ATDTDA (2): "wheelfolk appeared" 42.1)

[Tim Strzechowski]

Spring, arrived, wheelfolk appeared in the streets and parks, in gaudy striped socks and long-billed "scorcher" caps (p. 42).

 
"Wheelfolk" may relate either to the Ferris employees who were building the Wheel, or to the various employees we might today call the carival workers.



Carny is the singular slang for a carnival employee, as well as the language they employ. Carnies is the plural. The term is also used in reference to pro-wrestling jargon.

A Carny is anyone who runs a "joint" (booth), food "grab joint" stand, game, or ride at a carnival. Carnies are typified as sly and coercive salespeople, but the term itself merely refers to any employee of a travelling circus or carnival, regardless of behavior or intention.

Carnies are commonly perceived as an insular and discrete subculture: an example of a marginalized segment of society banding together and consciously separating themselves from mainstream society. Popular perception of carnies is similar to that of gypsies (a.k.a. Roma), as both groups are often characterized (fairly or not) by their nomadic ways and purported belief that swindling or stealing from members of mainstream society is not sinful or dishonorable but rather a display of praiseworthy shrewdness and guile. The highly insular nature of carny society has fostered popular suspicions of inbreeding, supposedly manifested by a tendency towards small hands or thumbs. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carny

http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/lives-of-the-carnies/839/



from Eric Larson, _The Devil in the White City_ (p. 206):

"Throughout the spring of 1893 the streets of Chicago filled with unemployed men from elsewhere, but otherwise the city seemed immune to the nation's financial troubles.  Preparations for the fair kept  its economy robust, if artificially so.  Construction of the Alley L extention to Jackson Park still provided work for hundreds of men.  In the company town of Pullman, just south of Chicago, workers labored around the clock to fill backlogged orders for more cars to carry visitors to the fair [...] The Union Stock Yards commissioned Burnham's firm to build a new passenger depot at its entrance [...] Downtown, Montgomery Ward installed a new Customer's Parlor, where excursive fair visitors could loiter on soft couches while browsing the company's five-hundred page catalog. [...]