One man, trying to carry out a Christian work, improved conditions for everyone. Thomas Cook created an industry.
Born in Derbyshire, England, Cook had been forced by the death of his father to drop out of school at ten and go to work. At 20 he became a Baptist homeland missionary. As a traveling evangelist, he learned crowd control and persuasion; these served him well as a tour manager.
Cook knew an opportunity when it smacked him in the face. One smacked him on this day, July 5, 1841. Seeking to make the power of the railway subservient to the cause of temperance, he had organized transportation and entertainment for 600 people to a rally. Now he realized he could make money filling trains.
By 1845 Cook had negotiated a deal with the railroad to give him a commission for every ticket he sold. All he had to do was drum up passengers.
Cook did. The business really took off when he arranged package tours for the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. Five shillings covered fare, food and bed. He arranged over 165,000 tickets from Yorkshire alone.
After that, Cook arranged similar tours to the Paris Exhibition. Soon tourists could travel a pre-arranged circuit across Europe on a Cook plan and Cook's Tours branched out to the rest of the world.