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Show FEWER ARE GOING ABROAD Steamship Agents Blame Decrease of 30 Per Cent. Chiefly on the Recent Floods. New York. Up to May 8 the first-cabin first-cabin passenger traffic between this port and Europe was 357 ahead of the same period in 1912 west-bound and 138 bookings ahead east-bound. The second-cabin passenger traffic showed an increase of 15,000 west-bound and 2,434 east-bound from Jan. 1 to May 8 over last year. Traffic east-bound from now on will be about 30 per cent, below last year, according to the steamship agents. This, they say, is chiefly due to the number of cancellations of bookings made In January and February by persons who were sufferers by the floods in the middle west and by the tornado in the Mississippi valley. Generally the year of the presidential presiden-tial election Is a poor one for foreign travel, but 1912 was a very good year. Cancellations have been made in the last few days not only on the oldr Atlantic liners, but also on the first-cabin first-cabin bookings of the Imperator, Mauretania and Olympia. The Atlantic steamship companies look to the middle west and the west for the bulk of their summer. tourist traffic, and the sudden falling off in the demand for cabin accommodation and the cancellations came as a surprise sur-prise to them. A few of the more optimistic op-timistic agents hope that there will be a boom in the European tourist traffic later on, but it will have to come soon to have any effect on the trade. Conducted party travel is also light, according to the various tourist agents, and there Is not much hone of it picking up this year. The biggest party this summer will be the 1,000 t . persons who are going to Zurich to attend the international Sunday school convention, to be held In June. They are to be taken over by Cook's agency in two chartered steamships. There will be a universal exposition at Ghent, Belgium, which will draw a number of tourists, and another exposition expo-sition at Earl's court, London. |