Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1911 — AMERICANS IN PARIS [ARTICLE]

AMERICANS IN PARIS

$100,000,000 Spent by Yankees in Europe This Year. French Capital Getting Its Share of Cash, Declare Tradesmen —Begin to Understand Ways of Shopping. Palis. —According to recent statistics something over >80,000,000 per annum has been spent in Europe by American tourists during the last few years. This year the figure will be well over >100,000,000, a good share of which goes to Paris, where the American invasion since May has beaten all records. Although the hotel men are satisfied with the unusual number of American visitors, only too willing to pay good prices for good accomodations, it would appear from an investigation that the money spent in hotels this year will represent only a comparatively small fraction of the total. ' . “We have done more business with American customers this season,** said a high official of one of the largest dry goods stores tn Paris, “than with all the rest of our foreign customers put together. “It seems. In fact, that Americans are beginning to understand that shopping in Paris is not confined to the Place Vendome and Rue de la Paix, where prices are so high that only a few can meet them. Although this is supposed to be the middle of the dead season, our staff is as numerous and as busy now as it was at the end of June. At present we are working almost exclusively for Americans. "I believe we have taken big business from our competitors In America, and, judging from the quantity of clothes, and so forth, sold in Paris to

Americans, the custom house receipt? should be something like a record.” Jewelry and antique dealers and others are unanimous in declaring that, while of late years, American visitors came to Europe merely as tourists, they have now dicsovered that things in Europe can be had at much better prices than in their own country, and have begun to come here to buy. These statements of Paris business men are further confirmed by the aspect of the city itself. Now that the usual Parisian crowd has left for the summer holidays, the boulevards would be empty and desolate were it not for American tourists, who, undaunted by the scorching sun and melting asphalt, can be seen all day and every day going In and out of shops, giving the central district the appearance of an American city to such an extent that nothing has looked more like the busy section of lower Broadway than the Boulevard Haussmann during the last few days. Of course, temperatures at between 95 and 100 do not encourage entertainments, but the gardens and roof gardens of the chief hotels are as gay now as they weresome weeks ago. Hundreds of fresh arrivals are every day filling up immediately the void left by those who, having concluded their European holiday, are returning to America.

But new necessities and the desire for Increased comfort and luxury have raised the standard of living in Paris as well as in London, while taxation has increased. The price of bread and meat is higher in Paris than in London, and this is due to the Import duty on wheat, which increased the price of bread except In years of bountiful, harvest, and to the prohibition of the entry of dead meat, which is justified on sanitary grounds, but which is really a protective measure. On the • other hand, the price of sugar, owing to the signing of the Brussels convention, has materially decreased. Sugar is a food of the first class, and if the duty has decreased the amount or sugar available for France is much greater, so that the price Is considerably lower. Thia has given an Impetus to the industries which use sugar as a raw material, and for the first '.ime France has taken her place among the jam-pro-ducing countries. The price of wine has also diminished, owing to overproduction, and while the south of France has suffered Paris has gained. There has no doubt been a graduar rise in rent, and the working classes of Paris have to pay more for lodging in proportion, owing to the protective taxes on the raw material of the building trades, than the English working classes. But, on the whole, Tt Is reasssuring to learn that the cost of living in itself has not risen to any appreciable extent in Paris. Indeed, it is likely to decrease in the near future.