From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase often credited to P.T. Barnum (1810 –
1891), an American showman.
It is generally taken to mean that there are (and always will be) a
lot of gullible people in the world.
Attribution
When Barnum's biographer tried to track down when
Barnum had uttered this phrase, all of Barnum's friends and
acquaintances told him it was out of character. Barnum's credo was more along the lines of
"there's a customer born every minute" — he wanted to find ways to
draw new customers in all the time because competition was fierce and people could
become bored easily.
While some sources claim the quote is most likely from famous
con-man Joseph ("Paper Collar Joe") Bessimer,[1], other
sources say it was actually uttered by David Hannum, spoken in
reference to Barnum's part in the Cardiff Giant hoax. Hannum, who was exhibiting the "original"
giant and had unsuccessfully sued Barnum for exhibiting a copy and
claiming it was the original, was referring to the crowds
continuing to pay to see Barnum's exhibit even after both it and
the original had been proven to be fakes.
In turn, Barnum's fellow circus owner and arch-rival Adam Forepaugh
attributed the quote to Barnum in a newspaper interview in an attempt to
discredit him. However, Barnum never denied making the quote. It is
said that he thanked Forepaugh for the free publicity he had given him.
Yet another source credits late 1860s Chicago "bounty broker, saloon and
gambling-house keeper, eminent politician, and dispenser of
cheating privileges..." Michael Cassius McDonald as the originator
of the aphorism. According
to the book Gem of the Prairie: Chicago Underworld (1940)
by Herbert
Asbury, when McDonald was equipping his gambling house known as
The Store (at Clark and Monroe Streets in
Chicago) his partner Harry Lawrence expressed concern over the
large number of roulette
wheels and faro tables being installed and their
ability to get enough players to play the games. McDonald then
allegedly said, "Don't worry about that, there's a sucker born
every minute."
The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is in Opie Read's 1898 novel
A Yankee from the West.[2]
In the John
Dos Passos novel The 42nd
Parallel, the quotation is attributed to Mark Twain.
The phrase is the opening song in the Broadway musical Barnum,
about P.T. Barnum's life.
See also
References
- ^
Saxon, A. H. (1989). P. T. Barnum:
the Legend and the Man. Columbia University Press.
- ^
Read, Opie (1898). A Yankee from
the West. Rand, McNally & Co.. p. 46.
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