The Concessioner From "Snap-Shots of the Midway of the Pan-Am Expo" Men
follow expositions as a business. The running of these mammoth shows has almost
become one of the professions. In the principal departments the line of advance
is as surely marked, and the progress of an able man as certain, as it is in any
of the experienced walks of life. Expositions now come so often that a man
may find almost continuous employment with them, and there is about the same fascination
about it that there is about theatrical enterprises. The publicity attained has
a glamour in it, and spectacular success finds sure reward in some more
substantial employment. And there is also the lottery of it. No one can tell just
what an exposition will do; no one knows how far a man may reach if be has
the cunning or the luck to strike the right gait.
The business men of the Midway are frequently of consequential origin, and are regarded as quite an estimable factor in the affairs of the exposition proper. During the opening months of the Pan-American it was a case of the tail wagging the dog, for the Midway jumped to the fore in the matter of prominence in the minds of the public. This resulted mostly from shrewd advertising, but was not entirely without its merit, for the street possesses the most varied and extensive list of amusement devices ever offered at one time to any public. It is as a show that an exposition chiefly appeals to the masses, and as the Midway is its show end it is not to be wondered at that it should strike the popular fancy. The Midway Day, managed by the Midway men and filled with their specialties, and, more than all else, advertised by their methods, brought the largest attendance that the Exposition had throughout its first half. The
Midway concessioner is an ingenious and a shrewd man, and in several cases he
is extraordinarily resourceful. Like all showmen he is fond of big type and
superlative adjectives, and loves the roll of the "aire " with which he usually
announces his interest in a concession. He is a "concessionaire," a sonorous
something that is very much more important than a plain showman. Most of these men began small at other expositions and have now become influential. Frederic Thompson was an employee at the World's Fair in Chicago; in Buffalo he has designed all but five of the Midway shows and is one of the chief men. There is the concessioner of small bits, who waits until the last half of the show, when he knows the crowd is coming, and who then rents some jagged piece from a big concession, costing perhaps thousands of dollars, puts on a show costing a few hundred, and takes out more money at the end of the season than is earned by his neighbor. Such a case is that of Rhodes and Milligan, spielers for the Indian Congress, who rented a small space in front of the Spectatorium of Jerusalem, spent $300 on scantling and bunting for the decoration of a booth for the exhibit of "She," charged ten cents for a sight of her, and took in more money than did the Spectatorium, whose cost was $30,000, and whose front is twenty times that of " She." These are the little men of the Midway. In time they may be as mighty as the big ones.
* Inventor of the Aeriocycle, inventor and manager of the Ship Luna and the Trip to the Moon, architect of the following Midway buildings: Darkness & Dawn, Moorish Palace, Glass Works, Streets of Mexico, Old Plantation, Around the World, War Cyclorama, Cleopatra, Beautiful Orient, Hawaiian Theatre and Volcano, House Upside Down, Dreamland, Gypsy Camp, Philippine Village, Johnstown Flood, Baby Incubators, Wild Animal Arena, Venice in America, Chiquita, Esau, Jerusalem - The Crucifixion, with Pabst's and Lownie's thrown in.
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