Sawdust & Spangles: Stories & Secrets of the CircusCoup, W. C. (William Cameron)
History
Sawdust & Spangles: Stories & Secrets of the Circus
Coup, W. C. (William Cameron)
Circus
The next day the colonel handed me a New York paper, which proved to be
the same that I had mentioned, and in it appeared a double leaded
account on the Jumbo excitement. Their show agents in London did
wonderful work in keeping the associated press filled with new matter,
and the free advertising they secured would have cost at regular rates
a half million of dollars and even then would not have been as
effective.
The agents succeeded in working up this opposition to Jumbo's removal
until they induced the editor of the London Telegraph to cable Barnum,
asking what price he would take to leave Jumbo in his own home,
explaining the feeling of the people, especially the children. This
editor had no idea then and perhaps does not even now know that he was
made an innocent agent in the big advertising scheme. The children of
Great Britain had ridden on Jumbo's back, fed and fondled him for
years, so that it was easy to arouse this feeling of indignation and
sympathy. The multitude even threatened violence if he was removed. The
excitement had purposely been kept up to such a pitch by these people
that it became international.
There was also much excitement about Jumbo's wife, Alice. Elaborately
written articles were cabled over, expressing the sorrow of Alice at
the enforced departure of Jumbo and her consequent separation from her
husband. The feelings of the people were so worked upon that sympathy
for Alice and Jumbo almost equaled that aroused for the slave by the
description of Uncle Tom in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The advertising matter
for Jumbo--the lithographs, etc.--had already been printed, and in them
he was called "Mastodon." When he refused to be moved his right name,
Jumbo, was used, as the dispatches had gone out in that name. The
strategy used by these managers and their agents to get all this
notoriety did no one any harm and made good sensational reading for the
newspapers.
VII
PARADES AND BAND WAGONS
Shows thrive best on bluster and buncombe. Years of experience have
taught me that the traveling show business handled by capitalists who
have been trained in other lines of enterprise can never succeed. I
have often been reproved by business men who were astounded at the
lavish and apparently wasteful expenditures of the circus for "show and
blow," and who have insisted that these expenses should be cut in half.
It is true that such reckless expenditures in any ordinary commercial
undertaking would be disastrous, but it is the life of a big show. When
it is possible thoroughly to arouse the curiosity of the public,
expense should be a secondary consideration.
THE FIFTY-CENT RIVALS OF THE $10,000 HIPPOS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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