Esperanto by Act of Congress

Proposed Esperanto for
D.C. schools

One of the odd bits about Washington, D.C. is that Congress gets some say over some things that anywhere else would be wholly local decision. And so, when in 1908, Sara (Mrs. Wilbur) Crafts went to the D.C. school board to urge that Esperanto be taught (there was some opposition to the idea), maybe she should have taken things up with Congress.

If she were looking for a sympathetic member of Congress, her best best would have been the gentleman from Missouri, Richard Bartholdt. In 1910, Mr. Bartholdt took up Esperanto. Maybe Mrs. Crofts could have convinced him to start earlier.

But it’s not until 1914, nearly seven years after Mrs. Crofts went to the D.C. school board, that Mr. Bartholdt came up with his own proposal. As a member of Congress, he didn’t have to convince the school board, just the other members of Congress. His resolution was H.Res 415, “Providing for the study of Esperanto as an auxiliary language.” The resolution was introduced on February 14, 1914, and was in the newspapers on February 15.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

The Honorable Gentleman from Esperantio

Sinjoro Bartholdt

If I had to make a guess, I would estimate the current number of Esperanto speakers in the United States Congress at zero. I could be wrong, but I’m basing this on a lack of any evidence that any member of Congress speaks Esperanto.[1] No, I haven’t compared the names in the Esperanto-USA membership list with the names of the members of Congress. And I can imagine that if a member of Congress were a member of Esperanto-USA, he or she might not want to be listed.

But in the early part of the twentieth century, there was a member of Congress who made no secret of it. Richard Bartholdt, a Republican from Missouri, was a proponent of Esperanto. According to the dates listed in Wikipedia, he joined Congress at a time when Esperanto was pretty much unknown in the United States, although he had emigrated from Germany only a few years before Zamenhof published Esperanto.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!