NOTE: THE CHILDREN OF
THE CODE PROJECT IS NOT ADVOCATING ALPHABET OR SPELLING REFORM. WE
SHARE THESE PIECES AS EXHIBITS OF THINKING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN THE CODE AND READING RELATED PROBLEMS.
Abroad, observers wondered just what had
happened to the unruly and libertarian Americans. “Here is the language
of 80 million people suddenly altered by a mere administrative ukase,”
marveled an English paper.“Could
any other ruler on earth do this thing?"
From boyhood, Theodore Roosevelt had been a
notoriously bad speller; so as President he simply rewrote the rules of
orthography—until a swarm of spelling bees stung him back to his senses.
...
in August 1906, with characteristic impulsiveness, President Roosevelt directed
the Government Printing Office to adopt simplified spelling in all publications
of the executive department. His order was not “far-reaching or sudden or
violent,” averred Roosevelt, but only a modest effort “to make our spelling
a little less foolish and fantastic.”
It
may have been the worst miscalculation of T.R.’s career.
The
press heaped ridicule upon the Rough Rider, who had a self-deprecating sense of
humor but did not much like to be deprecated by others. The Baltimore Sunasked how the President’s surname would be rendered in the new
spelling: “Rusevelt” or “Butt-in-sky”? In best conspiracy-sniffing
fashion, the Rochester Post-Express declared, “It is a scheme financed
by Carnegie, backed by certain large publishing interests, and designed to carry
out an immense project for jobbery in reprinting dictionaries and school
books.” Abroad, observers wondered just what had happened to the
unruly and libertarian Americans. “Here is the language of 80 million people
suddenly altered by a mere administrative ukase,” marveled an English paper.“Could any other ruler on earth do this thing?”
In
the end, the Supreme Court refused to follow the President, as did the House of
Representatives, which voted 142-24 to overturn T.R.’s order. The President
withdrew his spelling edict and admitted defeat in this “undignified
contest.”
The person most responsible for bringing a spotlight of publicity to the
Government Printing Office was President Theodore Roosevelt. Not only did he
appoint Public Printer Stillings, but he gave him an order that brought him into
the limelight. The Associated Press reported it on August 24, 1906:
"President Roosevelt has endorsed the Carnegie spelling reform movement. He
issued orders today to Public Printer Stillings that hereafter all messages from
the President and all other documents emanating from the White House shall be
printed in accordance with the recommendation of the spelling reform committee
headed by Brander Matthews, professor of English in Columbia University. This
committee has published a list of 300 words in which the spelling is reformed.
This list contains such words as 'thru' and 'tho' as the spelling for 'through'
and 'though.'"
The press had a field day with the "reform spelling crusade" and
editorials and cartoons abounded. The Supreme Court entered the fray and
directed that its opinions should be printed in the old style. Finally, Congress
had the last word when Representative Charles B. Landis of Indiana, Chairman of
the House Committee on Printing, introduced a resolution on December 13, 1906:
"Resolved, That it is the sense of the House that hereafter in the printing
of House documents or other publications used by law or ordered by Congress, or
either branch thereof, or emanating from any executive department or bureau of
the Government, the House printer should observe and adhere to the standard of
orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English
language. The motion passed unanimously. The President let the Public Printer
and the Nation know that the old style was reinstated.
I wrote John A. Gable, Ph.D. Executive
Director, Theodore Roosevelt Association, he replied:
In response to your e-mail of recent date, you
might look at C.H.Dornbusch, "American Spelling Simplified by
Presidential Edict," American Speech, vol. 36 (1961), pp. 236-238.
Brander Matthews, prof. of English at Columbia, was TR's inspiration and
coach on spelling reform, and all books on BRANDER MATTHEWS should be
consulted.
I know many historians
interested in Theodore Roosevelt, but none who have any particular knowledge
of this subject. It is mentioned only in passing in books on TR.
I could bone up on the topic, I suppose, but my schedule is very full until
after February 2003. You might try Edmund Morris. He may be able to put
together some material. You could write to him at 222 Central Park
South, New York City 10019-1408.
Before I could respond to the first email he
wrote me again...
Lawrence J. Oliver is an expert on Brander
Matthew, and therefore on spelling reform. He did two books on Matthews and
TR: Lawrence J. Oliver, Brander Matthews, Theodore Roosevelt, and the
Politics of American Literature, 1880- 1920 (1992) and Matthew
J. Oliver, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt and Brander Matthews
(1995) Both books were published by The University of Tennessee Press In the
1990s Oliver was a professor of English at Texas A&M University. Try
Texas A&M to locate him. Good luck.
I responded...
I am beginning
to get the sense that TR's approach to instituting spelling reform by
mandate precipitated such ridicule that it knocked the wind out of the whole
movement.
It had been
building in America and England and had grown to include: William James and
Charles Darwin, Mark Twain and H.G. Wells and so many other notables
that it seemed to have the backing of the intellectual elite of both
countries...then in 1906 just a few months after releasing their suggested
reforms to the public, TR edicts some of the movement's reform
suggestions upon the office of government printing. The resulting
attack on him and the spelling societies seems to have led to the downfall
of the movement.
Your
input has been very helpful. Understanding the central role TR played in
this (and apparently even more so the strategies implicit in how Brander
Matthews encouraged him) is a very important area of focus for our series.
Then wrote to
Oliver...
No reply
Then received
the following from Gable...
Yes, TR's attempt at the reform was a disaster.
It was killed with ridicule. TR was portrayed as trying to act like God,
having control over everything. TR had a photographic memory, but
strangely was a relatively poor speller. His spelling may be related to the
reform.
He continued to attack particularly the spelling of labour, harbour, the
English ours. There is a manuscript galley at Harvard, in which the
our s are used, and he writes angrily in long hand, "I will not be held
responsible for these superfluous u s!"
And again from Gable...
It was, by the way, rare that Theodore
Roosevelt's advocacy of anything hurt that cause, as you say is the case with
spelling reform. His advocacy of such things as women's suffrage, workmen's
compensation, the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson, conservation, etc.
greatly speeded those causes down the road.
I responded...
Yes, I have
been reading his online autobio (http://www.bartleby.com/55/)
and I find his orientations to be both authentic and noble. I am in awe of
reading him and am very impressed with the clarity of his mind and the
courage of his heart.
As I meant
to caveat in my language, I am not sure of what happened. It 'appears'
at my current level of altitude that the Simplified Spelling movement in the
US went into a stall when the movement was attacked (http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/taejf01c.htm):
“It is a
scheme financed by Carnegie, backed by certain large publishing interests,
and designed to carry out an immense project for jobbery in reprinting
dictionaries and school books.” Abroad, observers wondered just what had
happened to the unruly and libertarian Americans. “Here is the language
of 80 million people suddenly altered by a mere administrative ukase,”
marveled an English paper.“Could
any other ruler on earth do this thing?”
It was the kind of fundamental issue smear common to those days (and still
in our own) and for which TR fought against so valiantly. I am not saying TR
did anything wrong. It appears as if he understood the 'fulcrum'
implications of the orthography and tried to help it move. In retrospect it
seems he grasped what Noah Webster said about the need for reform a century
earlier:
Delay
in the plan here proposed may be fatal ... the minds of men may again sink
into indolence; a national acquiescence in error will follow, and
posterity be doomed to struggle with difficulties which time and accident
will perpetually multiply."
From my read of
his words I think he was quite aware of both the 'language imperialistic and
'ecology of mind' arguments and I am quite confident in the nobleness of his
participation. Nonetheless, I do want to understand how the movement, which
at its peak had so many of the English language's best and brightest,
floundered, and, I think the backlash against TR's actions marked some kind
of significant turning point. Our 'reading war' debates have been developing
within a 'box' whose shape reflects what happened in those days. I hope to
learn more about this and when I do I will share it with you.
I found references to the following not available online...
Spelling an end to orthographical reforms; newspaper response to the 1906
Roosevelt simplifications [by] John H. Vivian. [University, Ala., 1979] p.
163-174 Photocopied from American speech, v.54, no.3, Fall 1979.
American spelling simplified by presidential edict [by Clyde H. Dornbusch.
New York, 1961] p. 236-238 Photocopied from American speech, v.xxxvi, no.3,
October 1961. Includes bibliographical references.
Theodore Roosevelt's 1906 Letter to the Government Printing
Office
by John Reilly of the Simplified Spelling
Society:
A minor mystery attends this document.
Public Printer Charles Stillings says in the Government Printing Office
directive of September 4, 1906, that the spelling changes are being made
pursuant to "Executive order."
Histories that mention Roosevelt's spelling
initiative usually say that the president issued an executive order for
this purpose on August 27, 1906. However, "executive order" is
a term of art.
Executive orders are the ordinary means that
presidents use to carry out the duties of their office. They are
numbered sequentially. Since the middle of the 20th century they have
been systematically codified. However, no such executive order appears
in the list of presidential documents issued by President Theodore
Roosevelt in 1906 or in any other year. Thie letter below may be a
simple letter of transmittal.
The text here is widely available in The
Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume V: The Big Stick 1905-1907;
edited by Elting E. Morison, John M Blum, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and
Sylvia Rice; Havard University Press, 1952; pages 389-390. Note that
this collection of letters does not include the list of reformed
spellings. The list of spellings may be found, along with the text of
the president's letter, in the Government Printing Office document of
September 4 mentioned above. That document is available on mircofiche at
major federal documents repositories. The series is US Executive Branch
Documents, 1789-1909: no. GP102-27.1, GP102-27.2). The material includes
copies of the Circulars of the Simplified Spelling Board mentioned in
the president's letter.
Oyster Bay, August 27, 1906
To Charles Arthur Stillings
My dear Mr. Stillings:
I enclose herewith copies of certain circulars of the
Simplified Spelling Board, which can be obtained free from
the Board at No. 1 Madison Avenue, New York City. Please
hereafter direct that in all Government publications of
the executive departments the three hundred words
enumerated in Circular No. 5 shall be spelled as therein
set forth. If anyone asks the reason for the action, refer
him to Circulars 3, 4 and 6 as issued by the Spelling
Board. Most of the critcism of the proposed step is
evidently made in entire ignorance of what the step is, no
less than in entire ignorance of the very moderate and
common-sense views as to the purposes to be cahieved,
which views as so excellently set forth in the circulars
to which I have referred.
There is not the slightest
intention to do anything revolutionary or initiate any
far-reaching policy. The purpose simply is for the
Government, instead of lagging behind popular
sentiment, to advance abreast of it and at the same
time abreast of the views of the ablest and most
practical educators of our time as well as the most
profound scholars—men of the stamp of Professor
Lounsbury. If the slighest changes in the spelling of
the three hundred words proposed wholly or partially
meet popular approval, then the changes will become
permanent without any reference to what officials or
individual private citizens may feel; if they do not
ultimately meet with popular approval they will be
dropt, and that is all there is about it. They
represent nothing in the world but a very slight
extension of the unconscious movement which has made
agricultural implement makers write “plow” instead
of “plough”; which has made most Americans
write “honor” without the somewhat absurd,
superfluous “u”; and which is even now making
people write “program” without the “me”—just
as all people who speak English now write “bat,”
“set,” “dim,” “sum,” and “fish”
instead of the Elizabethan “batte,” “sette,”
“dimme,” “summe,” and “fysshe”; which
makes us write “public,” “almanac,” “era,”
“fantasy,” and “wagon,” instead of the “publick,”
“almanack,” “aera,” “phantasy,” and
“waggon” of our great-grandfathers. It is not an
attack of the language of Shakespeare and Milton,
because it is in some instances a going back to the
forms they used, and in others merely the extension of
changes which, as regards other words, have taken
place since their time. It is not an attempt to do
anything far-reaching or sudden or violent; or indeed
anything very great at all. It is merely an attempt to
cast what sleight weight can properly be cast on the
side of the popular forces which are endeavoring to
make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic.
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