The Nome daily nugget., 1935-12-03
Rivalry Used 10 Be Fierce.

ileNlOis 10 I9Z3 most or the big circus units battled with one an- other up and down the country from Maine to California and from Can ada to the Gulf. Sometimes they employed the most vitriolic phrases in characterizing rival clrcuses as worthless. When electricity first was used to Illuminate a circus tent, competitors sOlemnly warned the public to stay away from that show because electric lights are known to be extremely dangerous and binding to the eyes :"
 Most interesting were the paper vars conducted by the big and little shows prior 10 the late sum- mer of 1929. The big circuses often bought advertising space on barns and buildings in the dead of win ter, so that the location would not be snapped up by rival concerns. Some of the shows had a playful little habit of covering each others posters when two shows saw fit to play the same city on the same day or few days apart.
 One of these paper wars became so intense when two circuses chose to book a California city within a few days of each other that the barns and bllbOards of the sur rounding countryside were plastered with covering of circus pictures 2S sheets deep. The opposition bri- gade of circus number one went out each morning to cover the adver- tsements of the rival show. The brigade of circus number two went out every evening to recover with its own billing. They watched each other so closely, these tireless ad- vance men, that each knew when the others crew left town to cover paper in the country.
 At last one of them played a master stroke, Two nights before the first show was due to arrive, the brigade hired hearse, climbed Inside with posters, paste, and brushes and quietly left town to do their work without attracting the attention of their competitors.
 The advance advertising cars of the big shows carry large crews of ambitious workers who often aver- age a posting of 10000 to 12.OOo sheets of circus Autographs a day. A crew of 30 men can bill a large city in a single day, so well do they understand their work.
 The flaming circus Autographs that herald the approach of the Spangled caravan must be printed in several different languages in number of places: Posters with Hebrew lettering in New York city'S Jewish districts, Italian in both New York city and Chicago, French In parts of Montreal and Quebec, and Spanish in certain Southwest ern cities.
 White Elephant Competition.
 Sometimes the tented enterprises tried to duplicate their rivals ace attractions. Barnum once import ed a sacred white elephant from Siam. Ii wasn't pure white, but rather a cream color. and 1t cost a lot of money and trouble. Adam Forepaugh, then Barnum's leading competitor, copied the Siamese ai- bino by applying generous coating of white paint to unclothed parts of a gray pachyderm. His elephant was SO much whiter than Barnum's that the public decided FOrepaugh had the real article-untll one day during a street parade in Philadel- phia, when a cloudburst exposed the imposture
 Even then skeptical show-goers refused to believe that Barnum's white elephant was any more genu- inc than the one they had seen exposed. Somebody asked Barnum what he was billing as his chief attraction that season. He smiled and replied, I've got a white ele- phant." Then and there he sup piled a distinctly American angle to the age-od white elephant allu- sion that to this day Is used to de scribe something expensive which cannot be disposed of to any ad- vantage.
 The big shows fought each other until the summer of 1929, when a great consolidation was effected. Now six of the largest tent shows. all Ringing owned, contend for pa tronage In friendly rivalry and try to keep out of one another's way.
 Most outsiders think that every circus picks It's complete route at the beginning of each season. In reality, they are routed only about six weeks in advance. Agents must study crop and factory conditions, epidemics of disease, and proximity of rival attractions, and must ar- range to send the circus where there Is a probability of doing good business. Routing a circus Is . h,,ct,4 aatanan