Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1910-08-23

When you see a flaming billboard
or a flamboyant newspaper advertise
ment or a Dickensesque press notice
announcing the approach of a travel
ing tent show, has it ever occurred to
you to wonder what had been the
procedure by which the management
had decided to come to your town?
Possibly you have thought that cir
cusses travel about the country in
hit-or-miss fashion following the line
of least resistance and simply making
use of the railways for short jumps
between neighboring towns. If so,
you are wrong. 1t is not done that
way.
The Barnum & Bailey Circus
which comes to Salem Saturday for
two performances is equipped with a
corps of financial experts, weather
and crop forecasters and travelling
agents so intricate and so complete
that they can properly be described
as the most efficient band of men
and the most perfectly informed
group of amusement purveyors eX-
tant. 1t is their business to know in
advance the exact condition of every
part of the country through which
the circus expects to play and they
must also be able to read the future
with something approaching precis-
ion OF course they would not be
able to succeed in this work were 1t
not for years of experience and great
masses of accumulated data. The
booking department of Barnum &c
Bailey's Circus is a wonderful place.
1t works the year round, and its
labors never cease.
You can depend upon it that the
circus is coming to this city because
after a careful and searching study
the propriotors find the conditions
here full of promise of successful
engagement with the material at
their disposal they believe that moth
ing can prevent the circus's local sue
cess excepting weather or some other
untoward cause over which human
beings have no control. They have
decided to play here at this par
ticular time for reasons.
AS soon as the circus season closes
in the late autumn the business of
booking the route for the next year
begins. A careful record is kept of
the rainfall and the crop reports of
every populated part of the country
for thirty years back. If the promise
of full crops is good and the weather
the past few weeks healthy, If the
financial equilibrium of the neigh |
borhood is undisturbed by bank fail
ures or strikes, II the general health
of the community makes it safe to
introduce the big circus family of 1880
people and the thousands of tome and
wild animals, the show is booked re-
gardless of the length of the railway
trip or the difficulty in overcoming
the local troubles in hauling the
heavy wagons and apparatus, For
this reason the booking is seldom
certain for more than six weeks in |
advance because any sort of trouble
may arise anywhere in a longer. time
and Illustrate the best endeavors of
everybody to make the engagement
a success When you stop TO think /
that every day rain or shine, the eX-
penses of the Barnum q Bailey Show |
are more than $4,000, you can ap-l
preoiate the gravity Of the situation (
and the extreme care with which the
booking department has to lay out
the route. This year the show has
entered upon the most pretentious
rip in its history Travelling from .
Sst to coast {. will be seen in near
very city and town OF Importance /
' ,".ry State OF the Union besid, .
au' sr.Dg In the Dominion of Canada