SHOWMEN COME and showmen go but the greatest of them all still remains the pioneer of audacious enterprisers - Phineas Taylor Barnum.  A skillful exhibitor with an uncanny knack of advertising himself and his shows to bring in the people and take away their cash.

Barnum was a sensation of the nineteenth century.  It was he who coined the phrase "There's one (fool born every minute."  Born in Bethel Conn. in 1810, P. T. went into the lottery business while a youth.  In 1824, he went to New York City and purchased the American Museum, which he raised to prosperity by exhibiting a so-called Japanese mermaid made of a fish and a monkey; a white negress; a woolly horse, and finally a dwarf.  "General Tom Thumb", whom he also exhibited in Europe.  One of his greatest enterprises was his exploitation of Jenny Lind. Swedish Nightingale, where he paid $1,000 a night for 150 concerts.  Tickets for Jenny's concerts were sold at auction and in one case brought $650.