[meteorite-list] OFF-TOPIC: P. T. BARNUM

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:15:11 -0500
Message-ID: <054901c76b3d$3a8d62f0$ab7e4b44_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi,

    Thanks to Susan for a Barnum story I hadn't
heard before. But, then, there are so many Barnum
stories.

    Most people think of Barnum (if they think of
him at all) as some kind of con man, more or less.
He was, first and foremost, a Showman, if not the
Showman of all time, but believe me, you always
got your money's worth in entertainment. Today,
we would call him an Impressario, at the least.

    He was also an author. By the year 1900, his
autobiography existed in more copies in the US
than any other book except the Bible.

    He was a unceasing debunker of mediums,
spiritualists and other frauds, and another of his
best-selling books was aimed to do that, and did
it very well.

    As for con men, he probably lost as much
money TO con men than he ever made from
his own flashy and exaggerated exhibitions.
He knew what the suckers wanted, because
he was one. He probably made (and lost)
more money than any other man in the 19th
century.

    His third book, available on-line, is:

ART OF MONEY GETTING
or, Golden Rules for Making Money
by Phineas. T. Barnum, 1880
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/

    It is entertaining, easy to read, very
straightforward in language to us 21st century
types for a writer who was born in 1810, and
most important, EVERYTHING he says about
managing money is TRUE. A great book.
Phineas would be the first to say so.

    In his way, he is as great an inventor as
Thomas Edison. He did everything possible
in every form of Show Business, but he
certainly didn't invent Show Business.

    No, he did something better: he invented
The Audience.


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "batkol" <batkol at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>; "Michael Farmer"
<meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>; "M come Meteorite Meteorites"
<mcomemeteorite2004 at yahoo.it>; "Notkin" <geoking at notkin.net>; "Meteorite
List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 12:51 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mr. Kramskoi & Meteorite Offers from Russia




P. T. Barnum Never Did Say
"There's a Sucker Born Every Minute"
By R. J. Brown
Editor-in-Chief

P. T. Barnum is most often associated with the circus sideshow and the
display of freaks. While this is true, he is also the founding force behind
one of America's most famous circuses: Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum is
also affiliated with the famous quote "There's a sucker born every minute."
History, unfortunately, has misdirected this quotation. Barnum never did say
it. Actually, it was said by his competitor. Here's the incredible story.

>From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied
archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how
to pull off a hoax. It seems that many an evangelist at the time had been
preaching that there were giants in the earth. In June of 1868 Hull traveled
back to Fort Dodge, Iowa where there was a gypsum quarry he had recalled
seeing two years earlier. Even then, he had noticed that the dark blue
streaks running through the soft lime rock resembled human veins. Realizing
this its appearance was tailor-made for his hoax and it was easy to carve,
Hull hired a group of quarry workers to cut off a slab measuring twelve feet
long, four feet wide and two feet thick.

In November, Hull had his gypsum wrapped in canvas and hoisted onto a wagon.
Since the nearest railroad was forty miles away, it proved to be a long,
difficult job. He then had the slab of gypsum shipped by rail to Chicago
where he had hired a stone cutter named Edward Burghardt to carve a giant.
Burghardt and his two assistants, were sworn to secrecy and agreed to work
on the piece in a secluded barn during their off hours and Sundays. The
instructions were to carve the giant as if it had died in great pain, and
the final result was an eerie figure, slightly twisted in apparent agony,
with his right hand clutching his stomach. All of the details were there;
toenails, fingernails, nostrils, sex organs and so forth. Even a needlepoint
mallet was used to add authentic-looking skin pores. When the carving was
done, sulfuric acid and ink were used to make the figure look aged.

The giant finished, Hull then had the figure shipped by rail to the farm of
William Newell, his cousin, located near the town of Cardiff, New York. In
the dead of night, Hull, Newell and his oldest son buried the giant between
the barn and house. They were instructed to say nothing about it and that
Hull would let them know in about a year of what the next stage was.

Luckily, about six months later, on another farm near the Newell's, some
million year-old fossil bones were dug up. Newspapers around the country
reported the finding. Hull was filled with glee in reading the accounts.

True to his word, one year after burying the giant, Hull sent word to his
cousin on October 15, 1869, to start the next stage of the hoax. Newell
hired two laborers to dig a new well near his home. Newell directed them to
the exact spot he wanted the well dug and went back into the house to
wait -- anxiously. Sure enough, well into the day, the two laborers rushed
up to the house to announce their discovery: a giant turned to stone! The
laborers and both Newells carefully excavated the area surrounding the
giant.

News of this amazing discovery spread throughout the valley and soon wagon
loads of neighbors streamed into Newell's farm to see the giant. By
mid-afternoon, Newell erected a tent around the "grave" and started charging
25 cent admission. Two days later, the Syracuse Journal (New York) printed
an article about the discovery. Being greedy, Newell raised the price to 50
cents, and a stage coach company made four round trips a day from Syracuse
to the Newell farm. Thousands came every day. Among the visitors were
clergymen, college professors and distinguished scientists. Before long, the
expert's opinions split into two theories; one side claimed it was a true
fossilized human giant and the other side pronounced it an authentic ancient
statue. No one asserted that it was a fake!

About ten days after the discovery, and about the time the Cardiff Giant, as
the papers had named it, started receiving national attention, Hull sold
two-thirds interest in the giant for $30,000 to a five-man syndicate in
Syracuse, the head of which was a banker named David Hannum. The syndicate
moved the giant to an exhibition hall in Syracuse and raised the admission
price to a dollar a head. Unknown to them, P. T. Barnum sent an agent to see
the giant and make an assessment. The particular Sunday the representative
saw the giant, the crowds were abnormally large -- about 3,000 people. The
agent wired the news back to Barnum and Barnum instructed him to make an
offer of $50,000 to buy it. Hannum turned his offer down.

The Cardiff Giant was the most talked about exhibit in the nation. Barnum
wanted the giant to display himself while the attraction was still a hot
topic of the day. Rather than upping his offer, Barnum hired a crew of
workers to carve a giant of his own. Within a short time, Barnum unveiled
HIS giant and proclaimed that Hannum had sold Barnum the original giant and
that Hannum was now displaying a fake! Thousands of people flocked to see
Barnum's giant. Many newspapers carried the version that Barnum had given
them; that is, Hannum's giant was a fake and Barnum's was authentic. It is
at this point that Hannum -- NOT BARNUM -- was quoted as saying "There's a
sucker born every minute." Hannum, still under the impression that HIS giant
was authentic, was referring to the thousands of "fools" that paid money to
see Barnum's fake and not his authentic one.

Hannum brought a lawsuit against Barnum for calling his giant a fake. When
it came to trial, Hull stepped forward and confessed that the Cardiff Giant
was a hoax and the entire story. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be
sued for calling Hannum's giant a fake since it was a fake after all.
Thereafter, Hannum's name was lost to history while Barnum was left with the
misplaced stigma of being the one to say "There's a sucker born every
minute."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Michael Farmer" <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>; "M come Meteorite Meteorites"
<mcomemeteorite2004 at yahoo.it>; "Notkin" <geoking at notkin.net>; "Meteorite
List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mr. Kramskoi & Meteorite Offers from Russia


> Hi, Mike, List,
>
> I have to quarrel with your arithmetic, Mike.
> A sucker a day is only 365 new suckers a year,
> and the population of suckers is far too great to
> have been created at that rate.
> The great Phineas T. Barnum is the source
> of that quote, and I believe that he said, "There's
> a sucker born every minute," Even that is only
> 525,960 new suckers a year, which sounds a
> little on the shy side to me. But I'll take old
> Phineas' word for it; he knew his suckers.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Farmer" <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
> To: "M come Meteorite Meteorites" <mcomemeteorite2004 at yahoo.it>; "Notkin"
> <geoking at notkin.net>; "Meteorite List"
> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 10:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mr. Kramskoi & Meteorite Offers from Russia
>
>
> A sucker is born every day.
> Michael Farmer
>
Received on Tue 20 Mar 2007 06:15:11 PM PDT