Another factor in the spread of the Barnum legend was his autobiography. It was sold at the circus for one dollar, fifty cents less than the published price, and, so anxious was Barnum to increase its circulation, each purchaser was entitled by his purchase to a fifty cent ticket to the entire show, so that the book was sold at the circus for less than half its published price. The cost of the autobiography to Barnum, he told Major J. B. Pond, was nine cents a copy, because he ordered a million copies of the book. Barnum told a reporter for the _Buffalo Courier_, who found him at “Waldemere” in the act of adding another appendix to the book, that he sold 100,000 copies each year at the circus. “Nearly every family buys one or more of my book,” Barnum said. “As the multitudes pour out of my canvas tents at the close of each exhibition, every third person seems to have a book under his arm.” “That must be a funny sight,” said the reporter. “Yes,” said Barnum, “it looks as if they were coming out of a circulating library.” When the same reporter expressed his astonishment at the magnitude of Barnum’s circus, Barnum said, “My business is to astonish as well as to please.” But in spite of his support from the church, his personal notoriety, and the extent of his advertising, Barnum’s show was not alone in the field. There were many circus troupes touring the country, and at least one other was as large as Barnum’s, that owned by Cooper & Bailey. So great was circus rivalry that circus men stopped at nothing to hinder the progress of a competitor. W. C. Coup wrote in _Sawdust and Spangles_ that a circus company once burned a railroad bridge after crossing it so that a rival show could not get to its next stand.