The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1900-10-14
FAILURE OF PARIS FAIR.
Why It Did Not Prove a Finan-
cial Success.
HOTEL PEOPLE MAKE no MONEY.

~A~AAoES 80 AEAB OA0 NOL A@Eh OuN
TO Ee flre Great Bonanza which
Landlords and Restaurateura An
ticipated-The Price of Tickets.
The coming of autumn has brought
the long expected crowd to Paris,
writes the correspondent of the New
York Evening Post from that city. In
April and May boarding house and inn
Keepers comforted themselves for the
lack of custom with the excuse of a
premature opening of the exposition.
Foreigners and Frenchmen alike were
waiting until they could be sure of all
the promised magnificence. Then June.
the rich mans month, when money
should be as common as roses, passed
with half filed hotels. The English
were evidently occupied with their own
affairs, and they have continued so
until now. Resorts like Pontresina, in
the Engadine, which are especially fa-
vored by Britons uneasy to step off
their island, have had a meager year.
The boycotting of Paris, because the
| French press paid back with Boerism
the English DreyfusiSm of a year be-
fore, is not needed as an explanation
OF the absence of wealthy English Wis.,
| itorS. Even Americans were in less
number than had been expected, but
this was attributed to the scare Of high
prices started with more or less foun-
dation in fact. And August was only
more dead than July for all those who
| nrnnnSnI RI fboir
Paris hospitality.
Not that the attendance of the expo
sition has been less than was expected,
at least by sober minds. This has been
steadily greater than at any previous
Paris show of the kind, but it has not
profted the sellers OF high priced food
and lodgings. 1t has been n cheap
crowd from the start. The admission
tickets, hUated by the lottery bonds to
which they were attached, soon fell
from the face value of 20 sous to s and
and even less. In 1899 they were no
time lower than -; in 1878 they re-
mained above par On Sundays and
holidays all Paris, from Bohemian
Montmartre to working MOntrouge,
came out to see it's fair. These visitors
brought their eating with them. at
most they bought the national bottle Of
red wine-a few more sous added to
their entrance money-and they looked
. on from the outside only at the parades
of the various shows of the Rue de
Paris or in rare instances ventured to
pay the price of some Of the cheaper
and more elementary amusements.
Meanwhile foreign visitors have been.
in proportions beyond all expectation,
those Germans of the middle class who
have learned the secret of plain living
, while doing apparently a deal of high
} thinking as they go about the exhibit
= ton, catalogue in hand, with painful
. thoroughness. They scent out infalli-
bly, the cheaper places where they can
obtain their necessary modicum of
comfort. With the vacation season the
provincial families of France appeared
like flight of passenger pigeons. They
are no more money spending on their
travels than Germans and Dutch.
OF the money throwing nations
there have not been enough Russians
] to make the year fat, and there have
o been far too many Cooks trippers and
0 others more or less personally conduct
ed among Americans and English to
furnish a public for the expensive res
taurants of the exposition. These are
300 in 1900 where so were sufficient in
1885, There is an equal plethora of
amusements, widely scattered. often
] childish or Of limited interest. even to
the French, as where Montmartre per-
D ! suaded itself that it's topical singers
were of some interest to the rest of the
t | world Add to this that inside the ex-
position grounds all concessions have
been sold at the very highest prices
. based on the maximum possible num-
Der of visitors and money spending
Outside rents have gone up. and there
: has been the same multiplication be-
yond measure of places for eating and
drinking and sleeping, as if all the
: world from Spitzbergen to Cape Horn
were setting out fer Paris.
If there is an undercurrent of feel
q ing that Great Britain and the United
! States have not been completely rep
L resented, the radical fault should be
brought home to the lack of patriotic
enthusiasm, union and collective or
q ganization among the national pro
# ducers themselves. Notably in the
o American section, with all its serious
gaps and in spite of a mediocre filling
= In with shop articles, there has been 9
= real success of many individual ex
hibits, which cannot but have far
reaching results in our national com
= merce. If some of our most creditable
products are quite wanting, it Is main
- ly because separate industries with Us
: do not constitute a COLLECTIVELY capa
}, BILE of uniting for common end. as Is
|, the case in Germany. And then, in the
l. United States there is no one to signify
d to recalcitrant parties the imperative
I. request of superior authority" as IL
the empire Of the kaiser.
TOlstoi Not ExcOmmunicRted.