Chapter I: The Why of the Circus

Snow is flying. It is early March, and cold. Hardly what one would call “circus” weather, yet there under the train sheds it stands at the end of a south-bound passenger train, a thing of resplendency, of silver and gold lettering, of backgrounds in which the main color is a beaming red, while along the length of it is emblazoned the caption:

“BIGGEST CIRCUS ON EARTH”
“ADVERTISING CAR NO. 1.”

From ahead the “highball signal.” A few quick handshakes, a last recounting of orders from the general agent who talks to his car manager until the last possible moment. A rear platform, crowded with strong-shouldered young men, milling and jostling. A cheer. The train is moving. Soon only the owner and his general agent remain on the station platform, watching the red and gold car as it travels far into the damp, cold haziness of the railroad yards, finally to disappear. The circus season has begun!

Rather, the first physical demonstration of a beginning has taken place. In reality, for the show owner, the season begins when the season ends. Paradoxical? Not a bit. To circus goers the circus season concludes in the autumn. To circus makers the next season begins at the same time. A big show doesn’t “just go on the road.” Circuses, to their makers, are an exact science. When the show comes home in the autumn, they begin their preparations to send it forth again in the spring. They know what wagons to repair, what painting is necessary, how many railroad cars must be discarded and replaced by new ones; whether the “big top” or main tent will stand another season and where the show is to travel in the summer days to come. It doesn’t “just happen” that a circus goes to a certain town. The reason why has been studied out long in advance, and the show arrives for one of two reasons; either there is a surety of sufficient money to make a profitable day’s business, or it is necessary to play the town in order to reach one farther on where the crowds are sure and the money certain.

Circuses don’t “take all the money out of a town”; neither do they always play at a certain place “just because it’s a good show town.” Often it isn’t, and the big organization loses money, leaving more cash in the village than it took away. But a show train can travel only about one hundred and fifty miles a day, at the most, and if there isn’t sure money within three hundred miles, it must take the best it can get and be satisfied. I have seen “canvas op’rys” exhibit in places where the traveling population of the show was greater than that of the village itself! And it is all carefully figured out in advance, with every possible circumstance taken into consideration; crops, money conditions, hard or good times, floods, forest fires,—everything which can affect a pocketbook. If Jonesville and Thomasville lie within twenty miles of each other, and Jonesville has had a disastrous flood in its surrounding country while Thomasville has escaped, the circus is routed to Thomasville. How does the circus know? It must know, for knowing is part of its life.

There is no other business organization which pays more attention to the various local conditions of the United States. The informants are the owners of the billboard privileges in each town along the proposed route, playing a good business policy by telling the truth about their community; often a circus general agent has the news of a crop failure even before the Department of Agriculture! So every town is picked, every town is known. If a State capital has only a small population, when does a circus play it? When the legislature is in session and the town is crowded! Does a circus play a college town in July? Hardly, but it will be glad to pay a visit in April, May or late September. The students are there at those times; in July they have gone home. The circus knows! More, the circus prepares; long before the snows begin to melt, even the size of the show has been decided upon, according to the money conditions of the country.

So the departure of the “bill car” or advertising car is a carefully thought out, preconceived thing. It is to arrive at a certain town in the far South on a certain day, stay there so many hours and depart at a certain time. All season it must live up to a schedule,—that of being three weeks ahead of the show. If it loses a day through storm or accident, then its men must do double work, a “brigade” of billposters being dropped at one town to look after the billposting, banner tacking, country routes and “programming,” while the car, short-handed, hurries on to the next town and overtakes its schedule, leaving the “brigade” to catch up as best it can.

For the circus accepts no outside assistance; it depends upon nothing but itself and its own finely attuned organization. Theatrical companies leave their billposting to local concerns. It has the time to do so. A circus must move day by day; consequently it has its own railroad cars, its own equipment, its own men for everything. The “bill car” carries its own boiler for making paste; its lockers are filled with “paper” or billing sufficient to last two months at a time. Above these are berths where sleep the twenty or twenty-five men who make up the car, the billposters, “tack spitters” or banner men, the lithographers, the “squarers” or men who obtain permission for the posting of paper or the tacking of banners, and the manager. It costs the world’s biggest show two thousand dollars a day for its “advance” alone, for the mere publicity and promotion which heralds the coming of the circus!

More than a hundred men travel ahead of the show, merely to bring it to a town. There is the general contracting agent, who makes all the primary arrangements, who arranges contracts for the circus grounds, for the billboards, for the exhibition and parade licenses, for the banners which overnight appear on the front of trolley cars, or flutter from the span wires, for the ten tons of hay, the five tons of straw, the three hundred bushels of oats, the twelve hundred bushels of bran, the one hundred and fifty bales of shavings which are used by the show to sprinkle in entrances and rings and hippodrome track—sawdust, in spite of tradition, is not used about a circus—for the cord of wood necessary to keep up steam in the calliope, the ton of coal which will be consumed in the big traveling ranges upon which is cooked the food for the thousand or so persons of the show, and the nine hundred loaves of fresh bread for humans and two hundred loaves of stale for the polar bears. To say nothing of a broken-down horse or two to be killed for the lions, tigers and cat animals, and the buying of ton after ton of beef from the divisional supply houses of the big packing companies for the human complement of the show.

This completed, the agent hurries on, each day a constant round of contracts. A single item may bring its difficulties: suppose, in the year that has passed since his last visit, the usual show grounds has been cut up into building lots! He must find another, fully five hundred feet square, fairly level, rentable at a reasonable price, not too far from the center of town and easily reached by main trunk car lines. It isn’t easy. But he does it.

Then arrives the “Number 1” car, with its billposters, banner men and “country routers.” Some of the billboards are contracted for and are easily covered with the brilliantly lettered advertising posters. In which, you’ve perhaps noticed, is a predominance of red. The reason is simply that red is an elemental color. It is the children’s favorite. The circus appeals to the elemental, to the child in us all. Hence—red!

Each man on the “bill car” has his job. It is the duty of the “banner squarer” to argue the owner of any building with a blank wall which can be seen from a downtown street, into allowing that wall to be covered by cloth announcements proclaiming the coming of the circus—without payment in actual money. The banner squarer who buys space for anything except passes to the circus, and general admission passes at that, is looked down upon by his fellow workers as a coward and disloyal. Isn’t a circus pass the most valuable thing there is?

Once that permission is gained, the “tack spitters” or banner men begin their work. No matter how difficult the wall may be, they will cover it. If it is too high to be reached by ladders, they will swing a scaffold from the top and there, in hot sun or chilling rain, fill their mouths with broad-headed tacks and work their magnetized hammers at a speed of fully forty blows to the minute. And a “tack spitter” actually spits tacks—or rather, blows them—by rolling them one by one to his lips with his tongue, flat side toward the waiting hammer, then propelling them by air pressure to the magnet. An expert can hit the magnetized end of his hammer at two or three inches; others prefer to merely force the tack through their lips on the end of their tongue until it reaches the magnet. Thus, with one hand holding the canvas in position, the other swinging the hammer, and with nothing to hold them to their scaffolding save their sense of balance, these men work sometimes as high as two hundred feet above the ground and brave the death of broken ropes, a misstep or being literally blown from their dangerous position,—to advertise a circus they never see!

Remember, the billposter and the banner man must always be from a week to three weeks ahead of the show, depending upon which of the three advertising cars he accompanies. The result is that all he actually knows of his own circus is what he sees in the posters he daily distributes.

Incidentally a circus isn’t content with merely billing the city in which it is to show. Its territory of potential patrons extends for a distance of forty miles on every side of the show place, and these forty miles must be covered by each bill car in a single day. Hence men depart by rail, buggy and automobile for the “country routes,” and if they don’t get back in time,—sorry, but the car must move, and they catch up as best they can.

There are three such cars with the big shows, one three weeks ahead, one two weeks and the last one only a week. The job of the last two named is to do everything that hasn’t been accounted for before, to renew billing that has been torn by wind or washed by rain,—and to fight!

For circuses quarrel. It is a battle to a business death once one circus crosses the trail of another. Every big show carries in advance what is known as an “opposition brigade” with no other duties save to fight the like brigades of other shows. As fast as one circus puts up a piece of billing, the “opposition” attempts to cover it. The result is flying paste brushes and buckets, faster flying fists, broken noses, black eyes, police, jail, bail,—and the same thing over again until one side tires and quits, or circus day arrives to end the war of the opposition crews. This part of the “advance” knows no schedule, nothing, in fact, except to fight until a battle is won or lost. Sometimes a billboard will bear as many as ten or twelve layers of posters, each alternate layer representing a different show; the last and winning layer slapped into place a bare twelve hours before the arrival of the contending circuses!

Then there are the press agents who flit here and there, doubling on their tracks, dropping in at a newspaper in one town during the morning, appearing at another newspaper office fifty miles away in the afternoon, and still a third or perhaps a fourth farther on that night, according to the flexibility of train schedules. To say nothing of the “checkers up” who inspect the work of the various cars and the “opposition brigade” and send each night a report of good or bad work to the general agent. And after all these are gone—

There comes the twenty-four-hour man.

They originally called him that because he came to town twenty-four hours before the circus arrived. A better reason might be because he works nearly twenty-four hours of the day. His is the task of seeing that every contract is ready to be fulfilled, that the fire department will have a man stationed at the fire plug nearest the circus lot to provide water for the sprinkling carts, horses, elephants and lemonade, that the circus grounds itself is in shape to receive the big show, any high weeds cut away, holes filled, hummocks leveled off; that the sidewalk crossings are well provided with boardings to protect them from the heavy wheels of the circus wagons, all bridges safe on the parade route, and on that which leads from the unloading point to the circus lot, the licenses granted, food ready; and after checking up on some twenty or thirty additional items he can sleep until four o’clock in the morning, when he must awaken to await the arrival of the show trains, arouse the various crews, and guide the cook-house wagon with its chefs, waiters and flunkeys, to the circus lot that preparations may be begun at once for breakfast. Yet there are those who believe that a circus “merely comes and goes!”

Did you ever notice for instance that the show trains are always “spotted” at the same place? Did you ever seek the reason? There is one—rest assured of that—a circus never does anything without its consideration of cause and effect!

A big show must record receipts of from $6,000 to $14,000 a day in order to live, such are a single day’s expenses according to the size. Often it exhibits in towns which have barely more than twelve thousand or fifteen thousand population and to gain a livelihood, not a single opportunity must be missed, not a solitary chance to get one more person into the big tent passed by. Therefore, from the minute that circus arrives in town, it must do its utmost to flaunt itself before every available person and breed the desire to visit the grounds where roar the lions and the tigers, where the bands play and the bespangled actors flash about the arena. It has one message and one alone, that of the instillation of the holiday spirit, the creating of an atmosphere by which a person says involuntarily and then repeats:

“Circus day—circus day—circus day!”

So it chooses a spot to unload where it can be seen by men going to work, by the early rising newsboy, and found easily by those hundreds of enthusiasts who set their alarm clocks for the gray of dawn “to see the show come in.” It sends its wagons to the circus grounds along routes selected for the same purpose—a circus wagon never goes up a side street when it can traverse one where a greater number of persons can see it. Always must that message be sent broadcast:

“Circus day—circus day!”

And did you ever notice that there is no conveyance which makes exactly the same sort of noise as a circus wagon? There’s a different truckling about the wheels, a different, hollower resonance as the axle flanges touch the steel of the hub rims. It’s meant to be that way; a circus wagon wouldn’t be such if it were like any other vehicle. It must shout its announcement from curb to curb, so that even the preoccupied citizen looks up and says to himself, “Circus day!”

And it does seem that there are more and better horses with the circuses nowadays than there once were, though of course there were always plenty of them. Is it because the wagons are heavier or—?

Not at all. Simply because horses are going out of fashion; draught horses are seen rarely on the streets any more. Every one loves the sight of a pretty horse. A good-looking equine exhibition on the street to-day is almost as much of a curiosity as an automobile once was. So the circus has plenty!

Why—every one asks the question—are those little red flags stuck about a circus ground before ever a tent goes up? Do they mean anything? Or are they there just so that the drivers will know where to bring their wagons? Their meaning is simply this,—that without them, there might not be a circus. Those little red flags, fluttering at the end of thin iron stakes stuck into the ground, are the map of the big show. They have been placed there by a hurrying lot superintendent, and to the workmen, the canvas men, the roughnecks—

Beg pardon? Not “roughnecks” in the general acceptance of the term. The circus is a land of slang. Its people and workmen and departments are designated by argot terms which mean a separate division of the circus. “Roughnecks” are common workmen. Plank men and seat men are those who erect the seats to accommodate the thousands who gather at the afternoon and night performances. “Canvas men” load and unload the tents and aid in their erection. The “big top gang” works nowhere except on the “big top” or main tent.

“Razorbacks” load and unload the cars. “Kinkers” are performers; “flunkeys” those who wait upon the people of the circus in the “cook house” or eating tent. “Punks” indicate a boy, an animal, anything not yet arrived at the age of maturity. Those who work in the side show belong to the “kid-show” crew. The entrance, where you give your ticket to the bawling attendants, is the “marquee.” The attendants of the menagerie are “animal men.” The lions and tigers and leopards are “cats.” Anything in the pony, goat, llama or bovine class, which can be taken to the circus grounds at the end of a rope or halter is “led stock.” And the elephants are “bulls.” But to return to those little red flags:

They form a book of information. They tell the drivers, the workmen and others just where the big top will be, where the connections must be made to lead to the menagerie at one end and the stables and dressing tents at the other. They show the position of the “midway” and the side show,—in fact, every one of the fourteen or so tents which go to make up the mushroom growth of canvas which constitutes the circus. Once they make their appearance, the rest is comparatively easy. The long center poles are placed and raised into position. The canvas travels upward. The tableau wagons and animal dens are wheeled into line. A bugle sounds—

“Hold-d-d-d-d yoah ho’sses. The elly—phants are coming-g-g-g-g!”

There are few horses to hold these days as the gleaming, resplendent parade turns into the main street, with its crowded curbings, its balloon vendors, its shouting fakirs and excited children. But a circus lives to a certain degree in the past. That bellowing warning has been a part of circusdom for years. It is expected, and therefore it is given. A parade wouldn’t really be a parade without it.

Nor without the balloon vendors. Did you ever stop to consider that they might be present along the crowded streets to breed atmosphere as much as anything else? Bright colors—cheery colors. Remarks about the circus and the fact that this is the glad holiday of them all:

“Buy baby a bal-loon! Buy baby a nice red bal-loon. Baby won’t be happy when she goes to the circus without a bal-loon. Remember, when baby goes to the circus—buy baby a bal-loon.”

The old power of suggestion! _When_ baby goes to the circus! Baby may have been scheduled to return home just as soon as she saw the parade. But now it’s a different matter. Baby’s never seen a circus; it might as well be now!

And the parade is passing! Every one in it seems happy. And bright. And cheerful. And smiling. Seems impossible that some one out of that long procession should not possess a grouch. But they’re all smiling because—

It’s part of their work to smile, in parade and performance. Isn’t a circus the typification of happiness? Isn’t it the bespangled fairyland which drops out of the night, glories in the sunlight, then fades with the gathering darkness? Smile—smile—smile! That is the order, and it is carried out.

Three lions’ cages have passed, with the sideboards down and the pacing animals displayed. Then a cage which is closed. Certainly if they could leave three cages open, they could leave a fourth. Wonder what’s in that cage; it must be valuable, something out of the ordinary or they would show it.

There you stand and wonder, wonder at a game that is as old as that of Adam and Eve and the Serpent, old as the world itself,—that of Curiosity. What’s in that wagon? What’s in that wagon?

Nor do you stop to consider that this may be the purpose of the whole parade, this play upon curiosity and upon the child-like credulity that is in all of us. The billboards, with their big, red letters, have announced a mile-long street parade, which will present a sample of everything that is in the big, wonderful circus.

One little word has stuck in your mind. A sample! From childhood days that has meant something very, very small with which you raced to the store, that you might return with a yard-length match for it. The thing you got was so much bigger than the sample. If it requires a mile to display a _sample_ of the circus’s charms, what must the real thing be? You reason without considering. Then—what were in those closed wagons? Besides, if the lion trainer can sit in the cage with three lions during parade, merely as a sample, what must he do in the performance!

Here comes a wagon with ten clowns atop it. The billboards said there would be fifty clowns—count ’em—fifty, in the performance. That must be true. There are ten here, just as a sample!

How that one thought sticks! Then the band plays. The horses prance, as though they were dancing for sheer joy. Of course they aren’t trained to dance in parade. Why should they be?

Why? Just so that they will achieve the object which that whole parade pursues, the embodiment of joy, of light-heartedness, the appeal which touches the hearts of us all when there is even a mention of a cessation of work and worries, of a real, true holiday. So the horses dance, and the clowns grimace, and the big-footed policeman in the tiny police patrol picks up an urchin for a half-block’s ride, and the calliope player turns to the hundred or so children trotting in his wake with the question:

“Well, kids, what’ll it be next?”

Oh, there’s joy about a circus parade, joy beyond the gleam of the gold and silver, the blaring of the bands, the glittering of the spangles upon the dresses of the equestriennes,—the joy of a thing well done, of an experiment in psychology worked out to the _nth_ degree. There goes another closed wagon. Perhaps it’s got the rhinoceros in it! Or—may be—didn’t some one mention the fact that the circus had a new sort of animal that no one in town ever had seen before?

Oh, well. Ho hum! Half the day gone. Nobody at the office will be fit for work, anyway. Guess you’ll go to the circus!

* * * * *

“Now-w-w-w-w, ladies and gentlemen-n-n-n, there are yet fortay-y-y-five minutes before the big show begins. Fortay-y-y-y-five minutes. A long time to wait, ladies-s-s-s and gentlemen. So we have arranged for your benefit a special exhibition in the Grand Annex and Museum of Wonders to delight the eye, please the brain and sharpen the intellect. If you will just step a bit closer-r-r-r-r—r!”

“I have brought out before you, ladies-s-s-s and gentlemen, a few of the strange and curious-s-s-s peo-ple who go to make up this Museum of Wonders. Starting at the right—”

Why have you stepped closer? You really hadn’t intended to move at all. But you did, didn’t you? Because some one jostled slightly; wasn’t that it? The human is an obliging person. Some one jostled and edged closer. The operation had started with only four or five men, far out there at the edge of the crowd. Naturally you haven’t seen them,—a hundred other persons have jostled forward since then. Could they have been men in the employ of the side show, paid to move forward at the signal, and by one little movement cause a whole crowd of hundreds and hundreds of persons to obey that command from the “ballyhoo” man?

Incidentally, he’s talking again, describing all the “strange and curious-s-s-s peo-ple,” urging that you become better acquainted with them inside. And repeating:

“Fortay-y-y-y-five minutes to wait. Don’t spend your time on the hot, dusty, circus lot. Fortay-y-y-y-y-y-five minutes to wait. Plenty of time before the big show. Fortay-y-y-y-y-y-five minutes.”

So you go in. Humans hate to wait. Circuses learned that almost as soon as the humans. For aren’t circuses human themselves? After that—

“The B-e-e-g show! This a-way to the b-e-e-g show! Performance starts in five min-utes! Buy yoah tickets for the be-e-g show!”

It’s crowded about the ticket wagon. Up at the window the ticket seller is scooping in money with both hands, apparently throwing it on the floor. You’ve heard that about ticket wagons before,—about how they throw silver and gold and paper bills indiscriminately about them until they stand literally knee-deep in money.

But inside the ticket wagon all is orderly. The silver passes into one drawer just below the marble plate of the ticket window. The gold goes into another. The currency travels into deep wicker baskets, one for dollar bills, one for fives, one for tens, and one for any denominations above that. A circus isn’t so unbusiness-like, after all! Then you go onward.

Through those gates at last! What a crowd! What a jam; why can’t they make them bigger?

They could. But then that wouldn’t cause a crowd. A crowd, you know, means popularity. Like breeds like. There might be fully a hundred dollars, even more, wandering about out there on the circus grounds that would be lost if the front gates didn’t indicate a rush on the part of all humanity to get inside. Strange how they think of those things!

What was that the ticket taker said to the fat woman who was trying to smuggle her ten-year-old boy through by carrying him in her arms? Wasn’t it:

“Hey, Lady! Put down that there young man an’ let him carry you! Twenty-five cents more for the young man, Lady.”

And what was it the manager had remarked to himself as the protesting fat woman had paid the extra money:

“Put the most honest woman in the world on a street car or at a circus gate with a kid, and she’ll lie her head off to get him through for half-fare!”

The menagerie. You’ve often wondered about menageries, why circuses go to the expense of carrying them. Yet—

Perhaps you’ve never realized that were it not for the circus menagerie, a great part of the youthful population of the United States would be devoid of an education in natural history. That most of the towns which a circus visits are without a zoo, and that the only chance which the population has to view jungle or strange beasts is when the show comes to town?

Also that the circus, utilizing everything, even as a packing house makes some use of every by-product, keeps its cost of operation down through that very fact? That there are many municipalities which would charge exorbitant licenses were it not for the fact that the circus has certain educational features in its menagerie that are necessary to the education of its youth?

More, the animal actors of the show are the cheapest actors a circus can carry. They draw no salaries and require no expensive food, and they serve a triple purpose: they take part in the parade, they form the menagerie and they work in the big show—all without salary. And now:

Now-w-w-w-w, the b-e-e-g show!

Just like a great big family, isn’t it, going through its stunts? But it isn’t.

It’s a community, with community lines, class, divisions and society!

Every grade of performer belongs to a certain Strata. The contortionist is not on the same plane with the aerialist, nor is the aerialist as high in social life as the equestrienne. Speaking of equestriennes, why are they able to stay on those horses so easily? And why are ring horses invariably white, gray, or dappled?

That’s why: so the equestriennes can stand on their backs! But that’s no answer. Pardon, but it is. Powdered resin, if you ever have seen it, is white. Powdered resin prevents one from slipping. But it can’t be noticed when it is sprinkled on the back of a white or gray horse!

All but over! Into the hippodrome track go the rumbling chariots, each with its horses four abreast. They’re off! The whites are in the lead—if they’ll only hold it! But the blacks have gained! They’ve passed the whites! Now they’re neck and neck again! A cheer! The whites are ahead again! Neck and neck once more. Now the blacks are in the lead! Now the whites! And they cross the tape nose and nose!

But it was a good race. If they could only have gone around the track once more—

They would have finished nose and nose again! For a circus is in the game of pleasing every one, those who want the blacks to win and those who favor the whites! So, at every turn, at the end of the track, the inside chariot veers to the outside rail, while the outside chariot cuts across to the inside track. The difference in distance brings them neck and neck,—and so they might race forever!

And that, really, is the secret and the why of the circus; the pleasing of every one. After all, it’s a simple task, for the circus has learned one great thing,—that somewhere in our hearts is something that never grows up, that old though we may be in years, the child lives within us just the same, and whether we be seven or seventy, that “something” answers the call of happiness, invariably!