Mondays, Mrs. Roe Teaches Esperanto

Ŝi volas paroli esperante kun vi

Esperanto seems to have been at the center of the social world of Omaha, Nebraska in the period before World War I. In 1909, according to the Adresaro published by the Esperanto Association of North America, the Omaha Esperanto Club had forty-two members, with an additional twenty-two in the evening class (what this distinction indicated, it’s not quite clear). Oddly enough, Omaha had fifteen additional members of the EANA who were not members of the Omaha Nebraska Club.[1] Given this, it’s no surprise that the Omaha Daily Bee covered the local Esperantists so thoroughly.

I’ve already written about two of these Omaha early Esperantists, Charles J. Roberts (EANA membership number 923) and Mrs. W. B. (Alice) Howard (1346). Alice Howard’s mother, Mrs. E. A. (Abigail) Russell (1713) was a member of the First Nebraska Esperanto Club, of Ord, Nebraska (her number seems to indicate that she joined the EANA some time after her daughter did). According to Wikipedia, about this time Omaha had a population of 124,000 people. Not bad to have sixty-four people speaking or studying Esperanto.[2]

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Esperanto on Street Cars

Somewhat dated, alas.

Oh, were this the reality now, and perhaps it will be again. I’ve been making periodic checks of the number of people who have signed up for Esperanto lessons on Duolingo. As of today (June 28, 2015), it is just past thirty-seven thousand.[1] In a way, it resembles the wave of enthusiasm that happened in the United States from about 1906 through 1912.

In the “Book Chat” column of the June 28, 1906 edition of the New York Observer and Chronicle, that’s exactly the vision brought forth by the writer: “it would not be surprising to hear ‘Esperanto’ conversations on board the street cars.” It would be today. I have the sneaking suspicion that there were more Esperanto speakers in 1915 New York than there are throughout the entire United States in 2015 (I hope I’m wrong).

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The Los Angeles Report on the Esperanto Congress

LA Times readers had an uncanny
experience of déjà vu.

Journalism by press release is clearly nothing new, given the overlap in information in the articles that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald and the Los Angeles Times on June 19, 1910. It’s also clear what the source of the article was: the Esperanto Society of Los Angeles, which managed to get a plug in for their own events. (I’d like to note here that while I struggle to maintain monthly meetings of my own Esperanto group, in 1910 there were weekly Esperanto meetings in Los Angeles. On the other hand, when I moved to California in 1991, there were weekly meetings in my area; that group has since folded.)

Because there is so much overlap, I’ve decided to take the irritating way out and combine the articles. I’ve set them below in three columns, the Herald on the left, the Times on the right, and everything where they’re using the same words is in the middle.

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Early Results on Students’ Petition for Esperanto

We want Esperanto now!

On June 8, 1913, two of the Washington D.C. newspapers, the Washington Herald and the Evening Star reported on plans by D.C. students to create a petition to have Esperanto taught in the public schools. This was neither the first nor last attempt to get Esperanto into the D.C. schools, though none of them were successful. We can cheer for the students in their attempts at convincing the board of eduction to have Esperanto as a subject, while at the remove of more than a century, we know that their efforts were not successful.

But they tried. What it does show is just how energetic and large the Esperanto movement was in just one American city a century ago, and that they were doing the work to try to perpetuate the movement. They had big plans in era when the hope was still alive that Americans traveling abroad would speak Esperanto. The Esperanto Association of North America was still headquartered there, although they would soon move their offices to West Newton, Massachusetts (Amerika Esperantisto had already moved there). Sadly, in a way this move showed that the Esperanto movement was diminishing in the United States; the EANA presidents would be Esperantists, not those who held power in diplomatic circles. The organization would no longer be headquartered in a major city, but was in a suburb. The Esperanto movement in the United States was somewhat running out of steam. A petition drive for Esperanto in the public schools was a bold move that, if successful, might have been imitated.

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The Death of an Esperantist

An unhappy end

Let’s clear this up first: despite the words of the Chicago Tribune, Herbert Harris was not “the chief exponent in America of Esperanto,” though he was certainly an active member of the Esperanto Association of North America, and the translator of two books into Esperanto (he was no Edward Payson, when it came to translation, or even leadership of the Esperanto movement). In 1919, when Harris died, it would have been more accurate to describe Payson as “the chief exponent in America of Esperanto.” That said, Harris was clearly an important and beloved figure in the Esperanto movement.

Sadly, Harris committed suicide by drowning. submerging himself in the waters of Lake Michigan in early June, 1919. He had been in the Esperanto movement for more than a decade. His obituary in Amerika Esperantisto notes that he learned Esperanto in 1906. (Amerika Esperantisto clearly went to press late, since the obituary written “as this number of the magazine goes to press” appeared in the June 1919 issue.)

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Students Petition for Esperanto

Well, maybe not "planned"

There were several attempts to get Esperanto classes in to the Washington, D.C. school system. The early Esperantist Mrs. Wilbur Crafts made an attempt in 1908, and in 1914, a Representative from Louisiana attempted to get the D.C. schools to add Esperanto to their curriculum. He was preceded by a year by Esperantists who tried to influence this themselves.

The plan was (and, alas, we already know it was unsuccessful) was to get District residents to sign a petition that the D.C. schools teach Esperanto, and no house was going to be ignored, not even that big white one on Pennsylvania Avenue. It made sense: get the endorsement of the people in D.C., and the school board would have to follow. In a way, this is a great idea, since one of the problem Esperanto seems to have is that it’s never achieved a large enough group of speakers to achieve the network effects where it then becomes sensible for lots of people to learn it.

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No Esperanto for Connecticut Schools

Did the judges speak Esperanto?

You can’t fault the Esperanto movement for trying. Over the years, Esperantists made a number of attempts to get the language taught in schools. One such example would be the attempt by Mrs. Wilbur Crafts to get Esperanto into the Washington D.C. schools. It’s a reasonable thing: it brings Esperanto to a group of people (schoolchildren) who have the time to study it, increasing the number of people who speak Esperanto, thus increasing its utility.[1] School systems look at the actual utility of Esperanto and then say no.

There probably are ways in which the Esperanto movement could get Esperanto into public schools, but someone (not the schools) would have to foot the bill. And probably offer other inducements. I remember reading about a program in which the Chinese government subsidized the instruction of Mandarin Chinese in American schools. I suspect part of this is a question of the sunk cost fallacy. If you’ve spent a year studying Mandarin at the age of eight, why not continue with it when offered a language at the high school level? Why start all over again with one of the standard European languages?

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Esperanto in 1909 Florida

Mr. Pryor played to win

Nellie Jerauld went unmentioned in the article in in the February 17, 1909 Pensacola Journal, but it probably wasn’t necessary to mention her, since her interest in Esperanto was probably well known to her neighbors in the Choctawhatchee Bay area of Florida, and her home got mentioned in the article. She was actually a bit of a latecomer to Esperanto, since the first indication of her Esperanto activity dates to the end of 1908, but by early 1908 there was a group in Pensacola, the “Unufojio Esperanto Societo de Floridio,” (at least what’s what the Journal put into print)[1] although Pensacola might have been a bit far for Mrs. Jerauld.[2]

Mrs. Jerauld named her home “Evoluta.” The Pensacola Journal noted in 1908 that “all of the planning and most of the work for the first two years was done by Mrs. Jerauld and her two daughters.” (There were two sons too, but they seem to have had other concerns.) From accounts in the newspapers, Evoluta seems to have been a combination of farm, boarding house, and arts center. And it was a place for Esperanto.

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Push Back on Esperanto in D.C. Schools

In July 1908, Mrs. Wilbur Crafts asked the Washington D.C. school system to consider teaching Esperanto. The response she received from the Superintendent of Schools really promised nothing other than that it might get on the agenda for discussion. The National Tribune questioned the wisdom of this.

In their July 23, 1908 edition, they did so in a manner that is timeless.

A Mrs. Wilbur Crafts, who, with her husband, has acquired more kinds of knowledge which won’t do anybody any good than most anybody else living, is now trying to induce the School Board of Washington to introduce “Esperanto” into the schools of the city. Now, what for? If the kids in the Washington schools could be taught a little more mathematics, spelling, geography, grammar and common sense no one would kick. But to add to the lack of common education in the commonest studies Esperanto would be to increase a vacuum. The pupils of Washington schools are turned out notoriously bad spellers. The things they know about the history of the United States would go on a sheet of notepaper. They do not know how to hunt for knowledge in a cyclopedia, and they have small use for a dictionary. Yet Esperanto would be added to the course! Shucks!

Timeless because it just keeps getting repeated. I saw a variety of this rant on Facebook just a few days ago. The sort of thing that gets posted by people in their 40s and 50s, complaining that teens of today lack the studiousness that people in the poster’s era had. Of course, when they were teens, people said the same thing.

When was this golden age of learning from which we have fallen?

Update: I've belatedly fixed a transcription error, and one that has a name. It's called an "eyeskip." When I transcribed the National Tribune's article, I jumped from one "anybody" (after "won't do") to the next next (before "else living"). My apologies for the transcription error. I try to keep these as error-free as possible, but typos do creep in.

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