Imaginary Animals?

Before 1919 the Barnum & Bailey Circus was THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH and Ringling Brothers Circus was simultaneously THE WORLD'S GREATEST SHOW. In 1919 this duplicate hugeness was joined under one top. The result, according to the U. S. Bureau of Internal Revenue, was not only the biggest circus ever but one of the fanciest conspiracies "against the peace and dignity of the U. S." on record. Last week the circus income tax evasion case, touring one legal phase after another for over five years, pitched its tents in Manhattan as the Government began its prosecution.

Opening the Government's case, Assistant U. S. Attorney Joseph W. Burns charged that the Ringlings grossed $53,400,000 from 1918 through 1932 when the circus was incorporated, paid out about $42,600,000, leaving a net profit of almost $10,800,000--an average annual $720,000 net which indicates that the Big Top was a much smaller Big Business than it was cracked up to be. But, said the Government, Ringling Lawyer John M. Kelley and the two onetime revenue agents who had helped him prepare income tax returns had made it out to be an even smaller business: they reported net profits for the 15 years of only $4,324,000, an annual average of under $300,000.

Federal Judge Murray Hulbert and a Grade A jury heard notes of awe and amazement in Attorney Burns's voice as he made it clear that the Ringling tax tricks, exuberant, huge and clever, were worthy of the late great Phineas Taylor Barnum. The Government charged that many of the evasions were run of the mill failures to report full income from gate, concessions, dividends, stock manipulations and "false, fictitious and fraudulent" deductions for debts. Among the latter was one for $50,000 from the late Promoter George L. ("Tex") Rickard, allegedly subtracted twice. But in the centre ring of alleged Ringling evasions were their incredible inventories. And the more colossal the inventory, the more colossal the depreciations to be deducted.

The technique was simple, according to Prosecutor Burns: The exigencies of traveling would cause the circus to abandon a large number of animals they had never owned. Without the animals they no longer had need of chimerical cages in which to keep them, so those were also listed as abandoned--so were wagons, horses and railroad cars. "Bridgeport, Conn.," said Mr. Burns in a rather bitter mood, "must have resembled a jungle when the circus moved from there to new winter quarters in Sarasota, Fla. in 1927. Income tax returns for that year show the abandonment of 46 elephants, 23 camels, 23 lions, 18 bears, hundreds of monkeys and some 800 horses."

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