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The Showmen's Culture: Life, Labor, and Negotiated Loyalty among Traveling Entertainment Workers in the Gilded Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

MADELINE STEINER Open the ORCID record for MADELINE STEINER [Opens in a new window]
MADELINE STEINER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of South Carolina College of Arts and Sciences. Email: steinem@email.sc.edu.
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Abstract

This article explores the formation of a “showmen's culture” among circus employees in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, a cultural identity which had the effect of diffusing labor conflicts in this developing industry. The showmen's culture created an affective bond between employees of all levels, from manual laborers, to middle managers, to company owners. This article links cultural history and labor history and provides an example of how workers outside traditional manual-labor industries coped with the challenges of industrialization, and how proprietors used the same cultural identity to their own advantage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , October 2023 , pp. 490 - 512
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies

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References

1 Whiting Allen, “The Organization of a Modern Circus,” Cosmopolitan magazine, Aug. 1902.

2 Charles Theodore Murray, “On the Road with the ‘Big Show’,” Cosmopolitan magazine, June 1900.

3 “The Circus Colossal,” clipping, n.d., Townsend Walsh Papers, MWEZ + n.c. 4032, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library (hereafter BRTC, NYPL).

4 Davis, Janet M., The Circus Age: Culture & Society under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Lewis, Robert M, From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America 1830–1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Toll, Robert C., Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Warren, Louis S., Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Vintage Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

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12 Work on the thematic content of traveling amusement includes Davis; Abbott, Lynn and Seroff, Doug, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (Oxford, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Ashby, LeRoy, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006)Google Scholar; Eckley, Wilton, The American Circus (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1984)Google Scholar; Kasson, Joy S., Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001)Google Scholar; Lott, Eric, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Mahar, William J., Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Toll.

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14 “Roustabout” was a general term typically referring to a manual laborer with a traveling amusement. Bert J. Chipman, Hey Rube, ed. Harry B. Chipman (Hollywood, CA: Hollywood Print Shop, 1933), 135.

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17 Davis, 71; Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1903–4, Box 47, Folder 12, McCaddon Collection, Princeton University Library (hereafter MC, PUL).

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20 Warren, 371. American Indians were employed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West almost exclusively as performers rather than laborers, leading to their absence in much of this chapter.

21 Employment contract for Ed Ames, canvasman, 1910, Box 2, Folder 12, Adam Forepaugh & Sells Bros. Collection, Circus World Museum (hereafter CWM).

22 Time Book, 1910, Vol. 6, Adam Forepaugh & Sells Bros. Collection, CWM.

23 These figures are based on the Forepaugh & Sells Bros. Time Book for 1910. The departments analyzed were nonperforming, nonmanagement jobs. As listed in the time book, these departments are: Animal Men, Bag Stock, Canvas, Elephants, Lights, Porters, Props, Ring Stock, Side Show (Non-performers), Train, Trappings, and Ushers.

24 Forepaugh & Sells Bros. Time Book, 1910. The precise calculations for this “held-back” pay is difficult to ascertain from records. Although most men did receive some extra payment at the end of the season, the formula the treasurer used to calculate this amount is unknown as no clear pattern emerges from the data.

25 A. H. Saxon, “New Light on the Life of James A. Bailey,” Bandwagon, Dec. 1996, 4–9.

26 Apps, Ringlingville, USA, 20.

27 Watt, “Side Lights on the Circus Business,” 21.

28 Davis, The Circus Age, 64.

29 Ringling Bros. Route Book, 1901, Box 47, Folder 23, MC, PUL

30 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1888, Box 47, Folder 3, MC, PUL; Apps, 102.

31 Apps, 21.

32 Coup, William Cameron, Sawdust & Spangles: Stories & Secrets of the Circus (Washington, DC: Paul A. Ruddell, 1901), 26Google Scholar.

33 Apps, 103.

34 Quoted in Blackstone, Buckskins, Bullets & Business, 37.

35 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1883, Box 47, Folder 1, MC PUL.

36 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1888.

37 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1884, Box 47, Folder 1, MC, PUL; Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1885, Box 47, Folder 1, MC, PUL; Ringling Bros. Route Book, 1892, Box 47, Folder 23, MC, PUL.

38 Cooper, Bailey & Co's Great London Circus, Sanger's British Menagerie, International Allied Shows Route Book, 1879, Box 46, MC, PUL.

39 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1891, Box 47, MC, PUL.

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43 Chipman, Hey Rube, 15.

44 Coup, Sawdust & Spangles, 4.

45 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1882, Box 47, Folder 1, MC, PUL.

46 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1893, Box 47, Folder 6, MC, PUL.

47 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1884.

48 Coup, 6.

49 Handy, Father of the Blues, 44.

50 Ibid., 45.

51 Chipman.

52 Van Alstine, “Circus Days and Circus Ways.”

53 Chipman.

54 Van Alstine.

55 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1890, Box 47, Folder 3, MC, PUL.

56 Van Alstine.

57 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1890.

58 Ringling Bros. Route Book, 1892.

59 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Route Book, 1896, Box 46, Folder 6, MC, PUL.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Davis, The Circus Age, 143.

63 Ibid.; Kasson, John F., Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002)Google Scholar.

64 Winter, Thomas, Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 4Google Scholar.

65 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Route Book, 1896.

66 Winter, 71.

67 Ibid., 47.

68 “James A. Bailey Dead,” New York Dramatic News, 21 April 1906, clipping, T-CLP James Bailey, BRTC, NYPL.

69 “Great Showman Is Dead,” 1906, T-CLP James Bailey, BRTC, NYPL.

70 “The Good Old Days of Haverly,” New York Times, 12 Oct. 1917.

71 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1888.

72 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1896, Box 47, MC, PUL.

73 Cohen, Making a New Deal, 184.

74 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Route Book, 1896.

75 “Timeline,” International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees, azt www.iatse.net/timeline.

76 Higbie, Indispensable Outcasts, 200.

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78 Barnum & Bailey Route Book, 1905, Box 47, MC, PUL.

79 Chipman, Hey Rube, 154.

80 Employment contract for Ed Ames.