A Total Circus Failure
A traveling circus skips the city license fees and leaves the locals furious with a botched performance.
The story, cleaned up
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The circus has come and gone and there are a variety of expressions about its merits, but all who attended in the evening are a unit in the statement that it couldn't have been much worse. The attendance was fair in the afternoon but very light in the evening, and the few that were there received no consideration, for every act was butchered and the show was over and the canvass down by 9:30 o'clock. McMahon carried no Yakima money away with him, and the main reason for this was that he refused to pay the license, and in order to avoid it, he pitched his tents outside of the limits, and at a distance that was a dampener to all circus ardor.
“All who attended in the evening are a unit in the statement that it couldn't have been much worse.”
This report highlights a recurring municipal battle: the struggle of small cities to extract taxes from itinerant businesses. While the circus is long gone, the tension between local regulation and businesses operating on the fringe of jurisdiction remains a staple of civic governance.
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