Cook Touring

Vernal wanderlust commenced stirring last week. Last year some half billion dollars were spent in Europe by U. S. tourists, who traveled solitary or under the auspices of travel agencies such as Thomas Cook & Son. What was spent by the thousands who toured similarly to Asiatic countries, to the Mediterranean shore lands, the Holy Land, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, it is difficult to estimate. Almost as much, probably.

This season more people will tour from the U. S.; more money will be spent; more facilities of travel agencies will be available.

Travel agencies have been the main stimuli to world traveling as it exists today. To see Europe or other lands most comfortably, most expeditiously, with the accumulation of the most salient bits of information, more and more voyagers have taken recourse to the worldwide organization of such agencies.

Their inception was obscure, ak most accidental. In 1841 Thomas Cook, a British lecturer and writen on temperance, decided to lead a large party from Leicester to a temperance society convention at Loughborough not far away. Coaching would be difficult and confusing. Travel on the new Midland Railway was considered audacious. Yet daring, enterprising Thomas Cook chartered a train, the first "public" excursion train in history, persuaded 570 temperance members to trust to his guidance, and appeared triumphantly at Loughborough. The fare was one shilling (24 cents) the round trip.

The success of this first excursion led to others. Thomas Cook opened all England to the provincials. Scotland had no direct railway connections those early days. So he organized an excursion by train and boat. For $5 each, 350 people traveled 800 miles. At Glasgow guns were fired in their honor, bands played.

Before Thomas Cook instituted an excursion, he tried to cover the territory personally. He was a great diarist, noting down the beauties and historicities of locales. In 1872 he pioneered the first annual tour around the world. Now the organization which he left in charge of his only son, John Mason Cook (died 1899)* arranges such tours with the casualness of a banker cashing a check. A host of other travel agencies have since entered the business, among them: Raymond Whitcomb Co., American Express Co., Frank Tourist Co., F. C. Clark. So too have various steamship lines. Yet none of them has quite caught up with the household fame of Thomas Cook & Son.

*Thomas Cook was born 1808, died 1892.