Under the big top

“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—