“The only circus in the world covering the entire continent in one season.”1
The new century opened with prosperity and optimism. William McKinley, who had taken office in 1897, continued as president of the United States. The first automobiles appeared; baseball was growing in prominence; barbershop quartets harmonized in village bandstands, often preceding a performance by the local band. Moving pictures were becoming the rage.2
In 1900 the average worker earned about $13 for a sixty-hour workweek; school-teachers received $325 per year. The Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck catalogs were read more than any other books, including the Bible.3 In a Baraboo newspaper an ad offered for rent a modern house with furnace, bathroom, cistern, well, and barn for $12 per month. A six-room home could be purchased for $1,500. W. M. Little, a Baraboo tailor, advertised: “For that cold feeling, wear an overcoat, one of the warm kind.” Another ad encouraged storekeepers to put in telephones. One could purchase a Blickensderfer typewriter at the Baraboo News office for $40. The Bank of Baraboo, where the Ringlings did much of their business, boasted that its capital was $50,000, and the South Side Cash Shoe Store bragged that it had “The Best shoes that tread the earth.”4
That year Alfred T. Ringling published Life Story of the Ringling Brothers, a colorful report of the beginnings of the Ringling circus. He was sometimes prone to exaggerate for the sake of a good story—but a great story it was. During the winter of 1899–1900 the Brothers took stock of their menagerie, and Otto ordered several animals. A January 1900 letter from the German animal dealer Hagenbeck’s read:
Enclosed I am sending you 2 photos of an alive walrus, which I have now since 2 years 5 months in my possession. It is a wonderful beast, now about 3 years old. It did weigh in June last year over 400 pounds, and I think, by the description my man gives me, that he has now at least 600 pounds. His tusks are about 2 inches long. It is a splendid trained animal, and I am sure it would be a wonderful success, if you had this animal in your show. The very lowest price for the animal is $5,000.00, delivered free to Hoboken, duty paid by me.5
By the turn of the twentieth century, people were attending circuses by the thousands. In this photograph the crowd has gathered, decked out in Sunday finery, to hear a “talker” describe the incredible sights awaiting inside the sideshow tent. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
There is no record that Otto bought the walrus, but he must have ordered a tiger from Hagenbeck’s in January, along with an eland and a “big monkey.”6 Otto complained about the price of the monkey and received a $100 reduction.7
Although they were well aware of the rapid changes taking place in society and technology, including increasing competition for audience members’ attention, the Ringling Brothers made few changes to their circus for the 1900 season. They did open in an eastern state for the first time, debuting in Wheeling, West Virginia, on April 10. “All Wheeling fell in love with the show almost from the day of its arrival because of the splendid conduct of the people and their courtesy to visitors.”8
The Brothers advertised the 1900 show as “Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows: The Invincible Monarch of Amusements, and beyond all dispute or doubt The Greatest Show on Earth.”9 The Barnum & Bailey Circus was known as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” but with Barnum & Bailey still safely away in Europe, the Ringlings apparently saw little wrong with “borrowing” a catchy slogan from one of their biggest competitors.
While Barnum & Bailey toured Europe, the Ringling Brothers conveniently “borrowed” their famous “Greatest Show on Earth” slogan. HANDBILL COLLECTION, CWM
Al Ringling was an avid fisherman, and he often took off from circus duties for a few days of angling. In this 1902 photograph Al is at right and Mike Rooney, a performer from Baraboo, is at left. RICHARD E. AND ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
After West Virginia the Ringling trains rumbled on to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut, where they did a stand in Bridgeport, home of Barnum & Bailey. By June they were back in the Midwest. The tour was going so well that Al took time off for two fishing trips in July, the second one with his wife, Lou, and brother Henry.
On August 6 and 7 the Ringlings played in Denver and claimed to turn away as many as seven thousand people. They traveled on to Leadville, Colorado, a city with one of the highest elevations in the country and then moved on to the Northwest. In Montana, Indians came from miles around, pitched their tents, and attended the show. The Ringlings turned away people in Seattle and then showed in California for the first time. The 1900 route book noted, “[D]uring its five weeks’ stay there it averaged nearly three turn-aways a week. In San Francisco and Los Angeles people were turned away by the Thousands.”10
The boys closed in Monticello, Arkansas, on November 14 and headed home for the winter. “The tour of the circus this year was one long run of prosperity. Never before in the history of tented amusements has such an enormous business been done by any show. We have traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific; have touched one point in Canada and gone to the South as far as the Mexican line, exhibited in twenty-eight states, two territories and British Columbia. … [W]e have not had a single accident of any consequence, and little or no sickness.” Even noting the obvious exaggeration in the route book summary, it was probably the Ringlings’ best season ever.11
Despite all its success, not everyone was happy with the Ringling Brothers’ show. In Richland Center, Wisconsin, the Richland Rustic noted: “The show itself was as good as ever, but to those who have seen it once or twice it was a disappointment. … It was in fact much the same show it was four years ago.”12
But most reviews of the season were laudatory. The Appleton (Wisconsin) Crescent proclaimed:
By all odds the biggest, cleanest and best circus and menagerie that ever visited Appleton was the Ringling show which exhibited here Monday. Every feature was perfect, and every promise of the program made good to the letter. No crooks or tramps were in the wake of the show, and not an arrest was made during the day as a result of the presence of the circus and its attendant throng in the city. … In the afternoon over twelve thousand people paid admission to the circus and the evening crowd was half as large. Everybody pronounced it the most novel and satisfactory arenic exhibition ever seen here.13
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported, “The people of this city evidently liked the Ringling Brothers show, for a big audience of Columbus people saw the afternoon performance, went out, talked about it and then came back in the evening bringing their sisters, their cousins and their aunts.”14
The Ringlings returned to Chicago for the opening of their 1901 season. They held a two-hour parade before huge crowds on the crisp night of April 8 and then opened the show at the Coliseum on April 10. They played mostly two shows a day in Chicago through April 27. (One exception was Sunday, April 14, when a nearby church complained: “The Reverend Ernest M. Stires and his flock, fearing that the commingling of the strains of Handel and Mendelssohn from the church pipe organ with the ‘Rag Time Life’ of the circus brass band would be conducive neither to musical harmony nor to religious devotion, refused to give permission to the granting of a Sunday night license to the circus people.”)15
From Chicago the circus played several shows in Ohio and then went east for a two-day stand in Washington, D.C. Many of the show people visited the Capitol, the White House, and other government buildings and, according to the route book, “pronounced them fully waterproof.”16 (One appreciates a comment about waterproof buildings from circus people, who lived under leaky tents!)
Ringlingville on Water Street, Baraboo, circa 1905. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
Winter at Ringlingville was planning and training time. Alf T. Ringling wrote:
A big show is a show all year round. It does not go into a comatose state in the winter, like the frog, and sleep until the warm breath of spring thaws it out … it goes into plain work-a-day winter quarters, which means, in the case of the Ringling Brothers, seven large barns capable of housing 350 horses, great, commodious and heated animal-houses with massive dens for the menagerie animals, car shops, 4,800 feet of railroad tracks, machinery building and planing mill, practicing-ring building, heated elephant house, giraffe building, paint shops, wagon shops, training barn, blacksmith shops, wardrobe rooms, large hotel, harness shop, carpenter shop, and storage building for canvas, paraphernalia, etc., hay shed, chariot and wagon sheds, office rooms, and what not in the way of buildings, in all covering over twelve acres of ground.
After the season is over it usually takes from two to three weeks to get everything back in the different buildings.1
Baraboo residents have passed down many stories—some have become legends—about Ringlingville winter quarters, particularly about the exotic animals housed there. Locals often commented on the trumpeting of the elephants, the roar of the lions, and the other strange sounds coming from Ringlingville down by the river.
Training animals was an important part of winter quarter activities. Here zebras practice a tandem act in the ring barn, circa 1908. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
One winter a black panther escaped its cage and ran across the street from Ringlingville, taking refuge in an old woman’s out-house. When the woman went for a visit, there was the panther, sprawled across the toilet seat. The resourceful woman went back to her house, grabbed a broom, and shooed the big cat out. Workers later captured the dangerous animal and returned it to its cage.
Residents also tell of the time a python that stiffened up from the cold was left for dead on the manure pile just outside the animal house. Local farmers often used the circus’s manure as fertilizer. Later, when a farmer pitched the manure onto his wagon, he uncovered the huge snake, very much alive and now agitated at having its warm nest disturbed. The farmer shrieked and took off running; workers returned the snake to its den. The farmer had the scare of his life.2
This photo, circa 1904, was taken behind the Baraboo animal house to emphasize the height of a Ringling giraffe. Giraffes were quite capable of eating feed placed on the ground. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
NOTES
1. Alf T. Ringling, Beneath White Tents: Route Book of Ringling Brothers, Season 1894, p. 144.
2. C. P.“Chappie” Fox, interview by the author, Baraboo, Wisconsin, August 20, 2001.
The Ringlings took their show to Canada for the first time in 1901. Ads that year boasted that the show included “the only giraffe known to exist today in the world”—a huge exaggeration. HANDBILL COLLECTION, CWM
After an extended tour in the Northeast, including five days before huge crowds in Boston, the Ringlings moved into Canada for the first time. They played there from June 6 to June 26 and then moved back across the border into Michigan. While showing near St. Thomas, Ontario, Al and Henry had time for a two-day fishing trip. They brought back six hundred pounds of black bass—“Enough to feed the show.”17
The troupe was back in Pennsylvania by early July. On July 4, in Pittsburgh, the Ringling employees took a break from their rigorous schedule to celebrate the holiday with a special dinner prepared by A. L. Webb, steward of the cook tent.
| Ringling Employee Fourth of July Dinner, 1901 |
| Mock turtle, radishes, olives, sliced onions, baked |
| lake trout, parsley sauce, shoestring potatoes. |
| Boiled ox tongue, lemon sauce. |
| Braised pork tenderloins, tomato sauce. |
| Veal loaf, with mushrooms. |
| Orange fritters, wine sauce. |
| Prime ribs of beef, dish gravy. |
| Spring lamb, mint sauce. |
| Chicken, with dressing. |
| Lemon ice. Chow-chow. Sliced cucumbers. Mixed |
| pickles. New potatoes in cream. Mashed potatoes. |
| Green peas. Beets. Braised cabbage. Cabbage salad. |
| Chicken salad. |
| Fruit pudding, brandy sauce. Lemon pie. Strawberry |
| pie. Assorted cake. Ice cream. Fruit. Crackers. Cream |
| cheese. Coffee. Tea. Milk.18 |
The circus staff usually celebrated holidays with a special meal in the Ringling dining tent. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
By mid-July the show was in the Midwest. A freak accident occurred in Muncie, Indiana, on July 11. In midafternoon two young men drove up with a team of horses just as the elephants were let out for water. The horses bolted and threw the young men from their buggy. The runaway team tipped over the ticket box and smashed into the sideshow banners, bringing down the entire front of the sideshow promotional banner before galloping toward town. No one was seriously hurt, although a woman “was stunned by a falling banner pole.”19
The show reached Wisconsin by the end of July. Several people from Baraboo, including Mrs. Al Ringling, Mrs. Alf T. Ringling, Richard Ringling (Alf T.’s son), the Ringling brothers’ sister, Ida, and their mother, Salome Ringling, traveled to Janesville to see the show.
In Topeka, Kansas, on August 6, the audience continually interrupted announcer Lew Graham as he tried to promote the after-show concert. Then, performer Joe Le Fleur did his usual backward flip from a pyramid of chairs and came down hard. Several men, including Graham, rushed to his side. As they lifted his limp body, the audience was at last completely silent. In a loud voice, Graham called, “Is there a doctor in the house?” He paused, gazing at the apparently severely injured performer. He called again, “Is there a doctor in the house?” There was no response from the deathly quiet audience. Graham paused, then said loudly, “If there is, then I would like him and all of you to remain and see our grand concert.” Le Fleur jumped to his feet, and a huge cheer came from the crowd.20 Audience members had been taken in by the ruse, and they loved it. Graham had clearly found a way to get their attention.
Local craftsmen in Baraboo, such as H. Moeller & Sons (the Moellers were cousins of the Ringlings), depended on the Ringlings for a large portion of their income. In the winter of 1899–1900, the Moellers collected $2,139.45 for repair work they did for the Ringlings, including the following:
| Cage No. 71: $9.10 | Elephant whip: $.50 |
| Cage No. 70: $8.25 | Two new plank wagons: $450.00 |
| Blacksmith bellows, extra long: $13.70 | Chandelier wagon: $53.10 |
| Elephant hooks: $.75 | 107 stake bands at $.05: $5.35 |
| Bell wagon: $7.75 | 26 seat brackets at .20: $5.20 |
| Menagerie pole wagon: $33.10 | 50 layout pins at .05: $.2.50 |
| Cook wagon: $28.30 | Balancing pole: $.501 |
| Ticket wagon: $89.71 |
NOTES
1. H. Moeller & Sons account book, April 1899–April 1900, Fred Pfening III, private collection, Columbus, Ohio.
The show played in San Francisco from August 26 to August 31 to huge crowds. It was a critical time for the show to be in San Francisco as the local teamsters had been on strike for several weeks. Circus workers were offered as much as eight to ten dollars a day to be strike breakers. But no one from the circus responded, deeming the proposition too dangerous. The circus appeared to be neutral ground between labor and management—everyone seemed to enjoy the circus no matter which side he was on.21
On September 14 the Ringlings were in Pomona, California, when they received the horrifying news: President William McKinley had died of gunshot wounds. He had been shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901.
The Brothers held only a night performance on September 19. That afternoon they organized a special memorial service for President McKinley in the Big Top, for Ringling employees only. It was an elaborate affair featuring speakers, a specially decorated stage with an immense American flag serving as the backdrop, and an oil painting of the president, draped in black. The Reverend J. F. Leland of the Universalist Church conducted the memorial service. The circus band played a dirge. In attendance were all the Ringling Brothers, their wives, members of the executive staff, performers, clowns, and workers of every stripe—about five hundred of them. The service closed with the singing of the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” “When the last note died away and Dr. Leland stood up to pronounce the benediction, suppressed sobs were heard and scarcely a dry eye could be observed under the spread of canvas.”22 The Ringlings made sure the press was present at their memorial. The Los Angeles Times carried a lengthy story about the event, with the headline “Unique Memorial by Circus Folk: Ringling Bros.’ Employees join in Mourning.”23 The Brothers held their service five days after McKinley’s death; it no doubt took a while for everyone to assemble in San Francisco, but one could also argue that they wanted to hold the event in a large city, and not down in San Diego or Santa Ana, which had less-prestigious newspapers.
The Ringlings had done extremely well during the years McKinley had been president (1897–1901). Their love for McKinley was genuine. Theodore Roosevelt, known to be a reformer, was the new president, and the Brothers had to wonder: Would major political change create problems for their circus?
From California the Ringlings took their show to the Southwest and South, closing in Mississippi on November 16. The show had had yet another successful season.
Back at winter quarters, the Ringlings were once more running out of room. In the fall of 1901 they built a new 36-by-110-foot brick animal house and a 56-by-120-foot horse barn.24 It is unclear when the Ringling Brothers’ new office building was constructed on Water Street, and whether the old office, constructed in 1897, had been moved to the new site and additions made. A reasonable estimation is that the new office was constructed in 1901, certainly before 1904. Sometime between 1904 and 1913 a records vault was added to the office building. The office was of balloon-frame construction in the Queen Anne style. It was rectangular with an added front porch, and it looked like an ordinary farmhouse, similar to thousands built in this period.
As 1901 came to a close, the future seemed much less certain than it had at the start of the century. Not only were new entertainment opportunities challenging the circus, but a new president might not treat big business—and the Ringling Brothers circus was surely a big business—as well as his predecessor had. The Ringlings looked to 1902 with some unease.
Weather was a constant challenge for the circus. High winds and lightning storms, which could lead to what was known as a “blow down,” were especially dangerous—even deadly.
When storms, high winds, or accident damaged a circus top to the point that it could not be used until it was repaired, workers would erect only the sidewall of the tent so that the animals were still hidden from those who had not paid the price of admission. Here the Ringling menagerie is set up with sidewalls. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
A terrific storm came up during the evening show in Sedalia, Missouri, on May 25, 1893. Al Ringling quickly warned the two thousand people under the Big Top. It was hardly a moment after the last person exited that a gigantic gust of wind snapped all the tent ropes on the windward side and the Big Top crashed to the ground. There was “a heaving mass of broken seats, splintered poles and torn canvas. The dressing room tent quickly followed, but the menagerie top to which the audience had fled remained standing.” Several people were injured, but everyone survived.1
The Brothers missed their next appearance, but by May 27 they had had the canvas, poles, and seats repaired and were back in business. A few weeks later, in York, Nebraska, high winds struck again. The menagerie tent blew down, soaking the wild animals, and the cook tents fell, but the Big Top remained standing.
The weather turned lethal when the show played in River Falls, Wisconsin, on June 21, 1893. An Associated Press writer reported:
A terrific thunder storm raged in this vicinity this afternoon. Rain fell in sheets, and great floods of water formed almost in an instant in the streets. … The circus proper had just finished its performance, and as the concert was about to begin a number of people who did not care to attend the latter were making their way through the menagerie tent when a terrific bolt of lightning struck one of the center poles of the menagerie tent, and more than fifty people were prostrated. Seven were killed instantly, and the balance is now regaining the normal use of their limbs. … [I]t was only by the exercise of rare presence of mind on the part of Messrs. Ringling and their employees that a more serious and probably fatal stampede was averted. … The bodies of the dead were taken to the village engine house, where some distressingly sad scenes were enacted. … This community is a gloomy one this evening, and the calamity is universally deplored. None of the show people were injured. … The circus will, of course, give no performance tonight.2
On the morning of June 10, 1897, in Wahpeton, North Dakota, a severe thunderstorm blew out of the west while the canvas crew was setting up the tents. Lightning struck a center pole where twenty-two men were working. C. E. Walters and Charles Smith were killed instantly, and twenty others were knocked unconscious. The hat was passed and money was collected for the men’s funerals; a monument, a replica of a shattered center pole, was placed over their graves.3
Even when severe weather left people unscathed, it could take a serious toll on both circus equipment and ticket receipts. When a huge prairie storm blew into Ellsworth, Kansas, on September 15, 1897, the route book scribe reported:
Threatening clouds began to gather a little after 4 o’clock and by six the storm had assumed alarming proportions. The first blow struck at about 6:00 o’clock but, although severe, the canvas withstood the force of it and nothing gave way. The storm then veered around and came back, whirling with terrific speed. It struck the big top and the black tents and in a second there was nothing by a mass of wreckage and debris where they had stood. The attendance at the afternoon show had been tremendous and another crowd was expected at the night show, but in consequence of the storm, the night show was abandoned. All hands were set to work all night in a pouring rain to untangle the mass of ropes, canvas, seats, stringers and shattered center and quarter poles, and it was daylight when the last section pulled out of the town. A great deal of valuable wardrobe and paraphernalia were damaged or destroyed, but there were no casualties.4
The Ringling circus even confronted a sandstorm in Butte, Montana, on September 4, 1902:
Small particles of dirt and stone were dashed into the eyes and faces of the workingmen and many of them were almost blinded, but like true soldiers they stayed at their posts and soon had the tents erected. … One could scarcely see ten feet from the front doors at one o’clock, yet an enormous crowd was in waiting long before the chains were taken away. Great difficulty was experienced by Henry Ringling’s little army of ticket takers, as their eyes were filled with dirt and dust and at times it was impossible for them to see the people. All the available men assisted at the door and the crowd was soon handled. When the circus commenced, swirling dust was so thick in the big top that all the chandeliers were lighted and even the persons on the seats could scarcely discern the actors. The storm continued all day and late into the night, and everybody, from the Ringlings to the smallest pony boy, was glad when Butte was in the distance.5
NOTES
1. Route Book of Ringling Brothers, Season of 1893 (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1893), pp. 46–47.
2. Quoted in the Route Book of Ringling Brothers, Season of 1893, pp. 55–56.
3. The Circus Annual: A Route Book of Ringling Brothers World’s Greatest Shows, Season of 1897 (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1897), p. 103.
4. Ibid., p. 112.
5. The Circus: A Route Book of Ringling Bros.’ World’s Greatest Shows, Season 1902 (Chicago: Central Printing and Engraving, 1902), p. 24.