Barnum, P. T.

One of the most famous sayings attributed to Phineas Taylor (P. T.) Barnum is “There's a sucker born every minute.” However, there is no evidence that Barnum actually uttered that phrase. Barnum was an entertainment promoter who presented and operated displays, museums, singing tours, and music halls that helped create and define popular culture in 19th-century America. His instructive observation about his role as a public entertainer and trickster is this: “The pubic appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.” In the arena of lies and deception, Barnum's “victims” came willingly.

Born in 1810, Barnum left the grocery business and entered the world of promotions in 1835, when he bought the rights to an exhibition featuring Joice Heth, who was described as “a negress aged 161 years, who formerly belonged to the father of Gen. [George] Washington. She has been a member of the Baptist Church for one hundred and sixteen years, and can rehearse many hymns, and sing them according to former custom.” Heth would also recount stories about Washington as an infant to inform the audience. A year later, Heth died at the less remarkable age of 80, but Barnum's career was launched nonetheless.

Barnum remained in the business of identifying and catering to public appetites until his death in 1891. At that time, the Washington Post declared him to be “the most widely known American that ever lived.” Scholars say that he helped craft the American middle class, and then entertained it, educated it, and took some of its money, all while becoming a national celebrity. While his name today often connotes shady practices, President [Page 58]James Garfield referred to Barnum as “the Kris Kringle of America,” hardly an indictment then or now. He demonstrated his public spiritedness by serving in the Connecticut General Assembly four times between 1865 and 1879; in 1875, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Barnum created and perfected many devices to harness public attention. By any strict measure, these devices misled the public, but no one objected. In fact, customers came by the tens of thousands. Among his refinements in mass persuasion was the ballyhoo or street bally, which was “the art of attracting a crowd,” and “endless schemes to start people talking about … attractions.”

Barnum's enterprises included a museum that he acquired in 1841, the American Museum in New York City. In those days, museums were evolving from philanthropic enterprises to commercial entities that displayed wild animals, natural history artifacts, waxworks, and other curiosities. Barnum's displays targeted a middlebrow audience, whereas cultural critics desired the sophistication of European museums. This criticism is embodied in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Smithsonian Institution, which were intended to supplant the vulgar commercial facilities such as Barnum's museum. Nevertheless, Barnum's facility served a million visitors at 25 cents apiece, and children for half price.

Barnum was also shaping culture through the museum's theater, which presented morality plays such as The Drunkard and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The plays had two themes, which were slavery and temperance, and had a single message: the joys of morality and the inevitable harms of vice. The moral stage was a safe alternative to conventional theaters, where Christians had reason to worry. Barnum's facility was didactic, guiding the lower classes toward virtue and away from urban wickedness. Successors to Barnum's American Museum were called dime museums and stood in contrast to the cultural palaces of MOMA and the Smithsonian. Dime-museum theaters also spawned vaudeville.

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