by Jerry Apps
The Ringlings had never before cleared this much money—and they did it in a year that was not especially good for circuses. In late 1909 headlines in The Show World read: “Circuses Experience a Rather Trying Season: Most of the Tent Shows Fail to Make Money.”24 Several factors had made it a difficult season: municipalities were increasing license fees, railroads were increasing their charges, and people had increasing opportunities for entertainment.25 The Ringlings clearly had been able to overcome these challenges.
The Ringlings and the Parson Brothers
For many years the Parson brothers leased concession sales from the Ringling Brothers. The Parsons sold pink lemonade, popcorn, peanuts, paper fans, Cracker Jack, cigars, and candy to circus goers. In 1909 the Ringling Brothers took back concession sales for themselves. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
The Parsons were farmers from Darlington, Wisconsin, and like many other young men of the time, they were interested in the circus. Joe Parson, the oldest of the brothers, worked in the late 1870s in a northern Wisconsin lumber camp during the winter months. On his way home from camp one spring, he supposedly saw a bison grazing in a farmer’s field and traded one of his horses for the animal. He began showing his bison at carnivals, then added a few more animals and created the Great Palace Show. Al Ringling worked as a ropewalker in the Great Palace Show in 1881 (and probably in 1882, as well) and with Parson’s Great Grecian Show in 1883.
When the Ringling Brothers organized their circus in 1884, they invited the Parson boys to participate. The Parsons signed on in 1887; Joe Parson performed on the high wire and did horseback-riding tricks, and Alfred E. “Butch” Parson managed the concession wagon, where he sold pink lemonade, peanuts, popcorn, Cracker Jack, cigars, paper fans, and assorted other items. Butch Parson paid a monthly fee to the Ringlings, hired his own help, ordered his own supplies, and kept any profits. The Ringlings stored and cared for the Parson concession wagon.
As the Ringling circus grew, Parson’s business became more lucrative. The Parson brothers’ income for the 1906 season was $66,612.50; their expenses, including labor (they had up to twenty employees), sugar, ice, lemons, and a weekly payment of $700 to the Ringlings, were $37,140.44. They cleared $29,472.06, for a 44 percent profit.1
In December 1907 Otto Ringling wrote to Butch Parson:
My dear “Butch,” Your letter received and in reply will say I have felt we ought to try the stands ourselves one season. … Regarding your wagon, you can leave it here until you have use for it or till the season after the coming one when we may be glad to lease you the privilege.2
By January 1908 Otto’s tone was more formal. He wrote:
Dear sir: Will you please write and give us full information and scale of wages and percentages you pay candy butchers. Thanking you in advance for your kindness in this matter, I am very truly yours, Otto Ringling.3
In November 1908 Otto wrote another letter to Butch Parson, making it clear that he was ending the relationship.
On account of the Forepaugh-Sells stuff, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Barnum and Bailey property, we are very short of room in winter quarters. We will run the candy stands with this show [Barnum & Bailey] same as last season. We find it much more profitable than to let the privilege. Your wagon takes up room which we need. Will you dispose of it in the near future? I think the freight to Baraboo, for instance, would be about $80. If you want to sell the wagon and take the freight cost into consideration, let me know your lowest figure.4
A final letter from Otto to Butch Parson, written in January 1909, includes this short paragraph:“In case anything should come up in the future, I would know whether it would pay to figure with you and if I think you are fair, I will bear it in mind and take the matter up with you when the opportunity offers itself.”5
A. E.“Butch” Parson’s career with the Ringlings ended, but he and his family had become wealthy selling pink lemonade and other concessions to circus customers.
* * *
NOTES
1. Candy Stand Book, Ringling Bros. Show, Season of 1906, Frank Parson, CWM.
2. Otto Ringling to Butch Parson. December 11, 1907, Fred Pfening III, private collection, Columbus, Ohio.
3. Otto Ringling to Butch Parson, January 29, 1908, Pfening collection.
4. Otto Ringling to Butch Parson, November 24, 1908, Pfening collection.
5. Otto Ringling to Butch Parson, January 6, 1909, Pfening collection.
The Ringlings wanted their competitors and the show world at large to know that even in the face of difficult times, when others were showing losses, they could turn a profit—in fact, the largest profit they had ever made. At the end of 1909, each of the five Ringling partners received $200,000 ($3.8 million in 2002 dollars), according to their practice of dividing profits five ways.
That winter the Brothers’ top priority was completing their new railcar shops, already under construction.26 Earlier that year they had purchased nine acres of land known as the flats on the south side of the Baraboo River, north of the railroad and west of the Frank Herfort canning factory. In October, the Baraboo newspaper had reported, “The present plans of the circus men are to build a car factory on the middle of the property. Through this building the cars will be switched from the main track of the Northwestern. … Stone is being hauled there and the engineer to grade the place will arrive from Chicago Monday.”27
The Isenberg brothers built the new sixty-four-foot by eighty-four-foot building. A November 4, 1909, news article stated that the new car shop “is well along toward completion … the first section … is nearly up and the grading for the tracks is being hurried along by contractor Isenberg and roadmaster, Leo Ryan. … The purpose now is to get the place ready for use this winter. … A large force of men is at work and no unnecessary delays are permitted.”28 Until this time the Ringling car shops had been on land they leased from the railroad, but the new car shops would be on their own land and under their full control. The old repair shops were to be torn down.
The Ringlings would use the new shops for railcar maintenance, repair, and painting; the cars, which the Ringlings bought rather than building themselves, were stored outside.29 The new building straddled the railroad tracks, and the Ringlings had additional tracks built parallel to the structure. (By 1913 they would increase the length of the rail repair building to 260 feet.)
Always looking to the future, when the Ringlings gathered in Baraboo in December 1909 for their annual meeting, they discussed how to increase profits even further. They had increased the size of both the Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows and the Barnum & Bailey show as much as they reasonably could: each show had eighty-plus railcars, which filled to capacity the rail yards in many smaller cities. And they needed to fill the Big Top with enough customers to cover the enormous expenses associated with running such large shows; smaller cities simply could not turn out a large enough crowd.
One way to make a few thousand dollars more each year was to reclaim the concession privilege from the Parson brothers, a decision they had made late that fall. But they had bigger ideas in mind. It was time to put the Forepaugh-Sells show back on the road. Their experience managing two big shows had given them the confidence to do what no other circus organization had done: tour three circuses at the same time.
Doing the Impossible: 1910–1911
“Otto Ringling: Financial wizard of the syndicate forces.”1
It seemed an impossible feat, but the Ringling Brothers put three large circuses on the road in 1910, leaving their circus competition far behind them. The Ringling show and Barnum & Bailey had eighty-four railcars each, and the Forepaugh-Sells show had forty-seven cars.2 Never before or since has one circus organization had so many railcars on the road.
But the Ringlings were facing an ever-changing world and new competition that went far beyond that provided by other circuses. In 1903 the hand-cranked Victrola record player became available to music lovers. In 1904 the Chautauqua Institution of New York State beg
an sending lecturers and tented stage shows to even the smallest towns in the country. Thomas Edison’s silent moving pictures continued to attract thousands of customers. Even theater people were worried about the movies. An entertainment reporter wrote about the 1909 season: “That the moving picture business had made deep inroads in the theatrical business is a matter of record, and is generally acknowledged by theatrical powers.”3
In 1908 Henry Ford began producing inexpensive Model T cars that sold for less than nine hundred dollars. He introduced the assembly line to speed production and by 1914 was paying workers five dollars for an eight-hour day, an unheard-of amount for a historically short workday.4
By 1910 automobiles were beginning to clog city streets, making it difficult to mount a circus parade and carrying people greater distances in search of entertainment. Vaudeville was attracting thousands of customers in the major cities and in the smaller ones, too, as communities built opera houses and traveling show troupes traipsed across the country entertaining huge numbers of rural and small-town people. The Ziegfeld Follies began in 1907. Irving Berlin’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band debuted on Broadway in 1911 and was an immediate hit.5
For the 1910 season the Ringlings had three shows on the road: their namesake show, Barnum & Bailey, and the Adam Forepaugh and Sells Brothers show. PROGRAM COLLECTION, CWM
In the midst of all these technological and cultural changes, the circus rolled on, much as it had since pre–Civil War days: horses and elephants, clowns and aerialists, ringmasters and Big Tops, trains and parades. And the crowds continued to come. Still, the Ringling Brothers, now the undisputed kings of the circus world, had to be highly concerned about the changes they saw going on around them.
Managing three circuses was a major task in every way, from staffing to equipment to, especially, routing. There was almost no way that the Ringlings could avoid competing with themselves. And there were nineteen other railroad circuses touring the country in 1910, all seeking a slice of the circus audience pie. Outside of the Ringling “big three,” Hagenbeck-Wallace (forty-five cars), John Robinson (forty-two cars), and Sells-Floto (thirty-one cars) were by now the largest circuses on the circuit.6
By the early 1900s circuses faced growing competition from new forms of entertainment, such as the Ziegfeld Follies (pictured here are players in the show “Lady Godiva Rides Again”), vaudeville, silent movies, and hand-cranked record players. WISCONSIN CENTER FOR FILM AND THEATER RESEARCH
Early in 1910 the Brothers continued to negotiate with the Chicago law firm that had represented them in their failed attempt to acquire the Hagenbeck Circus. In a letter to attorney Allen Frost, the Ringlings acknowledged the fee they owed—$800 left on the Hagenbeck deal plus $1,400 for general law services. Otto convinced the firm to accept 10 percent less than they requested, for a total bill of $1,974.22. Otto Ringling was a master negotiator—always looking for a better deal, whether for a carload of corn or attorney fees. In a letter dated January 10, the Brothers informed Frost that they had now employed attorney John M. Kelley on a yearly basis and asked Frost to send Kelley “as much data as you think he should have on the matter which you have been handling for us.”7
But Otto Ringling was ill. While in Chicago in February 1910, he wrote a note to Al saying:
I am glad to hear everything is in fine shape for all the shows. Regarding myself, I have not attended to my business since I left Bridgeport. … Since I saw Dr. Herrick January 11th at his office, which occasion he informed me what I had to look forward to, I have made every effort to [word unclear] business entirely and train my thoughts in a different direction. How well I am succeeding I do not know. I know I am doing the very best I can. … I hope that you and Lou will retain your present good health and live long and happily. With regards to you both, Good Bye, Your Brother, Otto. P.S. Al, I know your feelings and every bodies concerning myself, and will ask you to refrain from writing me about my condition, which would be to no purpose.8
Otto was probably suffering from Bright’s disease, the illness that had killed his brother Gus. From the tone of his letter, it was obviously serious.
From the very beginning of the Ringling Brothers’ Circus, Otto had dealt with all things financial and myriad other details. Now his health was failing. It was a worrisome time for the Brothers.
Operating costs for the circus, especially licensing fees, continued to rise. In 1910 Denver passed a circus license ordinance stating that an eighty-car circus that charged fifty cents per ticket must pay the city four thousand dollars per day. (According to the ordinance, smaller circuses paid two hundred dollars per day.) The same year Kansas City, Missouri, instituted a fifty-dollar-per-railcar fee for circuses with eighty cars and fifty-cent admission fees (the result was the same fee as Denver charged). Both the Denver and Kansas City fees were likely instigated by Harry Tamman, who owned major newspapers in those cities as well as owning the Sells-Floto Circus, a Ringling competitor. The Ringlings had won a lawsuit against Tamman in 1909 for using the word Sells on Sells-Floto lithographs.9
Ringling representatives worked hard to convince the cities to lower these rates, without success. Regarding the Denver negotiations, a reporter for The Show World noted, “Mr. McCracken’s [a Ringling representative] eloquence and persuasive power have availed him naught in this city thus far.”10
For the 1910 season opening, the Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows would return to Chicago—a cheaper prospect than traveling all the way to New York for the opening as they had done in 1909. Likewise, Barnum & Bailey would go back to opening in New York. The World’s Greatest Shows opened indoors on April 7 and then went under tents in Danville, Illinois, on April 28. The show slowly moved east and then played most of the summer in the Midwest.
Barnum & Bailey, The Greatest Show on Earth, opened March 24 in New York and played in the East and the Midwest until late July. Then it moved to the Northwest and then down to California for much of September. In late September Barnum & Bailey showed in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and Mississippi.
The Forepaugh-Sells show opened April 28 in Springfield, Ohio. From Ohio the show moved on to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maine, New York, back to the Midwest, and then into the South.
The Ringling Brothers’ shows continued to attract huge crowds in 1910. A reporter in Janesville, Wisconsin, stated: “The thousands of people who saw Ringling Brothers’ big parade this morning thoroughly enjoyed the pageant that passed along the streets. From the great 24-horse band chariot in the lead to the tail end, nearly a mile away, it was one chain of excellent attractions.”11
Some local merchants were not pleased when the circus came to town on a Saturday. In August 1910 an Illinois newspaper reported that “[i]f the Messrs Ringling will consult the merchants in Decatur they will not pull off any more circuses here on Saturday. The mixing of a circus with Saturday trade is not a good thing for the trade. … Many people went to the circus instead of coming down town to make their usual purchases.”12
Many forms of entertainment didn’t even try to compete with the circus. For instance, baseball games were sometimes postponed when the circus came to town, as happened in Janesville that August: “Today’s games in the Commercial League have been postponed owing to the fact that there is a counter-attraction in town, the circus, and it was felt by the board of managers of the league that the attendance at the games would not be large enough to make it worth while for the players to engage in the contests.”13
Even the barbers in some towns were unhappy:
“Circus day was not a good day for barbers,” said a barber last night. The people kept too busy trying to see that show. The parade was late and they were afraid that if they went to the barber shop to have work done the parade would get by them. After the parade they had to rush for dinner and after dinner they had to rush again to the circus grounds. It was a continual rush. It was not a big day for the barbers.14
Occasionally, local writers put a cynical twist on a circus’s arr
ival in their town, especially if other circuses had preceded it:
Today is circus day in Columbus … Ringling Brothers, who themselves are numerous enough to put on a pretty fair show all alone, are the visitors today, and theirs is the third big show to visit the Arch City this season. … Lizzie, the snake charming lady, sat in a glass cage with a beautiful, slimy cobra where some man’s good right ought to be, and the hippopotamus wagon was hauled through the streets to the great delight of everyone who has X-ray machines to look through the wooden sides.
There were tigers, lions, cougars, wolves and a few other pets exhibited during the parade, however, there was positively something new. There was a sixteen “horse” hitch of camels pulling a beautifully painted wagon full of beautifully painted ladies representing something or other in some other country. The parade was witnessed by many thousands of people.15
The hippopotamus and rhinoceros were major attractions, so the Ringlings kept them concealed in parades. They expected customers to pay to see these animals.16
The Barnum & Bailey show ended its 1910 season in Mississippi on November 5 and headed back to winter quarters in Connecticut. The World’s Greatest Shows closed in West Point, Mississippi, on November 9, and Forepaugh-Sells closed in Sardis, Mississippi, two weeks later; those two shows would winter in Baraboo.
When the Ringlings made their decision to house both the World’s Greatest Shows and Forepaugh-Sells in Baraboo, they knew the strain on winter quarters would be great. They had built new car shops in late 1909, but the space problem went well beyond storage and maintenance facilities for the railcars. Between the two circuses, there was a need to house thirty-seven elephants.17 That fall the Ringlings had the Isenbergs construct a thirty-three-by-sixty-foot addition at the rear of the brick elephant house.18 Although it is not easily confirmed, elephants may have been housed in other facilities in and around Baraboo, as well. The Rooney farm north of Baraboo was the apparent burial site of several Ringling elephants.19 And the present owners of the Lynn Avenue property, Jan and Duane Neuman, reported that elephants were once housed in the basement of the barn still standing on their property in 2002.20 Jan Neuman pointed out a mound of ground back of the barn where she said an elephant was buried. “It’s why the trees grow so well there,” she said.