Mr. Privat Goes to Washington

Li iris al Vaŝingtono

One of the early great celebrities of the Esperanto movement was a young man from Switzerland. You cannot fault Edmond Privat for a lack of fervor: he walked to the first Esperanto Congress, from Geneva to Boulogne-sur-Mer.[1] at the age of fifteen (the conference ended shortly before his sixteenth birthday). By 1907, he was actively promoting the Esperanto movement and had become a prominent Esperantist, and had been sent to the United States to promote the language. In late 1907 (check the link), the New York Sun dubbed Mr. Privat “the principal commercial traveller for the original manufacturer of Esperanto.”

Privat began his visit to the United States in New York, but in February 1908, he came to Washington, D.C. At the time that he was there, the national organization was the American Esperanto Association, headquartered in Boston. It was later that year that they would be supplanted by the Esperanto Association of North America.[2] In February 1908, D.C. wasn’t the center of the Esperanto movement in the United States,[3] but it had been national capital for a good long time. And who knew? Maybe Mr. Privat could get President Roosevelt interested in Esperanto.

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An Esperantist at the White House

Roosevelt giving a speech.
Probably not in Esperanto.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have been the President. However, the newspapers of March 3, 1908 make it clear that, however briefly, and to what little effect, there was an Esperanto speaker in the White House on March 2, 1908.[1] In my earlier post, I noted some doubt, given the news reports, as to whether the meeting took place or not, but the later articles make it clear that the meeting did take place.

This much is also clear: Roosevelt did not promote Esperanto at any time. When Edmond Privat showed up, Roosevelt’s universally ignored presidential order that federal agencies use simplified spelling had resulted in just ridicule for the President. Even a bull moose was unlikely to tangle with that again. Plus, was in the last year of his presidency. He had probably already decided that he wasn’t going to run again, so why take on the advocacy of a cause like Esperanto?

Many newspapers covered Edmond Privat’s brief meeting with Roosevelt, and some of them even got the Esperantist’s name right. The New York Times, (“Edmond Privato”), the New York Sun, and the Stark County Democrat (“Edmond Privot”) were not among these. Privat was trying to encourage the study of Esperanto in public schools, an issue that just kept coming up.

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Esperanto and the Bull Moose

Theodore Roosevelt
(from a 1902 stereo card)

There is a page in Wikibooks, under the category US History that describes Theodore Roosevelt as an Esperanto speaker, but I have not been able to discover any sort of confirmation for that assertion. In 1907, the press made the claim that Roosevelt’s vice president, Charles W. Fairbanks had taken up Esperanto, but again, this seems difficult to confirm.

There was a strong Esperanto movement in Washington, D.C. during the Roosevelt administration, and although he left office in 1909, more than a year before the Washington Universala Kongreso, if Roosevelt read the Washington newspapers, he would have seen plenty of references to Esperanto. Indeed, if the President read the Evening Star, he would have seen his name linked to that of Dr. Zamenhof.

During this same time, Edmond Privat was spending time in the United States promoting Esperanto, and on February 23, 1908, the Washington Herald ran a long piece on Privat and his plans to meet with President Roosevelt as part of Privat’s activities promoting Esperanto in the United States. The article is too long to quote in full, but it can be found here.

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Uncle Joe and Esperanto

Nia amiko, Onklo Joĉjo?

Joseph G. Cannon[1] entered Congress in 1873 and finally left it in 1923. While his congressional serve was not consecutive, he did mange to serve as Speaker of the House from 1903 to 1911, during his uninterrupted span in Congress from 1893 to 1913.[2] Nothing in his biography suggests that he was even the type to go for Esperanto when it was popular in Washington. A autobiography, Uncle Joe Cannon; the story of a pioneer American, compiled by his secretary (i.e.: chief aide) L. White Busbey, makes no reference to Esperanto or even any of the major figures of the Esperanto movement in their roles outside the movement, with one exception.

That one exception was George Harvey, who is mentioned in passing in a chapter on Mark Twain. Twain had written Cannon in 1906 seeking to lobby Congress on a copyright bill on the floor of Congress.[3] During all this, Twain invited Cannon to lunch along with George Harvey. This was before the North American Review took up the cause of Esperanto.

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Zamenhof and Spelling Reform

Surprisingly lukewarm on
phonetic spelling

First, I should note that the spelling reform movement referenced in the title was for the English language, not Esperanto. A spelling reform in Esperanto would be a vocabulary reform, since all the words are phonetic. If you know how to pronounce Esperanto and you see an unfamiliar word, you will know how to pronounce it, even if its meaning is wholly obscure. (Specialized terminology would be a good example of this. Anything you might call a “whatchamacallit,” someone else has a real name for.)

Zamenhof had been asked to give his opinion of the Simplified Spelling movement, which at the beginning of the twentieth century had some really high powered support. Wikipedia notes that the funding for the Simplified Spelling Board came from Andrew Carnegie, and supporters included the president of Columbia University, Mark Twain, and even Melvil Dewey. But the most prominent supporter was the Theodore Roosevelt, who put the power of the presidency behind it.

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Welcome to Usono

Nia Usonestro
(from Wikipedia Commons)

It’s funny to think of a New York paper devoting this much space to a minor point of Esperanto usage, but on June 30, 1907, the New York Sun did exactly that with an article on how the new name for the country in Esperanto was Usono.

Despite the popularity the word had achieved, the older usage, “Amerika” was still retained in the principal magazine of the Esperanto movement in the United States, the Amerika Esperantisto, which would continue under that name at least until the 1930s. It finally stopped publication in the 1950s.

Happily, the article is not too long to quote in full (I’m a quick typist). The article appeared in the New York Sun on June 30, 1907. While it was a new coinage in Esperanto, in 1907, a lot of Esperanto was new. The language had vastly developed since 1887. The use of the word Usono dates back to 1905, and it seems it had quickly become established in Esperanto.

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