When I was a youngster in a country town I used to marvel at the extraordinary transformation wrought upon the bill boards and barns and fences in a single day or night, without any perceptible human agency. The circus bill poster was a member of the Santa Claus family—coming from nowhere and vanishing into nothing, but leaving the glowing traces of his visit in highly colored pictorial illustrations that covered the dead walls in town and along the country roads. Now, however, I know all about it. Having traveled with him by night and by day and in a measure made myself a part of him and his, I have become initiated into the secrets of the paste pot and brush and amateur paste master of the circus advertising art. I have actually witnessed.

The Putting Up of Bills
      The various phases of show advertising are apparently simple; until you come to circus advertising, which is on a scale unknown to the theatrical world. This not only in the vast amount of money annually invested in it, but in the perfect labyrinth of details incidental to the system. A single advertising car, such as used by Barnum & Bailey, independently of the money invested in the car, and the paper handled by it, costs $1,000 a week. Multiply this by six, the number of cars thus used by that firm, and you have the sum total of $6,000 a week for this single line of advertising. Each car carries sixteen men land is accompanied by a responsible manager and by an advance press agent, who attends to the newspaper end of the business.

Distribution of Advertising Cars
      All of the six advertising cars, excepting one, run over the route laid out lor the circus to come, and are just so many days ahead and between each other. Each is expected to make a town a day outside of the big cities, where the show remains longer than that time. Car No. 1 is an exception; being known as the skirmishing or opposition car, and running here and there where special work is to be done because of the opposition of other shows or for other reasons. The advertising car is attached to any trains, not limited, on the roads with which the circus railroad contractor has previously made contracts for transportation. The first man to actually cover the route of the show is the general contractor, who makes arrangements for everything used or consumed by the show, including the advance men. He contracts for license, exhibition grounds, billboards, liverymen, straw, food, hotels, etc. If there are no billboards, or an insufficient supply, he contracts for the erection of boards.

Work and Play on a Car Under Way
      When our car No. 2 approached a new town Mr. Hedges, the agent in charge of it, had before him a brief of all the contracts made by the man in advance, a detail map of the boards in town, and the country routes to be covered, knew how many sheets had to be put up, and how many lithographs might be used, where the car would be left, and when it must leave in order to make connection for the next show town. He knew the hotel where his force would get breakfast, and had telegraphed the liveryman to have so many teams ready for the country routes at the car next morning. In the car for the benefit of the working force was posted an outline of this necessary information. From this card the boss billposter divided up his force so as to cover the routes as rapidly as possible, and before he went to bed each of the sixteen men knew what he had to do the next day. Certain men were told off for town work and the others divided up for country. Then each man took his turn at the broad counter on one side of the car and arranged his paper and pasted the date lines on the bottom of

His Window Lithographe
      At the lirst peep of dawn we are routed out, to find the car motionless, but to hear the first murmur of steam and human voices. Outside I find the entire force rushing up and down and stirring around half a dozen big galvanized iron cans. The men are clad in their pasty suits and remind me of the witches around the cauldron in Macbeth. The car is near the yet silent station, the town at hand is still buried in slumber. The stack leading from the engine boiler in the rear of our car is sending up clouds of black smoke and the smothered gurgle of steam comes from the bottom of one of the big cans of flour and water. They are cooking the paste. One man is holding the nozzle of a steam pipe down in the can, another is carrying water, another dividing up the bags of flour, another cleaning the slopping over paste from can and bucket. The others are arranging the paper for the different wagons and town workers. Then I discover that the steam arrangement is on the inside and a part of our car, the connection with the nozzle being made below

Near One of the Trucks
      From two to three barrels of the best flour are used daily on the road; and in big cities where much billing is done five or six barrels are required. This paste it very thick, and is used only by liberal dilution of water wherever the bills are being posted. A big tin dipper full of piste from the big can will make a bucket of paste for service. A big can, a couple of buckets, the dipper, and two long-handled hoe-shaped brushes are the outfit for a country wagon. Experience has taught the men just how much of this flour and water is necessary to put up a certain number of sheets. The eagle-eyed man back with the show can tell from the reports whether so much as a bucketful has been wasted. And that must be explained. So many pounds of flour, so many sheets—and the return of the number of sheets and the purchase of flour tells the story.

Bargains in Barnsides
      From the making of paste we move down the dead streets to the country hotel where breakfast is prepared for us; then the whole force swarms down upon the car where the livery teams are now ready, and scrambling into the pasty suits again we are qnickly out on the country roads. The local liveryman is familiar with the routes and directs his drivers. With him I follow one wagon for ten miles. It is along a beautiful valley at the bottom of which ripples the dark Lehigh. Mountains rise on either side and sloping fields and rugged uplands set with pretty farm houses tell of rural prosperity. The sun is just peeping over the first chain of hills when we rouse the farmer from his breakfast. He has a nice new barn fronting the road which the bill posters measure with greedy eyes. The one who is boss for the day jumps down and goes to the door. The farmer comes out in his shirt sleeves and argues with him. He says he has no prejudice against the circus; but he is a

Member of the Church
      and is afraid the neighbors will talk. The old man keeps his eyes averted from the ticket order which is prominently held in the tempter's hand, for fear he will be unable to resist. Time is precious, however, and the circus man runs down the walk and remounts to his place, and we drive on.
      The next place is all right. The bill posters know it before going to the house, because the marks of the last circus bills are hanging in tattered remnants to the old barn. While the boss goes to the house the other man gets out his buckets and brushes and goes for water. He considers permission a "dead sure thing." The other man carries a little order book each leaf of which contains a contract to the effect that the owner of the place gives permission for posting bills on his barn, or stable or shop, and promises that the said bills shall be allowed to remain there to a certain date. In consideration he receives from two to six tickets. The circus man offers him the very lowest number and generally keeps him down to two, but the smart farmer makes the man

Give Him Three or Four
      Then the owner signs the contract very reluctantly always—as a farmer hates to sign anything—the circus man places a little square across the leaf and tears off the order so as to include the printed number agreed upon, enters the man's name on the corresponding stub against the house and then bolts down the road. The other fellow, as soon as he sees the farmer laboriously writing his name, gets water from the well or spring and yanks on his overalls. Within the next half minute both men are sopping the sides of the barn with paste.
      Before this is done, however, one has with a date line rapidly measured the space to be covered and decided what stand of bills it shall be. It may be 9-sheet, 15-sheet, or even larger, and they have several different kinds which will fill the same space. The object is to get up as great a variety along the route as possible—and the days' reports will show how successful they have been. During the process of getting up the paper the farmer, his children, and hired man, if about the house, will come down to the front and gaze

Upon the Dazzling Pictures
      The artistic job and the deftness and rapidity with which it is executed always cause scarcely subdued admiration. But no time is wasted in conversation with the natives. In the twiukling of an eye the work is done, the bucket and brushes restored to the wagon and we are on our way on the road on a trot.
      The route is twenty-two miles, which makes it a forty-four mile drive—a pretty stiff day's work in itself. Yet I have the actual report of such a drive one day and the two men put up 596 sheets on fifteen stands, making fifteen contracts and giving out orders for forty-one tickets. For my own individual comfort I am very well pleased to get back in a light buggy from a ten-mile trip, or a drive of twenty miles, and without sticking any bills.
      Every agent in the advance who is entrusted with the expenditure of money has a little expense book in which every item is entered in detail, and every expenditure of $1 or over must be accompanied by a voucher. This book covers just one week and closes with a summary and balances in a regular printed ledger form, which shows

The Financial Condition
      of that man at a glance. It is duly closed and forwarded to the treasurer of he show each week to be entered on the general books, and a new book is opened by the agent with the beginning of the week. He also keeps a small ledger of his own during the season, which is presumed to balance with his account rendered to the treasurer. The latter has a regular ledger account with every man connected with the show, from the humblest bill poster whom he never sees to the high priced rider in the ring. The system is as perfect as the business of any bank. In fact, the owners of the show know exactly from day to day where they stand, which is more than the best regulated bank knows, as the correctness of the latter's balance sheets depends upon the solvency of men and corporations not under its control.

The Press Agent and His Ways
      With each advertising car is a press agent, whose operations are in conjunction with the movements of the car, though wholly independent of it and in a different field. There are huge cases in the car which contain his cuts and prepared advertisements. The latter have been prepared in the winter time when all the other printed matter is made up. The advertisements are in the form of one column, two column, double half column matter, just as they are to appear in the newspapers. Upon the variety and freshness of style in which these are written rest something of the reputation of the general press agent who prepares them. While they contain about the same material, no two alike are used in the same town. And the same thing applies to the reading notices which accompany them. Both display advertisements and reading notices are printed and bound in tablets and numbered for

Convenience in Handling
      The general press agent travels with car No. 2, and the work of those who come after him is chiefly supplementary. The "free lance" who travels with the skirmishing or opposition car (No. 1) has a different line of work. When car No. 2's force of billposters are at work scouring the town and country, Mr. Hamilton, who travels on regular trains when possible, and stops at good hotels, gets up in the morning and sallies out to work the newspaper offices. The first thing he does is to make a contract with some prominent drug store or bookstore for permission for a circus agent to sell tickets in that store on show day. The consideration is so many tickets and is let forth in a printed contract signed by the proprietor. Then he attacks the nearest newspaper. His encounter with the business manager, or the editor (where it is a country office) is one of the most interesting and often amusing features of the advance service. By his experience and judgment of human nature the show may be saved hundreds and

Thousands of Dollars
      The country papers look upon the circus as "fat" and charge, and usually get, the highest rates for their space. There are usually four or five papers in a town, and often that many dailies in a place of not more than ten thousand inhabitants. Each daily claims the largest circulation and in every office the showman is assured that "this is one of the best show towns in the country." The agent knows all about this and a look of unutterable weariness is apt to come over his face. From a casual comparison of the estimate of the circulation calculator with the town's population it is usually apparent that even the little children take at least one daily newspaper, and the heads of the families two or three. Then comes some earnest figure work on the part of the newspaper man, which almost invariably results in a charge for space that, based on circulation, would bring the rates of a metropolitan journal to about $500 an inch. Sometimes after considerable sparring the high rate is grumblingly accepted, and the showman quietly unloads about two columns of "reading notices" on the newspaper man and

Departs wih a Sardonic Grin
      Every office presents an entirely new condition and requires a different method of approach. When they are all done and the contracts have been signed the press agent goes down to the par, gets out his advertisements, and cuts and takes them around to the papers. He is then ready for the next town. Sometimes no conclusion is reached in the office and the agent firmly refuses to submit to the terms demanded and goes away—to be chased up eventually by the newspaper representative before he can get out of town. Sometimes the papers combine to demand so much apace at the same price without regard to local prominence; and sometimes a paper insists upon the same price for a small space that other papers get for a greater one. All of these conditions must be met in a kindly spirit; for it is the policy of the show to give all the legitimate papers patronage at liberal rates and that office must be hoggish indeed if it it left out.
      It is a wonderful and expensive and thorough system. For when show day comes around more than fifty men have covered every village railroad route and country road and newspaper along a vast belt of country forty to fifty miles wide-a belt which had its beginning in New York and extends before the close of the season from the Atlantic to the Pacific and return to the quiet winter quarters at Bridgeport, Conn.

From: The Cleveland Leader (Cleveland, OH), June 10, 1894, n.p.n.

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