Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-25
MAKING OF A CIRCUS
Business Side of a Great
American Enterprise.
PLANNING FAR AHEAD
MOST OF THE WORK rs DONE
MONTHS IN ADVANCE.
Laying Out the Route - Building the
Big Tent-Engaging Attractions
Wise Extravaganza.
PLANNING FAR AHEAD
Written for The Evening Star.

Written for The Evening Star.
Most persons think that the circus is
born, not made
This is Unborn idea dating back to
childhood. To an extent it may even be
hereditary
Many of us grew to mans estate before
we saw theaters and similar amusement
enterprises. BY that time we were so
schooled to the worries of life that the i'm
preston produced by the most beautiful
scene ever set was alleged by thought of
the hard work that had made it,
1t is different with the circus. Nearly all
of have within our earliest recollection
the memory of a lot that was vacant save
for. weeds and tin cans at nightfall, and
bright and wonderful with the canvas TO-
liage of the fairy circus by dawn.
From that moment dates the unconscious
conviction that the circus lust happens"
1t drops in on towns big and little over
night, and over night it folds its tents like
the Arabs and as silently steals away And
that's al we think about it,
1t is this attitude of the public toward the
circus that causes the circus mans greatest
sorrow.
Hang it," say Bailey and Hutchinson
and Hamilton and Starr and Watkins and
all the other big ones in Circus Land Hang
1t, why doesn't anybody ever think of the
serious side of the circus the side that
shows 1t as big American business?"
It's amusingly pathetic to hear them and
shows again how nobody is contented in
this world
Here is an enterprise that stirs the world
TO prlmftlvely pure joy, from the papoose
on the Indian reservation to the majesty of
the person who yields hereditary scepter
one might property suppose that a show
that has risen to the height of inducing
crowned heads, blase from glitter and
pomp, not only to visit it and show well
bred pleasure, but actually to hang
around it like any boy, would be content
with the laurels
Crowned Heads ''Hang Around" It.
. They did hang around it. H. R. H.
Edward did it in London, Kaiser Franz
did over and over again what every well
properly constituted small boy longs to do
Kaiser Wilhelm came incognito and in pro-
pria persona at all hours of the morning
and night and always wanted to see more
from the cooking wagons to the elephant
trains-and that whole "caboodle' of show
people, averse as they VIGOROUSLY are to
being advertised, say with gloomy faces
that it's all very WELL but there is more
behind the show than just amusement
For instance, they want to know, how
many of the million and more of folk that
sit under the big white tent ever give
passing thought to the planning and calcu-
lating and engineering talent that made it?
of organization that make it possible to
move that big tent and nearly twenty
smaller ones, LOCO people and 600 horses
denS full of lions and tigers and hippo
potamii and monkeys, aerial apparatus or
extraordinary intricacy, and seats enough to
hold $4,000 people, over 5000, 1900 and even
1900 of miles of any and every kind OF
country, often travelling 200 miles between
towns in one night, and miss so few dates
that at the end of the season the number
of lost performances can be counted on
the ten fingers, although the dates for each
performance were set months and some
times whole year before?
Floods and cyclones may come. They
do come. The route books of the big show
are full of references to wrecked places
through which the trains passed. All the
same, the appointed morning sees the tents
up, the elephants and the performers eat
ing their breakfasts, the electric light plant
working, the candy butchers barking and
all the freaks freaking as if the whole con-
Germ had been gently carried through the
air just as it was, and set down in the
town lot.
When the Circus "Goes Up"
The people who gather to see the circus
"go up see what they think is the work
of doing all this. But it isn't The work
of manufacturing the circus is done where
no one sees it except the Office force that
does it with pen and typewriters, gazetters
and railroad maps.
1t is the one thing that the circus does