Arthur Baker Speaks…Eventually

Arthur Baker
Esperantist.
Life of the party.

One of the attractions of covering this news item is that the article comes with a photograph of Mr. Baker, the first I’ve come across. I haven’t noticed any in the issues of Amerika Esperantisto during his period as editor, even when he was including photographs of prominent Esperantists, of which he was certainly one (I suppose modesty forbade). In addition to editing the magazine, selling copies of his American Esperanto Book, and distributing brochures, he gave talks. He had been doing this for some years, since he spoke in New York in 1908, prior to Sehohr Rhodes singing in Esperanto.

In the days preceding his talk in Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune initially described him as “a well-known journalist of Chicago,”[1] but a notice (probably written by the Salt Lake Esperanto group) that appeared in both the Tribune and the Salt Lake Herald on February 10, 1910, described him as “a well-known humorist and entertainer of Chicago.” Perhaps there is more to be found, but what I’ve seen indicates that Mr. Baker’s two main subjects were Esperanto and socialism. He just doesn’t seem the type to be delivering a comic lecture.

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Mr. Baker’s Brochure and An Esperantist Responds

Why would Arthur Baker ask
for stamps and then just
mail them back?

On December 5, 1910, the Los Angeles Herald ran a letter from O. H. Mayer, a prominent Idoist, promoting a brochure about Ido, must as Arthur Baker had been promoting a brochure on Esperanto. This brought two responses from readers of the Herald, one telling us what happened when he wrote to Arthur Baker for the free Esperanto brochure, and the other attempting to rebut the claims made by O. H. Mayer.

Baker was in Esperanto for the cash, and seemed resentful of competition from other Esperantist concerns.[1] For him, the whole point of the brochure Elements of Esperanto was to get people to buy his book, The American Esperanto Book, subscribe to his magazine, Amerika Esperantisto, or both. The proffered free brochure (available for stamps for reply) was a sixteen-pages long, and largely drawn from Zamenhof’s Unua Libro. Today it can be read without having to send stamps to anyone, since Google Books has made a copy of Elements of Esperanto readily available. Elements of Esperanto concludes with an advertisement for The American Esperanto Book.

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A Diva For Esperanto

La Esperanta kantistino

The first question raised is “just what is an electrical congress?” Why would a woman be singing at an “electrical congress”? Think Consumer Electronics Show, turn-of-the-century style. In 1908, municipal and household electricity were new and there were demonstrations of the wonderful, modern things you could do with electricity. But if you’re going to do an exhibition, you might want some entertainment as well.

The reports on the 1908 Electrical Congress in New York City make it clear that the local Esperantists saw this as an opportunity for promotion, and they were behind Mme. Rhodes singing at the Congress. There isn’t a lot of information about the oddly-named Sedohr Rhodes, but there is something. She had her moment as a diva, though it does seem that by the time she sang at the Electrical Congress, her career was over.

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Esperanto Magazine Launched

Not bad.
Ran for about 60 years

L’Amerika Esperantisto seems to have launched with a good deal of fanfare. Not bad for a publication in Esperanto. I have found at least nine papers announcing that there would be, for the first time, an Esperanto magazine in the the United States.

Five newspapers carried the same piece (more or less). What follows is my creation, as the various pieces are dated the 8th, the 10th, or not all all, and more newspapers got the name of the publication wrong than got it right.

Oklahoma City, Sept. 8—L’Amerika Esperantisto, the first Esperanto journal ever published in America has commenced publication here. Over 40 such journals are published in Europe, where the late Geneva conference created widespread interest in the subject.

Three newspapers (Gainsville Daily Sun, Minneapolis Journal, and the Hopkinsville Kentuckian) misname the magazine as L’Amerika Esperantesto, with the Daily Sun writing “esperanto” all in lower case, only the Hays Kansas Free Press got all the words right.

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