Following which, a loose purring issued from Shorty’s lips, to be echoed by the tigers.
“That’s their pay!” came laconically as the trainer walked to the chute. Then, “All right, Kids! Work’s over!”
Whereupon the great cats bounded through the doors for their permanent cages again, and still somewhat hazy, I left the steel arena. Everything had gone wrong! There had been no firing of a revolver, no lashing of steel-tipped whips; something radical had happened since the old days when Pop Jensen had beaten those three leopards about on the Old Clattertrap Shows. Either that or Pop Jensen had been an exception!
Since that first introduction, I’ve learned a few things about animals. A great many of these little facts have been gained by personal visits, often in as narrow a space as an eight-foot permanent cage in which the other occupant was anything from a leopard to a lion. And I’ve learned incidentally that Pop Jensen wasn’t an exception. He just belonged to another day, that is all, and his day is past. The animal trainer of the present is a different sort, with a different attitude toward the beasts under his control, different theories, different methods, and different ideas. Ask a present-day trainer about hot irons and all you’ll gain is a blank look. He wouldn’t know how to use them, and if he did, he wouldn’t admit it. He wants to hold his job, and with present-day circuses; hot irons or anything like them are barred. All for one very simple reason besides the humanitarian qualities. Jungle animals cost about eight times as much to-day as they did twenty or twenty-five years ago. No circus owner is going to mar a thousand-dollar bill if he can help it—and hot irons produce scars.
Which represents the business side of animal training as it exists to-day. There are two reasons; one being that the whole fabric of the circus business had changed in the last score of years from the low-browed “grifting” owner and his “grifting,” thieving, fighting personnel to a new generation of men who have higher ideals and who have realized that the circus is as much of an institution as a dry-goods store or the post-office department.
IN THE STEEL ARENA.
A TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACK.
Where the canvasmen and “roughnecks” and “razorbacks,” the laborers of the circus, once were forced to sleep beneath the wagons, or at best upon makeshift bunks, they now have sanitary berths, car porters, and sheets and pillow cases. Where they once ate the left-overs of stores; stale bread, old meat, and “puffed” canned goods, they now have food that is far better than that served in the United States Army. Where they formerly were the victims of hundred per cent. loan sharks, feeding upon them like so many human leeches; forcing them to pay double prices for every commodity and bit of clothing, and practically at the mercy of brutal bosses, their lot has been bettered until there is now at least one circus where the lot superintendent never allows his men to be commanded without a prefix unknown in a great many business institutions. He doesn’t swear at them, for instance, when he orders the tents strengthened against a possible blow. Instead, it is: