“I am very sorry to say, Mr. Barnum,” said that honest, good-hearted manager, “that our business here is important and serious. Although we, of course, like to bow to your decisions, and are ready to acknowledge that your experience is greater than ours, we have had a long and serious consultation this morning, and have unanimously concluded that your show is more than twice too large to succeed; that you will lose nearly four hundred thousand dollars if you try to drag it all through the country, and that your only chance of success is to sell off more than half of your curiosities and horses and wagons, or else divide them into three, or certainly two distinct shows.”
“Is this a mutiny, gentlemen?” I asked, with a feeling and countenance far from solemn.
“By no means a mutiny, father,” said Hurd, “but really it is a very serious affair. We have been making a careful and close calculation.” Here he drew from his pocket a sheet of paper covered with figures, and read from it: “The expenses of your exhibitions, including nearly a thousand men and horses, the printing, board, salaries, &c., will average more than $4,000 per day. But call it $4,000. You show thirty weeks—180 days. Thus your expenses for the tenting season, besides wear and tear and general depreciation, will be at least $720,000. This is about twice as much as any show ever took in one season, except your own, last year. This is the year of the presidential election, which, on account of political excitement and mass meetings, always injures travelling shows. We have carefully looked over the towns which you will be able to touch this summer, not going west of Ohio, for you cannot get beyond that State in a single season, and we compute your receipts at not over $350,000, which would leave you a loser of $370,000.”
“Are you not a little mistaken in some of your estimates?” I asked.
“Mr. Barnum, figures never lie,” exclaimed Mr. Coup, with great earnestness, and, pulling a pocket-map from his breast pocket, he opened it, and I saw that he was set down for the next spokesman.
“Our teams cannot travel with heavy loads more than an average of twenty miles per day,” continued Coup; “now please follow the lines marked on this map, and you will find that we are compelled to make seventy-one stands where there are not people enough within five miles to give us an average of $1,000 per day. That will involve a loss of $213,000, and, I tell you, that taking accidents, storms, and other risks, the season will be ruinous if you don’t reduce the show more than one-half.”
“Coup,” I replied, “did not thousands of people come fifty, sixty, a hundred miles last year, by railroad excursions, to see my show?”
He confessed that they did.
“Well,” I replied, “if you have lost faith in the discernment of the public, I have not, and I propose to prove it.” Then, laughing heartily, I added:
“Gentlemen, I thank you for your advice; but I won’t reduce the show a single hair or feather; on the contrary, I will add five or six hundred dollars per day to my expenses!”