The Greatest Showman: The Dark Truth

PT baram was one of the richest and most famous men in America and then in a matter of weeks he lost everything on the one hand this is a story about a man who built his fortune through lies and exploitation because before baram was a successful businessman and Global celebrity he scammed people out of their money by claiming he discovered mermaids cavemen and 161 yearold woman and the truth is much darker and twisted than you may think but on the other hand this is also of the story of an incredibly creative and hardworking entrepreneur who

climbed all the way to the top lost everything and then Rose From the Ashes to become an even greater success eventually baram became the world's greatest showman he completely transformed the Great American circus and his spectacular performances were sought after by the likes of the Queen of England and the King of France baram's Journey as a showman is a master class in capturing people's attention and turning it into money by whatever means necessary this is the crazy true story of PT [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] baram Phineas Taylor baram was born in 1810 in a small

farming town in Connecticut called bethl and as soon as he could stand on his own two feet his family had him milking cows and plowing Fields but Phineas hated this kind of hard manual labor so he always came up with clever excuses to avoid it earning him a reputation as the laziest boy in town in reality though Phineas wasn't lazy as much as he was disinterested because whenever there was money to be earned nobody could deny that Phineas worked with enthusiasm for example when phineas's grandfather paid him 10 cents a day to plow the fields

and take care of the animals Phineas stacked his pennies day by day until eventually he was able to buy a few sheep of his own Phineas got his next lesson in business when his father gave him a job at his General Store where all kinds of different goods were sold but in this Shop prices were negotiable and people often traded in products they already had rather than paying in cash and this meant some customers tried to cheat their way into a bargain by packing stones into wheat bags to make them seem heavier or just tricking

Finas into lowering his prices so in the General Store Phineas quickly learned the art of persuasion and by the time he was 12 he was a clever salesman who saw every situation as an opportunity to negotiate Phineas continued honing his skills at the General Store through his teenage years but in 1826 his father tragically passed away now phineas's father had tried his luck in many different businesses aside from the General Store he tried tailoring farming running Stables a Tavern and even operating a delivery wagon however none of these Ventures were ever very profitable so when

he passed away the baram family was left drowning in debts and fine had to take a job at another nearby store this time though the store wasn't paying him much so Phineas had to get creative in order to make some money for himself and his struggling family and thus Phineas decided to host a lottery at the new store and he promoted it heavily to make sure it was successful he said without promotion something terrible happens nothing so Phineas ran all around bethl posting Flyers that read magnificent Lottery and he even claimed that every ticket came

with a reward because of this his advertising campaign was a success and people flocked into the general store to buy his lottery tickets but how was Phineas going to make any money if he had to give every participant a prize Well the store Phineas worked at had a few items which the owner just couldn't find a way to sell so Phineas took these items and traded them in bulk for a whole wagon of glass bottles and thus every time someone bought a lottery ticket they did indeed get a prize except it wasn't cash like they'

expected instead they won a shiny new glass bottle if they were extra lucky they could win up to five so phineas's Lottery was a blatant hoax but it was so successful that after a few months he decided to open his own General Store and continue running lotteries there although this time with actual cash prizes at first Phineas only ran lotteries in Bethal but when the business grew as much as the town could manage he partnered up with Statewide lotteries and recruited agents to sell tickets in five other towns and for every Lottery Phineas used his

remarkable talent for advertising iing to fill the newspapers and sometimes his agents were able to pull close to $2,000 in Daily ticket sales seeing how successful this was Phineas started his own newspaper called The Herald of Freedom where he could advertise his lotteries even more however Phineas was barely 21 and owning his own newspaper gave him more power than he was able to manage responsibly sometimes instead of promoting his own business he used the newspaper to spread rumors about others as a result Phineas was sued for Lial four times once by his own uncle and

one of these lawsuits turned out to have very drastic consequences you see Phineas published an article accusing a local of loaning money to an orphan at highly unfair interest rates but they subsequently sued him and won the case so Phineas was faced with a choice he could either pay $100 in fines and court costs or he could spend 60 days in jail and to the surprise of everyone Phineas chose jail for the two months he was behind bars Phineas was the Tor of the town in fact some came to see him as a local hero

for calling things out that seemed unfair and when he was released from prison Phineas was met by a huge crowd of people and a marching band what unfolded was basically a big celebration where a powerful speech was given defending freedom of the press and Phineas was then praded through town but of course celebration events don't just get planned by themselves and so even though Phineas let people assume this was all spontaneous Phineas had obviously set up the event himself as he'd still been able to write letters whilst in prison [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when fineas

was 24 he moved to New York City to seek his fortune his first business was a grocery store and one of his customers told him a wild story you see this customer ran a traveling show where the main attraction was Joyce he an enslaved woman who claimed to be 161 years old she also claimed that more than a 100 years ago she'd been a nurse to George Washington the United States first president ident the customer had sold his share of the ACO and he told Phineas that his former partner was looking for a buyer when

Phineas heard this he couldn't resist the opportunity and went to see Joyce for himself once he did he was impressed Joyce was totally blind Toothless and one of her arms was paralyzed and yet despite this she talked endlessly about how she'd raised her dear little George and enthusiastically sang songs about him of course Joyce wasn't 161 years old and she never knew George Washington but according to Phineas she might as well have been called a thousand years old it was quite convincing and Joyce's owner produced a very old looking yellow document supposedly verified all this

now Phineas would have been well aware this was fake but back then curious human exhibits were common in America and Phineas saw this as a golden opportunity so he played along with the fantasy and agreed a deal to exhibit Joyce for 7 months all for just ,000 it's an unthinkable concept nowadays Phineas was basically renting this elderly disabled slave and putting her up for display so he could make money but back then slavery was still legal in some states and even though it wasn't legal in New York where Phineas was Joyce's owner was in Kentucky

and so through a loophole Phineas was essentially able to rent Joyce all Phineas had to do now was put on a good show and he used the same strategy as when he ran lotteries advertised like crazy Phineas commissioned exaggerated drawings of Joyce and produced more certificates that supposedly verified her story ads were also created declaring that she was the greatest Natural Curiosity in the world but the real stroke of Genius was when Phineas gave a private showing of her act to the newspapers and paid them more than $200 to back up the ridiculous claims about

her sure enough the newspapers were immediately filled with announcements calling Joyce a greater star than any other performer of the present day as a result for the first public performance in New York huge crowd showed up and all the tickets were sold but best of all for Phineas Joyce really was an excellent performer who sold the story well so after just 2 weeks phas had made $3,000 from the show but he was always watching the crowd closely whenever he saw attendance fall even slightly from its peak he ran off to another city instead to keep

the demand high and fin kept advertising the show even if he wasn't around at the time so this way if he ever returned to a place there was always a reliable supply of customers waiting for his act however although this worked for a while after doing endless shows eventually demand did start to drop and since Phineas still had months left on his contract for Joyce he had to get creative a few days later newspapers started claiming that Joyce wasn't a 161 year old woman in fact she wasn't human at all instead the newspapers now claimed

that she was a curiously constructed automaton of course it was actually Phineas behind this move by creating doubt around Joyce's Story the ACT Drew even more attention and even those who had already been to the show came rushing back to see if this was true however after Joyce died di in 1836 Phineas did something even more controversial Phineas sold tickets for one final show Joyce's autopsy where a doctor would prove once and for all the facts of her identity so even after she was dead Phineas was still making money in the end the doctors concluded

that Joyce wasn't an automatan and she couldn't have been any older than 80 but Phineas avoided getting called a con artist by claiming he'd been duped like everyone else the Joyce Heth show made fineas more than $10,000 in profits which is about $330,000 today however now that she was dead Phineas was forced to find a new way to earn a living once again and now that he'd had success with his traveling show it was time to take things to an even stranger [Music] level [Music] Phineas worked with jugglers dancers and even learned magic tricks but

for six long years he couldn't find any act that matched his initial success in his autobiography he wrote I began to realize that I was at the very bottom of Fortune's ladder and that I had now arrived at an age where it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself thankfully the opportunity of his lifetime finally came when he heard that the American Museum in New York was looking to sell its collection now the collection had steadily lost value for over a decade and it was now valued at just $115,000 but this was

still way more than Phineas could afford so he persuaded the owner of the Museum's building to buy the collection for him promising to pay him back month by month taking on this enormous debt meant that Phineas absolutely had to make the American Museum a success so he got to work immediately the museum had a vast collection of Curiosities including animals plants paintings aerations mummies and even shows with magicians of ventr quests there was definitely some good stuff inside the museum but Phineas knew none of it mattered if people didn't find out about it so Phineas

decorated the outside of the building with International Flags commissioned massive animal paintings to hang from the roof and of course he flooded the newspapers with advertisements and business was going well but a few months in Phineas saw an opportunity for a new star attraction as a museum owner from out of town came to Phineas with the Petrified remains of what he claimed was a mermaid Phineas kept a serious demeanor but he could immediately tell that this was really the lower half of a fish sewn together with the upper half of a small monkey it was

an ugly sight to say the least but ph's imagination ran wild with advertising ideas and so he couldn't resist renting it out he gave it the alluring name of the Fiji mermaid and advertised it with drawings that looked nothing like the actual exhibit when people got to see it a small National debate about the authenticity of the mermaid broke out and of course Phineas was ecstatic the more people doubted it the more attention this created for the American Museum you see even though most of phineas's advertising highlighted the wildest the most deceiving exhibits in the

museum like the Fiji mermaid he didn't feel guilty about lying to the public this was because in his mind even if people came to the museum hoping to see a mermaid their disappointment would be completely overshadowed by the thousands of other exhibits the museum had to offer in the end visiting the American Museum was not only entertaining but also educational and if a bit of crazy of advertising was needed to pull people Phineas saw no problem with running a fun little ruse like this one phineas's promotions were enough to take the Museum's revenue from around

$10,000 the year before to almost $28,000 so in just a year and a half Phineas was able to pay back the collection in its entirety but now he was fully dedicated to making the museum a massive success but the only way to do that was to get repeat customers so he decided to switch up his strategy over the years Phineas had learned that his greatest Talent was Showmanship so he decided to turn the museum into to the stage for a variety of exciting performances and he was about to meet the star that would Propel him

to Global [Music] [Music] [Applause] Fame in late 1842 Phineas met Charlie Stratton a 4-year-old boy with dwarfism at only around 25 in tall Charlie's head barely surpassed phineas's knees and this gave Phineas an idea Phineas offered Charlie's Family $3 a week plus expenses for him to perform at the museum for a month he gave him the stage name General Tom Thumb and advertised him as if he was 11 years old so that his short height would seem even more impressive during that first month Phineas spent days and nights training Charlie to perform on stage and

to his surprise Charlie was a natural Entertainer even at 4 years old he could memorize scripts songs and dance routines incredibly quickly and he even added his own comments to the material Phineas provided him together they developed a routine where Charlie imitated the infamous Emperor Napoleon bonapart and the newspapers all had glowing reviews for him Phineas himself wrote He Is So Graceful so intelligent so wonderfully dimunitive that all who see him are Charmed with him at once given this initial success Phineas raised Charli's pay to $1 a week then to $25 and it just kept

increasing from there everyone seemed to love General Tom Thumb's iconic Napoleon routine so sure enough the masses began flooding into the American Museum and Phineas began perfecting the strategy behind his promotion you see Phineas constantly advertised that Charlie would be leaving for another city soon which created a huge sense of urgency to buy tickets of course many of these departure dates were lies but either way the fear of missing out on the performance meant that by 1844 nearly half half a million people had come to see General Tom Thum eventually though the day came where

Phineas and Charlie did leave but not to a nearby City instead they were going to England with a singular gold in mind to give a show to Queen Victoria herself so after finding a manager for the museum they were off to England however when Phineas and Charlie arrived there was no guarantee that the English public would take a liking to General Tom Thum much less that they were going to get an audience with the queen and in fact the start of their campaign was not an immediate success as dwarf Acts were already common there and

the English public were not so keen on paying the equivalent of 25 cents when they were used to paying less than half that for entertainment shows but after 2 months of constantly improving Charlie's act booking more shows and making connections Phineas was able to secure a spot at the prestigious London hotel where Charlie could perform daily the performances caused such an uproar with the English public that the queen personally requested that Phineas and Charlie give her a private audience just like Phineas had hoped Phineas has canceled their shows for the day and announced General Tom

Thum was at Buckingham Palace on Her Majesty's orders Charlie who was barely 6 years old at the time gave an impressive performance for the royal family striking his classic Napoleon poses and even getting into a playful fight with one of the Queen's poodles and Phineas knew that after an audience with the queen demand for their show would be higher than ever but just to boost demand even further Phineas repeated his signature advertising trick he announced that General Tom Thum would soon be leaving England even though he wasn't so once again people rushed to buy tickets

Charlie continued performing three times every day and in the four months he was in England Phineas made over $300,000 from the act more than $12 million today however just as Phineas felt on top of the world he got some very tragic news his youngest daughter not even 2 years old had passed away in the journal that Phineas kept at the time he only mentioned his daughter's death one time and never again but he was clearly devastated and tried to avoid his grief by diving deeper into his work for the next 2 years Phineas and Charlie

who became 50/50 Partners traveled all around Europe hosting shows for everyone from peasant Farmers to the king of France and by the end when they returned to America in 1847 both of them had become extremely wealthy not just that but during his years in Europe Phineas had also been writing a weekly journal and Publishing it back in America this had become hugely popular so when he returned Phineas was basically a national celebrity meanwhile the American Museum was making more money in a single day than it used to make in a week with all this Fame

and wealth Phineas had planed to take a break and spend more time with his family but then quite suddenly his life went in a very different [Music] [Applause] direction after Phineas and Charlie had left England to tour the rest of Europe the English people had become fascinated by a new star the opera singer Jenny Lind or as she was called in the newspapers the Swedish Nightingale Jenny joined Her Majesty's theater in 1847 and even though most people couldn't afford to pay for opera tickets she was such a talented singer that the publicity she received was

enough to get her name everywhere clothing collections cigars chocolate boxes horses dogs they were all called Jenny Lind as for her shows they filled every seat in the theater and received admiring reviews for her entire first year and of course if anyone was getting that much attention Finas was going to be intrigued you see at the time phineas's various odd shows had made him wealthy but he had a reputation for essentially running freak shows and now Phineas was looking for a more sophisticated project to tackle and so Jenny seemed like the perfect candidate her second

year in the Opera was even more successful than the last but Jenny had become concerned that if she didn't stop playing so many demanding roles and singing so much that her voice would deteriorate so because of this Jenny decided to retire from the Opera after just 2 years and fineas saw his chance to become her promoter and sent an agent to negotiate with her now Jenny had already received other serious offers for an American tour and at the time phineas's reputation was still stained by his past exhibits like Joyce Heth and the Fiji Mermaid so

together on side Phineas had to make one hell of an offer that included paying every expense on the tour guarant $11,000 per show and even paying her $187,000 as a signing bonus needless to say phineas's offer was the best one so Jenny was happy to sign with him by now Phineas was a master Advertiser and he had 6 months to prepare the American public for her arrival there was just one problem Phineas had never actually heard Jenny sing but to him Jenny's outstanding reputation was all he needed to know so without ever having heard her

voice Phineas promoted Jenny as a lady whose vocal po have never been approached by any other human being to create more hype he spread rumors about the enormous sums he was paying her and promoted women's magazines with details about her romantic Life by the Autumn of 1850 the American public was dying to see the Swedish Nightingale Phineas met Jenny for the first time in her ship and as they approached New York City over 10,000 people gathered to catch a glimpse of her at the Docks hundreds of bouquets were thrown into their carriage and even outside

of her hotel a band of 200 musicians played songs for her until midnight as the day came to an end Phineas was excited by the public reception to Jenny but he was also worried he' created too much excitement he still hadn't even heard Jenny sing and he doubted if she could live up to the hype he created however when Jenny gave her first performance a few days later Phineas was mesmerized by Jenny's incredible voice he had a one-of-a-kind Superstar on his hands and any doubts he had disappeared instantly Jenny's tour attracted thousands of people every

night and on some shows chaos broke out as people fought over their seats but even if it was unnecessary Phineas did everything he could to drum up more attention for example he would host auctions for the first ticket to every show promising to publicize the winner and how much they paid because of this people paid up to $650 for a ticket which was normally worth $5 but the publicity these events resulted in was worth more than $650 for both the buyer and for Phineas another way he attracted attention was by throwing gas on the fire

whenever any controversies came up for example while on Tau Jenny usually gave huge donations to Charities and Phineas always made it a point to publicize them but on the other hand Phineas was criticized because he kept all his profits for himself but to Phineas all publicity was good publicity in his own words I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right so Phineas even wrote some attacks against himself and sent them anonymously to the newspapers behind the scenes though this controversy had no substance as Phineas often made

Jenny's donations even larger with with his own money but the donations were always done in her name this way Jenny appeared even more generous and Phineas appeared even more selfish but in the end both of their names were in the headlines that was the only thing that mattered the tour continued for 9 months with sometimes up to four shows every week but after 95 events both Phineas and Jenny were exhausted so he offered her a chance to buy her way out of their contract for $225,000 and she took the deal in those 9 months Jenny

made around $177,000 Phineas made 500 $36,000 which today would be almost $7 million for Jenny and over 21 million for Phineas so by 1851 Finas was one of the richest and surely one of the most famous people in America if not the entire world but now that he was wealthy and everyone knew so he was also a target for the countless hordes of people who wanted a piece of his vast Fortune before we get to the next chapter I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you for those who know my name is

John and I started this channel a few years back making crappy videos talking to a camera with no idea what I was doing but I'd always found business interesting the RS to riches Stories the way fortunes are built and destroyed the battles between companies business can be fascinating the problem was whenever I tried to watch a business documentary I'd find it boring so I started learning how I could make my own videos that felt more like mini movies and fast forward a couple of years and this channel has well over a million subscribers which is

wild but if you're subscribed to magnates Media then you're a part of this Channel and so I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all your support I'm going to keep trying to level up further to make some even better videos for you but for now though thank you for being a legend and let's get back to the [Music] [Applause] [Music] story after finishing his partnership with Jenny Lind Phineas went back to managing the American Museum which he had renovated and filled with new exhibits but since the museum had been operating for over 10

years at this point his involvement in the day-to-day operations had become minimal and he found himself with a lot of spare time one of the projects Phineas took on was to write his first autobiography where he retold the events of his life and openly revealed the secrets behind some of the scams he used to run in his early career as per usual the controversies only added fuel to the fire so the book soldo that pety baram became a household name but even though Phineas wrote this book as if his greatest Adventures were behind him the

story of his life was far from Over You See since Phineas was both rich and famous countless people approached him with all sorts of business opportunities in his words some of them were as wild and unfeasible as a railroad to the Moon however Phineas saw no benefit in having so much money if he wasn't doing anything with it and with so much time on his hands he threw his money into some sensible Investments but also lots of Wild Ones for example Phineas invested in a traveling circus act an invention called a fire Annihilator a huge

outdoor Museum a clock making company and even started a sister city next to Bridgeport Connecticut where he lived most of these Investments were either disappointments or outright failures but feeling overconfident because of his earlier success Phineas just kept making more and more bets to make things worse Phineas didn't pay much attention to his finances and this was a huge issue as for 5 years phineas's cash reserves were going down and his debts were running up but he wasn't really aware of it by the time he noticed it was too late in 1856 one bad investment

set off a terrible domino effect first the clockmaking company he' poured over $110,000 into went bankrupt this was already terrible news by itself but the company was also supposed to start a factory in the city Phineas was building and employ thousands of people when it went out of business the value of his properties in the new city plummeted overnight since many of his Investments were in interconnected like this they all began to fail one after the other and within a few weeks Phineas was a ruined man he was unable to pay his debts and forced

to declare bankruptcy there were only two independent assets Phineas could use to save himself the American Museum and his Mansion right before declaring bankruptcy Finas had done everything he could to protect his Museum he would have been forced to liquidate the museum if he still owned it so he sold the rights the Museum's lease to his assistant for a single dollar who then sold it to phineas's wife the next day also for a dollar now that his wife owned it the museum was protected But the lease still had to get paid so Phineas rented the

Museum's collection out to some of his associates who promised to pay $199,000 above the Museum's lease every year in exchange for the right to run the whole operation obviously this was a very big step down for Phineas but it at least gave him some income to support his family however it was still nowhere near enough to cover even the most immediate of phineas's debts so he had to abandon his mansion and mortgage it three times of course paying One debt with another is Risky Business but this was a desperate situation so he did it anyway

Phineas and his family had to move to a small rental apartment in New York where they lived with his land lady and her family now Phineas had lived like this when he was young but for his daughters it were used to mansions and servants it was a huge step down and considering that Phineas absolutely had to pay off his debts he was faced with a tremendous challenge with no Investments no Museum and no Superstar to rely on he had to recreate his initial success starting once again from the very bottom thankfully though Phineas had one

important tool at his disposal his reputation thanks to the name Phineas had made for himself in Show Business over the years people came to him with new AXS so he was able to put together a new catalog of shows and Phineas got some even better news when Charlie Stratton who had played General Tom Thumb reached out offering to work with him again Charlie had been busy touring America and was 18 years old now but when he heard that his old partner needed some help he wanted to be there for him together they sailed over to

Europe where Phineas gave public lectures put on his new shows and worked alongside Charlie once again of course since he had lots of experience in this already Phineas was getting back on track to paying his debts but then Phineas was given news of an unfortunate catastrophe overnight his mansion in America burned down to a crisp and since he was so short on cash at the time vas had stopped paying for its insurance this meant that he only got a small fraction of the property's worth back and because the building was mostly in ashes you also

had to sell the property at a massive discount it was another big setback but at least selling the land got him closer to paying off his debts and after three more years of running shows in Europe his Ledger was almost clean and so he decided to return to America a year later Phineas bought back the lease from the American museums collection from his associates which gave him an additional income of $90,000 a year and so finally in 1860 after turning 50 years old Phineas was on the way up again however if Phineas thought things were

going to be straightforward from here he couldn't have been more wrong hey guys I know some of you have been asking when my YouTube course will be ready it's been in the works for about a year now as I wanted to make sure it's the best on the market by far and the good news is it's now in the final stages so if you're interested in learning everything I know about writing videos editing videos growing a channel building a team and how to make lots of money from it then just click the course Link in

the description [Music] below [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that Phineas owned the American Museum again he hosted a grand reopening featuring his signature style of exhibits one of which was the supposed Missing Link in The evolutionary chain between man and monkey Phineas called it zip the pin head and said the creature had been captured in Africa however it was really just an extremely hairy man who had a disease which caused his head to taper at the top Phineas dressed him in a furry suit and had him in a cage where he was told to Screech and

rattle the bars he advertised it as the what is it now some people think this was an example of Phineas being back up to his old exploitative tricks as some reported that zip whose real name was William Henry Johnson was mentally handicapped however others claim that he was very much in on the ACT and got extremely wealthy from it and thus he actually enjoyed working with Phineas either way Phineas was selling museum tickets like crazy Phineas also recruited more performers with dwarfism one of which Charlie fell in love with a few months later they got

married and went on tour together with phineas's help so things once again all seemed to be going well for Phineas and his performers but when the Civil War broke out in 1861 Phineas put on a number of Patriotic War themed plays and displayed wax figures depicting famous Union Generals despite having essentially rented a slave when he worked with Joyce Heth Phineas had now changed his views and was openly pro-union and believed slavery should be outlawed so Finas heavily publ ized his political opinions hoping to attract people into the museum but for once not all publicity

was good publicity for Phineas as his political statements attracted the wrong kind of attention in 1864 when Confederate agents spared a fire in the American Museum fortunately though the fire was contained by the Museum's employees and no one was hurt but just a few months later another fire erupted inside the museum and this time within half an hour the entire building was engulfed in flames phineas's life work was burning before his eyes some people had to jump out of the Museum's windows in order to save themselves and after about an hour the Museum's roof collapsed

the main walls fell shortly after whilst all of the humans escaped thousands of animals inside the museum were tragically trapped inside the Flames this also meant that once again phineas's main source of income was gone but surprisingly Phineas remained calm he would later say apparent Evils are often blessings in Disguise instead of complaining about yet another setback he decided to build a whole new Museum that was bigger and better with over 100,000 items and animals in the new collection and sure enough for the next 3 years this new Museum was an incredible source of business

for Phineas who was always on the lookout for new exhibits putting on exciting shows and of course advertising like a madman but one morning in March 1868 Phineas opened the newspaper and saw the following headline Barnum's Museum burned the building and managerie totally destroyed it turns out that a fire had broken out at Mid midnight while a snowstorm swept over the City Firefighters had reached the museum too late and hundreds of thousands of precious artifacts were lost in the fire not to mention thousands more animals so incredibly once again phineas's Museum had burned down this

time Phineas declared that his career as a museum director was decidedly over he saw the land beneath the scorched remains of the museum and decided to retire at least for some time you see Phineas was never the type to sit around doing nothing and he still had the single greatest Triumph of his career ahead of [Music] him before we get to the next chapter I want to help you save time and money with today's video sponsor ship station ship station integrates everywhere you sell online including Amazon Etsy eBay Shopify and more ship station then makes

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fence about joining now is the perfect time to check ship station out as you can get a 30-day free trial if you use my link in the description no matter where you sell or how you ship make this year your most profitable one yet was shipstation go to shipstation.com magnates to sign up for your free 30-day trial today that's shipstation.com [Music] [Applause] magnates Phineas had decided to fully retire after his Museum burned down for the second time in 1868 but after writing a second of his autobiography he concluded that he wasn't made for an idol

life and chose to make some investments in show business so Phineas got in contact to a some of his former employees who were planning to start a traveling circus and with phineas's name attached to the project it would surely be a success they called it baram's traveling Worlds Fair Phineas would own 2third of the show and pocket 3% of its profits in exchange for his investment and his talent for finding axe he quickly got to work amassing a host of Curiosities ranging from Giants and conjoined twins to elephants camels and Egyptian mummies technically though this

was only an investment Phineas wasn't obligated to travel with the crew and once everything was set up he had no reason to get involved in operating the circus but after 2 years of retirement getting back to work sparked his passion for show business again and he poured all this energy into helping the circus and it was lucky he did as they had one particular issue that threatened to bankrupt the whole project you see the circus was going to be an operational nightmare it would take some Next Level coordination to care for the animals promote the

show keep track of the finances and manage more than a thousand employees the most complicated challenge was going to be moving everything and everyone because it was basically like moving a small town from one place to another in just a few days if Phineas didn't find a way to solve this the delays between one performance and the next would be too big and the production would miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars it desperately needed to become profitable so to solve this issue Phineas proposed an ambitious solution they would transport the entire circus via

65 railroad cars it wasn't going to be easy as this meant creating a standard procedure to unload the entire circus from the trains set it up for performance and pack it back up in an efficient way and if people didn't coordinate themselves perfectly it would take way too long sure enough their first attempt was a disaster with elephants running loose and people losing track of their possessions it took 12 hours to get the circus into the train cars which was far too much time in order to get to a nearby City quickly but Phineas decided

to keep trying the strategy and by the next attempt it seemed that everyone including the animals were getting the hang of this new process this meant that the circus could now wrap up their show in one city and be ready to resume it just 24 hours later in another one so the circus was able to greatly increase the number of tickets it could sell every year it was still a costly Endeavor though the company spent $5,000 every day just to keep the show running but according to Phineas by the circus's third year in 1872 its

profits surpassed the million Mark that's more than $25 million in today's money for 7 years Barnum's traveling World's Fair was the Premier Entertainment show in America during those years Phineas also got involved in other Entertainment Productions and even became the mayor of Bridgeport Connecticut for some time however by 1880 a rival was threatening to take their spots as the number one circus in America its name was the great London circus and it was run by James Bailey and James's ability as a showman almost came close to that of Phineas James had run a publicity campaign

announcing that the great London circus had the first American born elephant when Phineas offered to buy it from James for $100,000 James declined the offer and instead publicized phineas's offer in advertisements as a way to promote the great London circus essentially he was using one of phineas's usual tricks to ridicule him and publicized the great London circus at the same time soon the great London circus was booking events in the same cities as phineas's circus and often out selling it so Phineas knew he was up against a worthy competitor but instead of trying to out

compete them Phineas approached James with a proposal to combine the two circuses into one after some tough negotiations Phineas and James agreed to split the cost and earnings 50/50 and thus instead of two competing circuses there was now just one totally dominant circus which they called baram and London circus together Phineas and James spent months preparing for the grand opening they gathered all sorts of animals including t Tigers zebras leopards elephants and they planned the most breathtaking performances with everything from magicians to trapeze artists to sword swallowers it was also the first three ring circus

with three acts going on at the same time it was an event like no one had ever seen and the new circus went on tour around the country in 1882 the new circus returned $600,000 in profits more than $15 million today Phineas also managed to buy an exceptionally large 710 elephant called jumbo which helped the circus's popularity sort to even higher levels than Phineas had thought possible together Phineas and James were an Unstoppable Force they eventually created a new and improved circus show called The Greatest Show on Earth and they were determined to live up

to the name they invested close to $3 million to make this shared dream come true as they continued to improve the show even more after years of exceptional performances and exceptional profits Phineas was 79 years old and still just as energetic about his work as ever he and James decided to take the circus to London along with over 12200 performers and hundreds of circus animals in London Phineas was received with open arms as a returning Hero at this point in his 60- yearlong career as a showman people came to the circus to see him as

much as they did to see the show but even still he and James outdid themselves in London the greatest show ran twice daily for 12,000 people each time and the seats were always full as a last act there was a dramatic depiction of the fall of Rome complete with tigers Flames Roman chariots and and Gladiator fights it was played by 1,200 performers and supported by a band and a choir so after the most successful years of his life with this new circus Phineas brought the greatest show back to the US with plans to take it

to other countries all over the world but soon after he arrived the 80-year-old showman caught a cold suffered from a stroke and on April 7th 1891 Phineas Taylor baram took his last breath he had loved his job so much he' continued working right up until he died on the day of his funeral the circus was silent dark and empty but as Phineas surely would have wanted the next day The Greatest Show on Earth went on without a hitch and phineas's Legacy as the world's Premier showman was cemented forever his circus was so popular it continued

long after his death in fact even today the company lives on now called ringing Bros and baram and Bailey which all raises the question what should we think about PT barnham if you've seen the movie Loosely based on his life called the Great to showman then you'll realize the film hugely overg glamorizes reality it was certainly a successful and entertaining film it just shouldn't be viewed as historically accurate at all I guess slavery and animal cruelty don't fit so well in a fun Disney musical because there's no doubt many of the animals in bham circuses

were treated terribly like elephants that were stolen from their homes and trained by sticking a hot poker up their trunks likewise some of Bam's early Acts were completely horrific and inexcusable like leasing Joyce he not to mention mention that many of his early shows relied on using deception to get attention having said that some people have tried to make PT baram out to be a completely evil monster and there's definitely an argument that it's more complex than that was trying to create a freak Show and parade them around for money certainly looks awful in today's

context it's always difficult to judge people in the 1800s by our values today because most of the people he worked with were paid very well and Phineas gave them a chance to financially support themselves at a time where they had very few other options he made many of his performers extremely rich and had good relationships with them they worked with him because he helped them provide for their families and by the end of phineas's life he was also pushing hard to end slavery and was quite charitable by all accounts like he was instrumental in the

Inception of Bridgeport Hospital so was he the hero the movie portrays him as definitely not he should not be glorified doing some good certainly doesn't mean we should overlook the bad there is plenty of criticism he definitely deserves but to completely ify everything about him would be an oversimplification pety baram was a great businessman and marketing genius who entertained Millions all over the world he undeniably had a huge impact on the entertainment industry and brought joy to many he was complex and it was the opinion will be divided on how harshly he should be judged

nobody can deny that PT Barnum put on an incredible show but if you want to see the story of a real scam artist you have to check out the scammer who saw the Eiffel Tower twice just click the thumbnail on screen now to watch this next video and I'll see you there in a second cheers