Circus Trust

With the circus as a business enterprise, with circuses as corporations, the average person is no more concerned than he is concerned with the old swimming pool as a source of waterpower.

Last week, however, came a reminder of the fact that the circus business is an industry, subject to profits and losses, to fat seasons and lean, and subject also to mergers, combinations, monopolization. It was the monopolistic aspect of the circus which last week attracted attention. For, through buying out American Circus Corp., John Ringling, large, two-chinned proprietor of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus became owner of every U. S. circus of any considerable size. American Circus Corp. was the management company for Sells-Floto, John Robinson, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Sparks and Al G. Barnes circuses. In absorbing American Circus Corp.. Mr. Ringling in one all-embracing gesture eliminated competition in a manner which in almost any other field would have excited public clamor and governmental disapproval. But a circus is not a necessity of life and there is a certain justice in the fact that there now undoubtedly exists that "Greatest Show on Earth," as which every circus has billed itself from the time when the first tent rose, on the first lot. Mr. Ringling will continue, however, to operate his various shows as separate units.

It was a popular preference for acrobatics instead of music that started Mr. Ringling, youngest of seven Ringling Bros.* on his career as circus-man. Back in the late '70s, the brothers organized a concert troupe, discovered that the addition first of a contortionist, later of a trapeze act, materially increased box office business. Then came a menagerie in the shape of one hyena, to the laughter of which was later added the roar of a lion and the leaps of a kangaroo. It was not until he had been for several seasons a circus man that Mr. Ringling even saw an elephant. But gradually the show grew bigger, the animals wilder, the freaks more peculiar and the patronage more substantial. In 1907 Mr. Ringling bought control of Barnum & Bailey, became leader of the industry which he now dominates. His combined employe list totals some 6,500, and his wealth is estimated in eight figures.

There is little of the traditional show man in Mr. Ringling except that he is sartorially on the same plane as New York's Mayor Walker. He is the owner of various oil-wells and railroads, of a Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, mansion, a 46-acre estate at Alpine, N. J., a Venetian palazzo at Sarasota, Fla. At Sarasota he has a museum, but not in the circus sense of the word. It is filled with Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Corots, Tintorettos, and works of many another classicist, but no moderns. Last June he bought Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, price $40,950. The museum (largest south of the Mason-Dixon line) is built of marble taken from the temples of ancient Greece.

Mr. Ringling is now in his sixties. Said he: "Circus people are hard-working and thrifty. They all save up to have homes. . . . They can't get drunk even if they wanted to."

* The brothers: Otto, Gus, Henry, Charlie, Alf T., Al and John. Only John is now living.