Esperanto for Clayworkers

To you who manufacture or deal in clay products, supply to clayworkers requisite machinery or accessories, or cater to the needs of the industry in any way—Esperanto, the new international language, will be of interest.

Have you received in your office letters written in German, French or Spanish, which you, as a layman, could not decipher? Has the air become blue and surcharged with sulphuric fumes, as you stood helpless—or rushed wildly to every dictionary, almanac, or encyclopedia available, in your frantic endeavor to piece two and two together, linguistically, to make four? Have you been foiled in your desperate attempt to ascertain whether your correspondent was ordering—Rush!—l,000,000 tons of sewer pipe—or merely inquiring the present of pavers in your vicinity f. o. b. yards? If so, Esperanto might be a friend in disguise! Investigate.

Might not some worker in clay on the Continent, in Africa, in Japan, be encountering the same difficulties that you are trying to overcome? Might not an interchange of experiences, opinions, ideas, be helpful? In the columns of foreign journals devoted to the clay and kindred industries, are there not data obtained by careful experimentation and research in technical and ceramic schools and chemical laboratories of great value to American clayworkers but inaccessible to the majority because of their being hidden in the intricacies of German, Latin, or French?

If there were a language so easily mastered and so eclectic that all nations would adopt it without dissension, the valuable secrets discovered in scientific laboratories or factory practice at home and abroad could be easily made known to the industry at large. This would do away with the immense amount of labor and expense involved in the translation of that matter into the multitude of different languages—granting that such a thing were a possibility to the author or his representatives in the beginning. Is not Esperanto, then, worthy at least of consideration? Write to Arthur Baker, editor of “Amerika Esperantisto” and author of “The American Esperanto Book,” 1239 Michigan Ave., Chicago, and he will gladly furnish you with detailed information in regard to this new language, send you interesting literature, and explain to you why Esperanto may eventually become an acknowledged and necessary factor in the industrial world.

SOURCE: “Esperanto for Clayworkers,” Brick (1894‑1910): Mar 1, 1908: 28, 3; p. 138.

Esperanto, Vaŝingtono, & la Mondo / Esperanto, Washington, & the World — 1910
Centjara Jubileo / Centennial — 2010

Esperanto Study Guide / Esperanto-Gvidilo