The Retail Merchants' Association of Kentucky printed several hundred thousand copies of this lecture and scattered them broadcast throughout the state.  Mr. Plattenburg's articles on this and kindred subjects have had a circulation of more than a million copies.

Pres. Cass, Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern R. R., says:—That is the most helpful community building lecture I ever heard.

Dr. Reed, the biggest retail merchant in the state of Nevada, President Board of Regents State University, after hearing Mr. Plattenburg at Reno, said:—That story should be told in every town in America.



Here and There; Now and Then
In this lecture Mr. Plattenburg in a semi-humorous vein compares social life in Europe and America.  In an entirely unique and original manner he discusses woman suffrage, disarmament, international marriages, etc.


Coshocton, Ohio, Tribune:
—Not so far on the Chautauqua program has the audience departed as well pleased as on Wednesday afternoon, when Charles Howard Plattenburg, with a message and personality that won his way to the hearts of his listeners, delivered his lecture on 'Here and There; Now and Then'.



The Man Above The Mob
An inspirational lecture especially adapted for school and college commencements.