Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1916 — LABOR SHORTAGE MAY END CIRCUS SCHEDULE [ARTICLE]

LABOR SHORTAGE MAY END CIRCUS SCHEDULE

Hagenbeck-Wallace Show Still Finds It Difficult to Keep Moving and May Quit. A dispatch says the Carl Hagen-beck-Wallace circus, here last Saturday, and now touring Illinois, may be compelled to cancel the remainder of the show’s schedule and pull into winter quarters. After the show got into Illinois the farmers made a raid on the labor crews and by offering $3 a day and board to work in the harvest fields got a good portion of the tent, train and wagon forces. At Danville, 111., the show received.7s new men that were sent by an Indianapolis labor agency, and before night the farmers had corraled them. x

This is not the only show that has been handicapped on account of the scarcity of labor. Several of the smaller shows have had to abandon their schedules and quit. The big shows are only able to keep moving by paying their common laborers double and sometimes three times the customary wage. A few years ago circuses could get all the men they needed at from $lO to sls a month. Now they can’t get them by offering $25 to $35 a month and board.