The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-04-12
Prosperity and Strikes Hamper
Topeka Snowman.
photographers Made Show Bills
Hard to Obtain.
NEED ALL ENGINES.
Don't Want to Heir
Any to Shows.
VIII Have to Do With Wood
Cut Show Bills.

Prosperity in the west and the litho-
graphers' strike has made all kinds of
trouble for the Sells & Downs circus.
The striking union photographers put
the big Erie plant at Erie, Pennsyl-
vania, out of business. The Erie peo-
pie had orders for $4,000 worth of
show printing for the Sells & Downs
circus.
The prosperity in the west and the
big crops have caused the railroads
no end of trouble in securing enough
locomotives to move all the tonnage
that piles up each season and for this
reason the railroads are not willing to
burden themselves with circuses I'M
less mighty good freight rate is paid
and then the roads are not competing
for circus business.
For six weeks Williams Sells has
been in the east hunting for ways out
of the printing difficulty For two
months he has had agents touring the
east and west looking up conditions
and planning routes for. the circus to
take.
The route finally decided upon will
take the circus through Kansas, and
the adjacent states, and during the en-
tire month of August the Sells &
Downs circus will exhibit at Hanlon
Park, in the down town district at St.
Louis. Preceding the circus at Hanlon
Park will be a German circus which
comes direct from Germany Sells &
Downs have sold out for the entire
month. After that they will go south
and return to Topeka to winter quar-
tiers in November. The circus opens
the season in Topeka Saturday, April
%, and then goes to St. Joe, Atchison,
Kansas City, Ottawa and through the
gas and oil belt.
This year the circus will have SO cars
vertising cars. Last year the show had
20 cars in the train and two advance
cars and the year before had but 16
cars. Last year Sells q Downs bought
the Luella Forepaugh-Fish wild west
show and added it to the circus. That
wild west started out of St. Louis and
viii go back there with the Topeka
company.
"Circuses always want to travel
through a prosperous country" said
William Sells this morning, but to dc
that we have to put UP with the con-
ditions which we find we have had
men out for two months looking up the
conditions and preparing routes for
the circus. We find from this investi-
cation that everything is on the boom
in the west. ! ,should say thal
prosperity is general west OF
St. Louis, the kind of prosperity the
circus wants. Railroad rates are high
The roads have not enough engines tc
handle all the business and they are
not anxious to take on more tonnage
in the form of circus. So, if we want
to travel through this prosperous
country where corn sells at AZ cents a
bushel we have to pay for the priv
ilege.
but prosperity hasn't made half the
trouble for US that the photographers
strike has. The Erie company, of Erie
Pa. was at work on $4,000 worth OF
show printing to start US out with
when the photographers struck Ihere
we're the stones partly completed and
we with no paper. We had to have
nsper. Luckily we happened to have
Z about 80 days supply of last year
bills on hand and we started our ad-
vance cars out with them and l went
east to rustic.
Everybody used to show bill design
| ing and printing was out on the strike
There was nothing to do but go to the
non-union shops not affected by the
strikers. I got the artist of the Chi
cago Tribune to make sketches Tor me