Dear Everyone, The other day Buckles had on his blog photos of Ringling under the Big Top gpomg back some years go. I never got an answer or an idea on how many workers were in volved in settin up the tents in those days. How many of them were connected with the Circus/ How many were hired in each city How many workers are involved in setting up the tent today, Big Apple. Cole Bros, Carson and Barnes etc? How many workers are involved in setting up the Circus today in a building?? I woul like to know please if at all possible. Thanks for answering me. J. Francis Dolphin, m.M. Cochabamba, Bolivia |
Friday, October 04, 2013
Question for Richard Reynolds!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hello, I was hoping someone would give you the number of people that worked for Ringling during this time period (1929-1931) as the working men would come and go. I am not an expert and don't know if any of the payroll records for these years would still be available. That is not to say that all of them came and went as a lot of them worked on the show for years and years. I would maybe guess 1000-1200 by just looking in some of the route books of these years when they still had baggage stock moving the show on and off the lot. The baggage stock teams would make two runs each morning hauling a wagon from the trains to the lot and would do the same in the evening making two trips hauling a wagon from the lot to the trains.
To give you some idea of the size of this show, please find below a train list of the show from the following year in 1932. This list was completed by early circus fan, Gordon Potter.
2- advance cars. They went ahead of the show by 2 to 3 weeks and carried the billing crews.
1st section
3- stock cars
15- flat cars
4- sleepers
2nd section
5- stock cars
11- flats
6- sleepers
3rd section
5-stocks
14- flats
4- sleepers
4th section
10- stock cars
11- sleepers
For a total of 90 railroad cars. They had replaced the early wooden flat cars a few years before and these steel flat cars were all 70' long.
They loaded 145 pieces of equipment on these flat cars each day rain or shine in a new town during the regular season when they were away from the large cities were they would sometimes have multi-day engagements.
These large railroad shows were true logistic miracles never to be seen again.
p.j.
To the locals to take a vacant lot and transform it into a tented city in a few hours,a modern miracle.
Then add lots of rain with knee deep mud and train wrecks etc as you must keep up with your paper.
And then to feed the crew 3 squares a day and what that would cost today even shopping at Sams.
Thank goodness we have photos and a few movies of what it used to be.
Great days of the circus.
Harry in Texas
Post a Comment