[Membroj] Esperanto in the "generation of materialism"

[Ralph Dumain]

As civilization was becoming worldwide, why 
shouldn't the world have a common language? And 
if everything else could be manufactured, why not 
language? Very progressive people were as 
expectant of synthetic philology as of synthetic 
rubber, and inventors of either were not lacking. 
A German priest, Johann Schleyer, invented the 
odd looking language of "Volapük" in 1879 1880. A 
first congress of its devotees was held on Lake 
Constance in 1884, a second at Munich in 1887, a 
third at the Paris Exposition of 1889. By this 
date there were 316 textbooks in the new language.

But in the 1890's Volapük was largely supplanted 
by a still newer language, the invention of a 
Polish Jew, Louis Lazarus Zamenhof. He published 
in 1887 a pamphlet entitled "La Lingvo Internacia 
de la Doktoro Esperanto," meaning, of course, to 
English speaking people, "The International 
Language of Dr. Hopeful"; and Esperanto was 
created. It was subsequently improved and 
perfected, like any industrial product, and in 
1898 it began to be advertised by a French 
Society for the Propagation of Esperanto. It was 
the subject of a paper read before the French 
Academy in 1889; and at the Paris Exposition of 
1900 it was, so to speak, placed upon the world 
market. Great expectations were attached to the future of Esperanto.

At least to many optimists in the year 1900, a 
made to order world language was but the natural 
accompaniment of a trend toward a new world order 
which would be not only mechanically productive 
but spiritually pacific. One felt pretty sure of 
this trend as one looked back from 1900 over the 
preceding quarter century. One beheld so many 
ripening fruits of international co-operation­the 
Universal Postal Union of 1875, the convention of 
1883 for the standardization of patent laws and 
that of 1887 for uniform copyright laws, the 
succession of world's fairs from the Viennese of 1873 to the Parisian of 1900.

http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/gen-materialism-9.html

SOURCE: Hayes, Carlton J. H. 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/gen-materialism-0.html>A 
Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900 (New York: 
Harper & Row, 1963 [orig.1941], p. 335.

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