Send in the Crowds

   Welcome to Friday with Joe McDonnell

   On this day in 1841 Thomas Cook organized the first package excursion, kicking off mass travel as we know it today.  Cook was a cabinet maker, but his passion was the temperance movement. He believed alcohol was bad, and tried to help others see the light. One day he decided to use the new railway line to take 500 people to a temperance rally in the town of Loughborough from the city of Leicester. It was a journey of eleven miles.
   The trip was a great success and over the next few years, Cook took temperance groups by rail to rallies as far away as Liverpool, 100 miles to the northwest. In the year  1851, he took 150,000 people to the Great Exhibition in London. It wasn't just about temperance anymore. Within the next few years he was taking groups on tours of Europe, Egypt, and the United states.
   In 1872, Thomas took his son John into the business. Thomas still saw travel in religious and social terms. He and his wife even ran a small temperance hotel above their London office. John had the business head to expand the business. He lined up contacts with European hotels and restaurants then sold coupon books that travelers could use for a room or a meal. In 1879, John convinced his dad to retire, and brought his own three sons into the business. By 1890, Thomas Cook & Son was selling over three million tickets a year.
  The company had an interesting effect on the country of Italy. Everyone wanted to see the glories of Italy, and John Cook's contracts with the Italian railroads allowed tourists to travel all over the country on a single  ticket purchased from Thomas Cook & Son. This was during the period when the Italian government was trying to consolidate the independent Italian states into a unified country. Italian citizens traveling around their own country helped make this process possible. Tourism also gave a tremendous boost to the Italian economy. It still does.
   John Cook enjoyed leading tours through the Middle East. He was known as "the second-greatest man in Egypt." Unfortunately, while setting up a tour for the German Emperor Wilhelm II to visit Palestine, he contracted dysentery and died just before the turn of the century. Tourism has its risks.
   Mass tourism also has its critics, but done right, it does help open our minds, and gives us yarns to bore our friends with back home. My advice to travelers is to get to places like the Eiffel Tower early, before the tour busses arrive. And make sure your health insurance is paid up. You cetainly don't want to die of dysentery in Palestine.

Rush Hour on the Great Wall