by Jerry Apps
The Ringling Circus Band, shown here in 1891, performed in concert before the show and played throughout the circus performance. William F. Weldon was director. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
Profits varied among circuses; for the Ringlings it was about 40 percent for several of their most profitable years. Forty percent profit was certainly not the case for all businesses; circus profits, especially for the Ringlings, were outstanding, and some circuses turned in even higher profit margins. According to circus historian Stuart Thayer, profits for some pre–Civil War circuses reached 60 percent.34 Profits represented all cash money—no accounts receivable, no credit. And they were earned by selling twenty-five-cent and fifty-cent tickets to mostly ordinary country folk who thirsted for some good, clean entertainment.
The Ringlings had to earn almost all their money from April to October. The rest of the year they had essentially no income, only expenses. The animals kept on eating, and the winter quarters crew had to be housed and fed—and paid. Supplies had to be purchased and equipment repaired for the coming year. And if the Ringlings wanted to keep expanding, they had to add more of almost everything.
It is unlikely the residents of Baraboo had any idea of the vast amounts of money the Brothers were taking in, other than knowing that the boys were buying things in town and employed a number of locals at winter quarters. While the name “Ringling Bros.” was becoming well known throughout the land, back in Baraboo they were just a bunch of local boys with a crazy idea that seemed to have paid off. It had to be difficult for local businessmen and farmers, who could barely scratch out a living, to understand the Ringlings’ success.
In 1891 rumors persisted that the Ringlings might move from Baraboo. A local paper carried a brief notice: “The report that the Ringlings were about to change their place of rendezvous from Baraboo to Milwaukee is denied, on authority of the Brothers.”35
The Ringlings had no intention of moving. They were focusing on their recent accomplishments and trying to figure out how to expand and compete with much larger circuses, such as Barnum & Bailey, which had a tremendous reputation in the eastern United States and was known throughout the country. The five young Ringling partners had a taste of success, and with some luck, hard work, and careful attention to thousands of details, they were on their way to becoming a show that other circuses needed to worry about.
While in winter quarters in 1891–1892, the Brothers planned an even larger circus for the coming season. In October they bought two more elephants, three camels, a Russian elk, a mountain lion, a leopard, and a Sumatra tapir.36 The animals had been a part of Sam MacFlinn’s Great Eastern Circus.37 In February the Ringlings acquired a large polar bear to add to their menagerie.38
That winter the Ringlings turned the former Peck and Cramer Building, at the corner of Water and Ash Streets in Baraboo, into a carpenter shop where workmen built new seats for the Big Top. In a three-story building on the “corner near Hoyt’s mills,” leather crafters under the experienced eye of the Brothers’ father, August, made harnesses. The second floor was the lithograph room, “filled with tons of attractive advertising paper,” and the third floor was used for making mattresses for the “Ringling hotel,” a private facility where many Ringling winter employees lived. A brick former feed store near Noyes corner at Ash and First Streets was used as a paint shop, and tent canvas was stored in the back. And in a building at the corner of Oak and Fourth Avenue, in the Wright Block, seamstresses under the careful direction of Mrs. Al Ringling were reported to be “manipulating the needle and thread in the manufacture of their sparkling and costly new wardrobe.”39
The Sauk County Democrat reported that the Ringling hotel (at the southwest corner of East and Water Streets) “was crowded with employees of the show, and the room of other hotels is also being infringed upon as the newcomers arrive.” The Democrat also declared that in the Ringlings’ business office, “typewriters, pens and pencils are almost constantly in motion,” and it described the car repairing department as “keeping a force of men at work in making improvements in rolling stock. The wagon manufactories of Moeller and Sons [located on Third near Broadway] and Gollmar Bros. are also compelled to run extra forces in order to build all the necessary new vehicles. Space will not permit further mention of one of Baraboo’s greatest industries.”40
In 1892 the Ringling Brothers commissioned a new bell wagon, shown here in a parade that August in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. PHOTO BY C. J. VAN SCHAICK; BLACK RIVER FALLS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Brothers began the 1892 season with a larger Big Top, a bigger menagerie, and twenty-eight railcars (increased to thirty-two before season’s end). They added several other new features, including an impressive bell wagon—the nine bells weighed more than five tons and were cast especially for the Ringlings—and a huge J. I. Case steam tractor, referred to as a traction engine.41 The tractor had a steam whistle and a cab similar to one on a railroad locomotive. With their massive size and unusual characteristics, the new wagon and tractor became important attractions in the Ringlings’ parade.42
By April everything was in order for the season’s grand opening in Baraboo. Charles was sufficiently relaxed two days before the opening that he went fishing, catching “thirteen speckled trout that together weighed 15 pounds.”43
For many years Gus Ringling managed the activities of Advertising Car No. 1 and its bill posters, shown here in 1892. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
The city of Baraboo designated opening day, Saturday, April 30, “Ringling Day.” A long list of businessmen advertised that they would close their doors at 7:30 p.m., “in order to give all proprietors and employees an opportunity to attend Ringling Bros. Circus.”44
Rain began falling after the parade and continued all afternoon and into the evening, making it an uncomfortable “Ringling Day.” Nonetheless, thousands of people sloshed through the mud and water into the relatively dry tents to see what new thrills the Ringlings had in store this year. After Baraboo, it continued raining, day after day, town after town. A month of rain—and muddy show grounds, and missed appearances.
While the circus was traveling from Madison, South Dakota, on June 9, an animal cage blew off the train and a kangaroo escaped, “wildly hop-step jumping over the seas of plains.” The following day the kangaroo was captured. The brief bit of freedom must have been too much for the animal, however, and it died three days later.
Glowing newspaper reviews for the Ringlings’ show continued. A writer for the Duluth, Minnesota, paper reported, “Ringling Brothers’ Show, [June] 27th had fully 10,000 people at afternoon and over 10,000 at evening performance. It was pronounced by all to be the best exhibit ever given in Duluth of the kind.”45
The Ringlings were working hard to maintain their reputation as an honest, family-friendly circus, and they even employed Pinkerton detectives to assist. When the show played in Waupaca, Wisconsin, on July 14, 1892, the local newspaper carried this story:
Thursday morning last the Ringling Brothers notified the mayor that there were five pickpockets in town who had followed the show. Chief of Police Larson spotted them and made them leave town on the noon train, before they got in any fine work. It is seldom that showmen take such pains to preserve the reputation of their shows as did the Ringling Brothers.46
In August, while in the show was in Garrett, Indiana, the assistant master of properties, a Mr. Kelly, was killed. The route book account relates the incident:
The night was very dark, recalling what the Bible says about those who “love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” Mr. Kelly was lured from the door of the dressing-room tent, no doubt with the intention to rob and waylay. He probably made resistance, and then came a struggle, a blow on the head with a coupling pine, and finally the sudden shot which startled all in the dressing room, laying the victim low. Mr. Kelly was borne to a neighboring house where he lived an hour and a half in great apparent agony. … In the excitement and darkness the murderer escaped.47
The Ringlings’ receipts for 1892 exceeded those of 1891 by about $122,000 (in 1891 they took in $206,635; in 1892, $328,878).48 Assuming a conservative 40 percent profit, the Ringlings banked about $131,551 in 1892 (about $2.5 million in 2002 dollars).
The Ringlings arrived in Baraboo on Saturday night, October 29, 1892, and immediately proceeded to tuck animals and equipment away for the long, cold Wisconsin winter. There was no denying that they had become a major force in the circus world. For those not privy to account books, a circus’s success was judged by the number of railroad cars, horses, and elephants, the size of the menagerie, the number and size of tents, especially the Big Top, and the quality of the Big Top show. All of these were on the increase for the Ringling Brothers—with the possible exception of the quality of the Big Top show. Some historians argue that the quality of the Ringling show hadn’t reached that of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which often competed with the Ringling Brothers. “The Ringlings were a Chevrolet show, the Barnum & Bailey show was a Cadillac.”49
If the Brothers were aware of an unfavorable comparison, they didn’t let it bother them. With their assets and confidence on the rise, they immediately began preparing for the 1893 season. They were considering new acts, John Ringling was scouting new towns to play, and they were adding to their menagerie. They purchased more elephants, increasing the herd to eight: Babe, Jule, Fannie, Lou, Fanchon, Prince, Duke, and Sultan. (Zip, the huge African elephant, died during that winter.) They bought a gnu (often referred to as a horned horse) and a giraffe. “During the winter of 1892–93, we purchased of John Robinson one female giraffe [named Mamie] and shipped it to Baraboo on a flat car in a cage over which was built a shanty—unloaded when the thermometer registered zero.”50
Train Wreck
The circus train rolled through the dark and rainy early morning of May 17, 1892, on its way to Concordia, Kansas. Suddenly, everyone was jarred awake by a terrific crash and then the screams of injured and dying animals and the cries of workers caught in the rubble. A railroad bridge had washed out, and the train had hurtled off the tracks.
Pouring out into the night, our men perceived by the flickering light of lanterns a chaos of wrecked [rail] cars, some crushed to utter kindling wood, and others hurled headlong or sidelong into a lake of mad waters that held both sides of the track, and whose undermining power had wrecked a trestle and train. This lake was full of dead and drowning horses. … With humane bravery, our men plunged into the waters and cut harness right and left, or pulled the necks of drowning horses out of the water with halters. As the gray of morning came on the situation grew worse. Robert O’Donnell, of Gratiot, Wisconsin was found in a mass of blood-stained wreckage, with a splintered piece of two-by-three scantling driven clear through his head. … Nearby, mid twisted rails and rack and ruin, was the body of Albert Dietzler, aged sixteen, from Freeport, Illinois. The poor boy’s head was crushed as if by a sledge hammer. Twenty-six magnificent draught horses, heavy Clyde stallions, Normans and Percherons, floated dead in the lake on the other side of the track. Other poor brutes had broken legs or ripped bellies and had to be killed.1
Four other men were severely injured and were taken to a Kansas City hospital. Immediately after the wreck, a handbill began circulating, “Wanted, Draft Horses, weighing from 1,200 to 1,600 pounds. Will pay what they are worth. Ringling Brothers’ Circus.”2
No time was taken off. The circus performed as scheduled on May 18 in Concordia.
* * *
NOTES
1. O. H. Kurtz, Official Route Book of Ringling Brothers: Season of 1892 (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1892) pp. 53–54.
2. Ibid.
Sideshow performers (shown here circa 1893), including the tattooed man, fat man, bagpiper, and snake charmer, had similar contracts and salaries to other performers’ and were treated no differently than other show people. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
The Ringlings bought this giraffe from the John Robinson circus during the winter of 1892–1893. WALTER SCHOLL COLLECTION, ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY, NORMAL, ILLINOIS
Exaggeration had always been a part of circus promotion, and the giraffe offered a new opportunity. In 1893 Ringling posters proclaimed, “Largest living giraffe.” She was a big one—but as a female, hardly the largest living one. She remained a major feature of the Ringlings’ menagerie until her death in July 1896 while the circus was in Iowa.51
Baraboo contractor Carl Isenberg and his brother, George, constructed most of the Ringling winter quarter buildings as well as several homes for the Brothers. SAUK COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
By the end of January 1893, the Ringlings had a new car shop adjacent to the Chicago and Northwestern yards on the south side of the Baraboo River.52 Local contractor Carl Isenberg did the work and would build several other buildings for the Ringlings in ensuing years. The Ringlings also built a paint shop near their railroad tracks in Mrs. Potter’s field.53
By late 1892 plans were well under way for the World’s Columbian Exposition, to be held the following summer in Chicago. The international exhibition would commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America and was purported to cost $31 million. The show would display wonders of technology, including the first movable sidewalk and the forerunner of the movie projector, and showcase unheard-of products that are now familiar: Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Aunt Jemima syrup, Juicy Fruit gum, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Visitors would stand in awe of the huge Ferris wheel, invented for the World’s Fair; this one was 250 feet across and held more than two thousand passengers. Admission would be only fifty cents for adults, twenty-five cents for children age six to twelve, and free for those under six. It was predicted to be the event of the year.54 The word was that people would forgo a visit to the “ordinary” circus and would travel to Chicago to see this extraordinary World’s Fair.
Many thought the spectacular 1893 Columbian Exposition would steal customers from the Ringling Brothers Circus. It did not. WHi(X3)40415
While Americans eagerly awaited the World’s Fair, they were also about to enter one of the most severe economic depressions in the country’s history. Early in 1893 banks around the country began to fail. Panic spread, farm prices fell, and soon thousands of businesses had closed and individuals had gone bankrupt. Within a year three million workers—20 percent of the workforce—would be unemployed, and thousands of homeless and starving men would aimlessly walk city streets, searching for their next meal.55
With both the World’s Fair and the country’s economic woes to consider, it seemed clear that businesses, especially those in entertainment, should hunker down and ride out the economic storm. Many of them did.56 But the Ringlings decided to go on with their show no matter what. They opened in Baraboo on Saturday, April 29, World’s Fair and depression be damned. With 35 railcars, 3 advertising cars, 207 horses, 20 cages of wild animals and birds, 7 elephants, 3 camels, and about 700 employees, the 1893 Ringling circus was the largest ever.
An 1893 handbill advertised “The Giant Giraffe, Tallest Animal on Earth” and “Mr. Charles W. Fish, the Acknowledged Champion Bareback Somersault Rider in the World,” among other features. HANDBILL COLLECTION, CWM
On May 1, opening day of the World’s Fair in Chicago, the Ringlings played a little more than a hundred miles away in Sterling, Illinois. The show included three rings and two stages, sometimes with five events going on at the same time. There were clowns and acrobats, trained horses, and tight-rope walkers. Charles W. Fish, well known for his horsemanship, was one of the featured performers. He was billed as “The world’s champion summ
ersault rider.”57 And of course, the “Largest Living Giraffe” was boldly promoted.
The show also featured an eight-piece sideshow band under the direction of John Marshall, a Grand Concert Band of twenty-one members directed by William F. Weldon, Minstrel Orchestra of eight (an entire minstrel show was part of the performance), three parade bands ranging from nine to thirteen members, and a four-member Parade Field Band with fife and drums.58
The Brothers quickly discovered that even though times were tough, farm prices were low, and many people were out of work, families still went to the circus. The color and splendor, the animals, and the music took people’s minds off their problems, at least for a short time. The boys reported an “enormous crowd” in Mankato, Kansas; “business was big” in Phillipsburg, Kansas. In Wayne, Nebraska, “the number of tickets sold exceeded by several thousands the entire population of this county.” In Minneapolis a newspaper reported it as “the largest [business] ever done by a circus in Minneapolis, and the show as the most satisfactory ever seen here.”59 One day’s receipts in Minneapolis were $3,510.60
The Ringlings’ business was flourishing, and yet the country’s economic situation grew more dire. On May 12 there was a run on the Plankinton Bank of Milwaukee, precipitated by the failure of a big furniture company to which the bank had lent money. The bank closed on June 1.61
While in Milwaukee in late July, the Brothers saw firsthand the effects of the depression. Many local firms were closed or operating with limited hours. Unemployment was high and money was short, but still, people came to the circus. Milwaukee’s Evening Journal reported an afternoon attendance of fourteen thousand people, with every seat taken and people sitting on the hippodrome track. The paper reported, “The show was superior to any circus performance ever seen in Milwaukee.”62 Afternoon and evening receipts for the Milwaukee performance totaled $3,234.45.63