Circus

Men who run circuses know better than to tease the animals or to ask the employes intimate questions. To do otherwise would precipitate quarrels in the higgledy-piggledy family that a circus is. Therefore, when the 1,800 employes of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey show received their pay in Montreal one day last week and entrained soon after for Ogdensburg, N. Y., the circus officials made no comment about the strange mounds that appeared in the bunks, strange piles in animal cages, strange packages stuffed into corners and tied under cars, all over the four-section caravan. They left the commenting to Prohibition agents at Malone, N. Y., after the trains had crossed the border. Such is the reputation of Circus Man John Ringling for discipline and probity--he entertained President Coolidge in Washington only lately (TIME, May 14)--that none of the Ringling officials was even suspected of connivance. At Malone, the Federal men confiscated some 4,000 bottles of prime Canadian whiskey, gin, wines, beer. Acrobats had it hidden in their kimonos. A Spanish couple hid it beneath their infants in an upper berth. The trains were run on a siding for the search and as word spread of what was happening, bottles showered out of the car windows. Possession cost $5 per bottle in fines. After twelve hours of searching, the Malone inspectors were satisfied they had found everything. The circus was allowed to proceed to Ogdensburg, where it had missed a $15,000 "gate" and was nearly late for the next scheduled performance. After the circus folk had left their cars, Federal inspectors stationed at Ogdensburg made a fresh search, ripping, probing, thoroughgoing. The number of bottles found rose to 30,000, filled eight trucks.

Besides the liquor smuggled, the Federal men detected and sent back to Canada some 200 aliens who had tried to enter the U. S. disguised as "razorbacks," "alligators," lion-tamers, acrobats, elephant-scrubbers, wild persons from Borneo.