Off the Road

Into the Potomac freight yards just outside of Washington. D. C. last week rolled Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows Inc. Off the tent cars came rain-wet canvas to dry in the sun. lest spontaneous combustion destroy what labor combustion had left of the Greatest Show on Earth. Representative Robert Low Bacon of Long Island surveyed the sorry scene, declared through G. O. P.'s publicity office: "Not even the great Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus can compete with the circus the New Deal is now giving us."

Thus after six distressfully disputatious days at Scranton. Pa., young (34) John Ringling North's circus paused in Franklin Roosevelt's back yard to check up before proceeding to winter quarters at Sarasota, Fla. The show was off the road before midseason because Mr. North, having lost money lately, was unable to induce his union roustabouts to take a 25-c- pay cut. Last week Mr. North reached into a $250,000 "nut" acquired early in the season, paid off the roustabouts. He also paid off the thin man, the fat woman, the clowns, the midgets, most of whom agreed with Star Performer Frank ("Bring 'Em Back Alive") Buck that they should take the cut, go ahead with the show, and set up a more cooperative union than A. F. of L.'s American Federation of Actors.

But doughty Mr. Buck could not bring around the roustabouts. They preferred to believe A. F. A.'s Executive Secretary Ralph Whitehead. who declared that Mr. North, having lapped the cream from the big cities, used the pay issue as an excuse to get off the road. The A. F. A. also charged that Mr. North was trying to get out from under a fiveyear, closed-shop contract which A. F. A. signed last year with the bankers with whom his ancestral tents were then in pawn. Mr. North retorted that Mr. Whitehead had stubbornly declined to face depression facts. Meantime, shrewd Mr. North was reported preparing a neat finesse. To the Ringling-owned, non-union Al G. Barnes-Sells-Floto Circus in the West would go such attractions as Gargantua the Great, the wire-walking Naittos, the Flying Concellos, perhaps Mr. Buck. With them would go the Ringling Big Top, upping the smaller show's capacity from 6,000 to 10,000.

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