LETTER.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., September 4, 1880.

SIR: I have the honor to invite your attention to the following statement of the progress of the reform in spelling the English language. The statement has been prepared at my request by F. A. March, LL.D., professor of the English language and of comparative philology in Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., and president of the Spelling Reform Association, a well recognized authority upon the subject.

In training the young to a correct use of good English, our teachers encounter few embarrassments greater than those arising from the anomalies of English spelling. Many of these difficulties have long been universally acknowledged, but as yet no remedy has met with general favor. Many experiments have been made: not a few attempts at change have failed; others have been conducted with great skill and learning, and have commanded increasing attention and approval. More recently some of our most eminent scholars have taken up the subject, and certain points on which they agree have received very extensive public approval.

The Home Journal, of New York City, a newspaper of social and literary importance and a supporter of the reform, published last spring a collection of opinions from a hundred noted educators, authors, and scholars. Among these, President F. A. P. Barnard, of Columbia College, New York, speaking of "our vicious system of English orthography," says that "looked at in an economical view, nothing could be more wasteful; regarded in its scientific aspect, nothing could be more absurd." The Earl of Malmesbury is quoted as being of the opinion that "no prime minister, from Lord Bute to Lord Palmerston, could pass an examination in spelling." Prof. Max. Müller, of Oxford University; President Noah Porter, of Yale College; Prof. A. P. Peabody, of Harvard University; President D. C. Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. S. Wells Williams, the eminent Sinologue, and Prof. S. S. Haldeman, of the University of Pennsylvania, also approve of the reform, looking at it from different standpoints. Mr. Donald G. Mitchell, the distinguished author of Dream-Life and other books, regrets "the parting from old forms," but believes "in the good sense and economies of the new." The late Prof. James Hadley may also be mentioned as one of the most eminent authorities who have favored improvements in English orthography.

The disposition to apply philosophical methods to the spelling of words is also seen in the efforts to simplify the orthography of the German language. The suggestions of the late Professor von Raumer have been accepted by the educational departments of Prussia, Bavaria, and Austria, and introduced into the schools of those countries.

As authoritative information of the progress made is beyond the reach of the great body of teachers, save as supplied by this Office, I deem the publication of the accompanying paper of great importance to the teachers and school officials in correspondence with this Bureau.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Hon. CARL SCHURZ,

Secretary of the Interior.

Approved, and publication ordered.

594

JOHN EATON,

Commissioner.

C. SCHURZ,
Secretary.

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE MOVEMENT FOR

SPELLING REFORM.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION.

The present organized movement for spelling reform had its rise in our centennial year. An International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography was held at Philadelphia from August 14 to August 17 of that year. The design of the convention, as stated in the circular by which it was called, was "to settle upon some satisfactory plan of labor for the prosecution of the work so happily begun by the American Philological Association and various other educational associations in this country and England." The convention was well attended from all sections of this country and from England; it was presided over by Prof. S. S. Haldeman, of the University of Pennsylvania, president that year of the Philological Association.

The motive power which urges the reform was set forth as follows in the opening address of Prof. F. A. March:

Three years are spent in our primary schools in learning to read and spell a little. The German advançes as far in a twelvemonth. A large fraction of the school time of the millions is thus stolen from üseful studies and devoted to the most painful drudgery. Millions of years are thus lest in every generation. Then it affects the intellect of beginners. The child should have its reason awakened by order, proportion, fitness, law in the objects it is made to study. But wo to the child who attempts to use reason in spelling English. It is a mark of premise not to spell easily. One whose reason is active must learn net to use it. The whole process is stupefying and perverting; it makes great numbers of children finally and forever hate the sight of a book. There are reported to the takers of our last çensus 5,500,000 illiterates in the United States. One half at least of those who report themselves able to read, cannot read well enough to get much good from it. But moral degeneracy fellows the want of cultivated intelligence. Christianity cannot put forth half her strength where she cannot üse her presses. Republics fall to ruin when the people become blind and bad. We ought then to try to improve our spelling from patriotic and philanthropic motives. If these do not move us, it may be worth while to remember that it has been computed that we throw away $15,000,000 a year paying teachers for addling the brains of our children with bad spelling, and at least $100,000,000 more paying printers and publishers for sprinkling our books and papers with silent letters.

The immediate urgency of these considerations was variously enforced by many speakers, and the convention finally passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That this convention has listened with great interest to the facts presented by J. B. Towe, of Virginia, in regard to the impossibility of teaching his brother freedmen the present English spelling; and to his appeal on their behalf. And also to the facts and appeal of S. V. Blakesly, of California, in regard to and on behalf of the pagan populations amung whom he is laboring as a Christian missionary; and that we earnestly commend this matter to the attention of all who have at heart the perpetuity of our institutions and the progress of Christianity; and especially to the Bible and Tract Societies and Freedmen's aid Societies, whose duty it is to use the press wisely for these vital ends, and that we urge the speedy publication in English of the Bible and uther good books in a reformed spelling.

The obstruction which our irregular and delusive spelling offers to etymological research, and to scientific study of our language, was also frequently enforced, and the opprobrium which it brings upon English scholars.

A large number of schemes of reform were presented to the convention; but after giving all a hearing, there seemed to be a unanimous desire to obtain definite action by the Philological Association, and a hearty disposition to accept and adopt whatever they should recommend. The members of the convention organized, however, as a Spelling Reform Association, and prepared to urge the necessity of reform, while the philologists should be deliberating as to what the reform should be.

THE AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.

At the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in 1874, at Hartford, the president spoke in the opening address at some length on the reform of our spelling. He said, among other things:

It is of no use to try to characterize with fitting epithets and adequate terma of ebjurgation the monstrous spelling of the English language.

The time lost by it is a large part of the whole school-time of the mass of men. Count the houre that each man wastes in learning to read at school, the houra which he wastes through life from the hindrance to easy reading, the houre wasted at school in learning to spell, the houre spent through life in keeping up and perfecting this knowledge of spelling, in consulting dictionaries, a wurk that never enda, the houre that he spende in writing silent lettera; and multiply this time by the number of persona who speak English, and we shall have a total of milliona of yeara wasted by each generation. The cost of printing the sįlent lettera of the English language ja to be counted by millions of dollars for each generation. And yet literary amateura fall in luve with these squintinga and lispings. They try to defend them by pleading their advantage in the study of etymology. But a changeless orthography destroys the material for etymological study, and written recorda are valuable to the philologist just in proportion as they are accurate records of speech az spoken from year to year.

Next year, 1875, at Newport, the subject was resumed by the presi dent, Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull. He said:

In the devious mazea of American linguistics it ia eazy to lose one'a way and forget the time. Let us return homeward, to say something about a language in