Struggles and Triumphs - P. T. Barnum (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

to sell out his business, take stock in the show, and become its treasurer and assistant manager. Hurd is clearheaded, but he moves cautiously, and “looks before he leaps.” On a cold, clear morning in February, 1872, Mr. Coup, Mr. Hurd, and several of our leading assistants and counsellors called at my house. Their countenances were solemn, not to say lugubrious; their jaws seemed firmly set, and altogether I discovered something ominous in their appearance. I saw that there was solid business ahead, but I said with a smile:

“Gentlemen, I am right glad to see you. I confess you don’t look very jolly, but never mind, unbosom yourselves, and tell me what is up.”

Manager Coup opened the ball.

“I am very sorry to say, Mr. Barnum,” said that honest, good-hearted manager, “that our business here is important and serious. Although we, of course, like to bow to your decisions, and are ready to acknowledge that your experience is greater than ours, we have had a long and serious consultation this morning, and have unanimously concluded that your show is more than twice too large to succeed; that you will lose nearly four hundred thousand dollars if you try to drag it all through the country, and that your only chance of success is to sell off more than half of your curiosities and horses and wagons, or else divide them into three, or certainly two distinct shows.”

“Is this a mutiny, gentlemen?” I asked, with a feeling and countenance far from solemn.

“By no means a mutiny, father,” said Hurd, “but really it is a very serious affair. We have been making a careful and close calculation.” Here he drew from his pocket a sheet of paper covered with figures, and read from it: “The expenses of your exhibitions, including nearly a thousand men and horses, the printing, board, salaries, etc., will average more than $4,000 per day. But call it $4,000. You show thirty weeks⁠—180 days. Thus your expenses for the tenting season, besides wear and tear and general depreciation, will be at least $720,000. This is about twice as much as any show ever took in one season, except your own, last year. This is the year of the presidential election, which, on account of political excitement and mass meetings, always injures travelling shows. We have carefully looked over the towns which you will be able to touch this summer, not going west of Ohio, for you cannot get beyond that State in a single season, and we compute your receipts at not over $350,000, which would leave you a loser of $370,000.”

“Are you not a little mistaken in some of your estimates?” I asked.

“Mr. Barnum, figures never lie,” exclaimed Mr. Coup, with great earnestness, and, pulling a pocket-map from his breast pocket, he opened it, and I saw that he was set down for the next spokesman.

“Our teams cannot travel with heavy loads more than an average of twenty miles per day,” continued Coup; “now please follow the lines marked on this map, and you will find that we are compelled to make seventy-one stands where there are not people enough within five miles to give us an average of $1,000 per day. That will involve a loss of $213,000, and, I tell you, that taking accidents, storms, and other risks, the season will be ruinous if you don’t reduce the show more than one-half.”

“Coup,” I replied, “did not thousands of people come fifty, sixty, a hundred miles last year, by railroad excursions, to see my show?”

He confessed that they did.

“Well,” I replied, “if you have lost faith in the discernment of the public, I have not, and I propose to prove it.” Then, laughing heartily, I added:

“Gentlemen, I thank you for your advice; but I won’t reduce the show a single hair or feather; on the contrary, I will add five or six hundred dollars per day to my expenses!”

My assembled “cabinet” rolled their eyes in astonishment.

“Father, are you crazy?” asked Hurd, with a look of despair.

“Not much,” I replied.

“Now,” I continued, “I see the show is too big to drag from village to village by horse power, and I have long suspected it would be, and have laid my plans accordingly. I will immediately telegraph to all the principal railroad centres between here and Omaha, Nebraska, and within five days I will tell you what it will cost to transport my whole show, taking leaps of a hundred miles or more in a single night when necessary, so as to hit good-sized towns every day in the season. If I can do this with sixty or seventy freight cars, six passenger cars and three engines, within such a figure as I think it ought to be done for, I will do it.”

The “cabinet” adjourned for five days, and it was worth something to see how astonished, and apparently pleased, the various members looked as they withdrew.

At the appointed time all met again. The railroad telegrams were generally favorable, and we, then and there, resolved to transport the entire Museum, Menagerie and Hippodrome, all of the coming season, by rail, enlisting a power which, if expended on traversing common wagon roads, would be equivalent to two thousand men and horses.

If life and health are spared me till another spring, I will report the result of thus setting on foot a mighty “army with banners.” But if it is wisely appointed that some other hand shall record it, I confidently trust that the American public will bear witness that I found great pleasure in contributing to their rational enjoyment.

P. T. B.

Endnotes

These were the euphonious names of localities in the vicinity of Bethel. ↩

By his consent I state that his name is John Fish. ↩

The New York and New Haven Railroad Company never forgave me for thus securing a righteous law for the protection of its commuters. Even as lately as 1871, the venders of books on the trains