Struggles and Triumphs
Phineas Taylor Barnum, 1869
How do you start a business without money and get back up after ruin? Phineas Barnum tells his own life: a museum bought on credit, a little “general” in the queen's palace, a tour by a singer he had never heard, a crash caused by one signature, and a comeback. You will see how he created attention, what his methods cost the people he put on display, and how he climbed out of the pit.
Who it is for
For anyone starting a business without capital, looking for a way to tell people about it, or going through a financial failure, and for anyone curious how the famous American showman lived and went broke.
I have at last touched bottom, and today I am happy to announce that I have come ashore.
An Island That Did Not Exist
A ten-year-old boy from the town of Bethel in Connecticut is finally going to see his estate. On his christening, his grandfather gave him five acres of land called Ivy Island, and ever since, his relatives and neighbours had told everyone that he was the richest child in the county. The boy makes his way through a swamp, sinks up to his waist, is stung by hornets, and a workman fells a tree to get them across a stream. On the other side, scrubby bushes and a black snake await him. The estate turned out to be a barren bog, and for years the family teased him about it.
The boy's name was Phineas Taylor Barnum. At fifteen he buried his father in boots bought on credit: the family's property did not cover even half of the father's debts. At thirty-one he will buy a large museum on Broadway in New York without money, then bring the Swedish singer Jenny Lind to America and grow rich. At forty-five he will go bankrupt because of a single signature, and by fifty he will climb out again. He finished his book, Struggles and Triumphs, in 1869, on the day of his fifty-ninth birthday.
This is a man's account of himself, cheerful and not always impartial: the book was itself part of his publicity. Barnum readily confesses to his tricks, but among the “curiosities” in his exhibitions were living people, and we will say so plainly.
You will see how to buy a business without capital, draw in audiences, and climb out onto the shore when everything is lost. Barnum hoped his story would support those who struggle against an unfavourable fate. If you are in such a struggle now, this book is for you.
A Museum Bought on Sheer Resolve
Barnum's first years as an adult were spent earning quickly and losing even faster. His shop sold on credit and left behind a ledger of debts annotated “died,” “ran off,” “ruined.” A partner bought out his share on instalments and sailed to Rotterdam without paying. In 1841 Barnum was writing advertisements for a circus at four dollars a week.
An acquaintance who held Barnum's mortgage for five hundred dollars wrote: since you will not save anything anyway, pay up now. The letter stung Barnum, and he decided to stop living from one paycheque to the next.
Soon he learned that the American Museum was for sale for fifteen thousand dollars: a huge collection of curiosities that had long been losing money. It seemed to Barnum that it lacked only energy, tact and generosity. A friend asked what he intended to pay with, and Barnum replied: “With nerve. I have no silver or gold.”
He wrote to the building's owner, the merchant Olmsted: buy the collection in your name, and I will pay on time along with the rent, and if I miss a single payment I will leave and forfeit everything I have paid in. Bind me as tightly as you like, he wrote, only give me a chance to climb out. Barnum took on all the risk and left the profit to the owner. He arrived at the meeting on the minute, and his guarantors, by Olmsted's account, praised him as though they were his partners.
The deal was nearly snatched by operators who wanted to issue shares in the museum and pocket the difference. Barnum flooded the newspapers with mocking notes, and nobody bought the shares. He had also agreed with the seller in writing in advance: if the operators had not paid by 26 December, the museum would pass to him the next day for twelve thousand, paid in instalments over seven years. They did not pay, and on 27 December 1841 the museum became his.
The family lived on six hundred dollars a year. Olmsted once found Barnum at the cash desk with cold salt pork and bread: a hot dinner, he explained, would come only on Sundays, until he had paid his debts. Within less than a year the museum's profit had covered its cost.
About the author
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891) started as a clerk in a village shop, in 1841 bought the American Museum in New York and became famous as an impresario of spectacles. Later he sat in the legislature of Connecticut, and in 1871 he founded a huge travelling show.
All books by this author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Terms from the book
- Connecticut
- acres
- Lind
- mortgage
- Washington
- penny
- shilling
- Wall Street
- Jerome
- bill of exchange
- Bethel: A small town in Connecticut where Barnum was born in 1810.
- Ivy Island: “Ivy Island,” a boggy plot of land near Bethel that his grandfather gave Barnum at his christening. The name is from the book.
- Broadway: The main street of New York, lined with theatres and places of entertainment.
- American Museum: A museum of curiosities on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York, founded in 1810. Barnum bought it in 1841, and in 1865 the building burned down.
- Olmsted: Francis Olmsted, a New York merchant who had retired from business and owned the building of the American Museum.
- Heth: Joice Heth, an elderly Black woman who was shown to the public in 1835 as a 161-year-old former slave and nurse of George Washington. She died in 1836, and the autopsy showed she was much younger.
- Fiji: An archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Barnum exhibited the “Fiji Mermaid” from 1842; by his later conclusion, it was a fake made by Japanese craftsmen.
- Bridgeport: A city in Connecticut on the shore of Long Island Sound, where Barnum lived and Charles Stratton grew up.
- Stratton: Charles Stratton (1838-1883), who performed under the name General Tom Thumb. Barnum began showing him at the age of five, in 1842, and from 1845 they were equal partners.
- Victoria: Queen of Great Britain from 1837 to 1901. In 1844 she received General Tom Thumb three times at Buckingham Palace.
- East Bridgeport: A district on the east bank of the river, opposite Bridgeport, which Barnum and a partner began building up in 1851 on former farmland.
- Wheeler & Wilson: A company that made sewing machines. It bought the empty clock factory building in East Bridgeport and became one of the city's largest enterprises.
- Bacon: Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and statesman.
- Greeley: Horace Greeley (1811-1872), founder and editor of the New York newspaper Tribune, and Barnum's friend.
All terms
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