The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 27

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jumped from fourteen to twenty-two.
By the 1890s, Barnum’s Greatest Show
on Earth and other circuses were being
studied by the U.S. War Department
for information on how to more
efficiently move personnel and animals
and to enjoy reputations for being family-friendly
and educational. 57 Alongside
this more moral environment were
freak shows and side exhibitions, as circus-goers
made their way to the main
tents and the big top, show the circuses’
“diverse collection of social outsiders”
who found homes and acceptance in
a “nomadic community of oddballs.” 58
Despite circuses often being considered
“low” entertainment because of
their “sawdust, dirt, animal smells, and
the bizarre,” they continued to grow in
popularity because they offered upbeat,
optimistic performances and a culture
that audience members craved and
found reassuring during Reconstruction.
59 Even in his later years, Barnum
said he “found the great American public
appreciative and ready to respond
in proportion to the sum expended for
their gratification and amusement.” 60
Barnum even claimed he was not in
show business just to make money, but
that his showmanship was his mission
to “provide clean, moral and healthful
recreation for the public to which I have
so long catered.” 61 His critics and audiences
alike questioned his limits for
grandiosity, but even in his later years
Barnum said he had “never yet found
that limit.” 62
Just as Barnum’s Greatest Show
on Earth heralded the beginning of the
American entertainment industry, the
Transcontinental Railroad expanded