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PART III
The Esperanto Cluster: Same Language, Different Communities
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The Demographics of Esperantujo
Since an international language such as Esperanto is a public good, rational- ity dictates free riding rather than volunteering to promote its success. An- other factor that might discourage cooperation was personal reputation. Like the Volapukists before them, the Esperantists were harassed and ridiculed by the media as hopeless fools, when not more vehemently as people of ques- tionable patriotism. Who were they? What motives drove them to invest time and money and to risk their personal reputations to learn and champion a barely spoken language?
A review of contemporary journals gives us some answers. Also, the Ad- resaroj, or address books, provide some basic information about the Espe- rantists. The most comprehensive source of information, however, is the data collected by the American Reuben A. Tanquist in 1927, for his master's thesis.1 Supervised and encouraged by his mentor, the sociology professor and Esperantist Edwin L. Clarke, Tanquist launched an ambitious research project to profile the Esperantists, their motivations to learn the language, and its diffusion mechanisms. To do this, Tanquist sent 1,800 questionnaires to Esperanto clubs and journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe.
A total of 505 individuals returned the questionnaire, 162 from the United States, 207 from Britain, and 136 from continental Europe. Since 109 of the latter come from Germany and Austria, we can broadly label them "German- Austrian Esperantists." If we compare Tanquist's data with the statistics on the distribution of the international Esperanto movement in 1926 provided by the Germana Esperanto Instituto,2 it is evident that Tanquist's sample was not representative. It did not include members of the working-class Esperanto movement, and it offers only a snapshot of the English- and German-speaking Esperantists in 1927. Notwithstanding these biases, it is the best source for studying the Esperanto movement in the interwar period. Table 2 shows the distribution of these three sub-populations according to gender, age, educa- tion, and occupation.
As Table 2 shows, slightly more than one-third of Esperantists were women. Women were better represented among Esperantists in the United Kingdom (41 percent) and the United States (37 percent) than in Germany and Austria,
Table 2. Percentage of American, British, and German-Austrian Esperantists by Gender, Age, Education, and Occupation in 1927
American
British
German- Austrian
Tota
Gender
Women
37
41
26
36
Men
63
59
74
64
Age
< 20
27
21
19
25
21-30
19
32
34
29
31-40
24
27
20
24
41-50
17
15
15
13
51-60
10
5
8
7
> 60
3
0
4
2
Education (Last School Attended)
Primary
19
48
24
31
Secondary
43
28
40
36
University
28
9
17
17
Teachers school
4
2
10
5
Commerce school
3
1
5
3
Other prof. school
4
12
4
7
Occupation
Un- and semi-skilled workers
7
8
5
6
Skilled workers
5
15
11
11
White collar
26
33
11
25
Professionals (incl. teachers)
26
21
41
28
Students
24
8
16
16
Housewives
10
13
10
11
Others
2
1
4
3
Source: Tanquist, "A Study."
where they were only 26 percent of the movement. Still, this compares favor- ably with other social movements and organizations of the time. Even after the incorporation of the Women's Labour League in the Labor Party after World War I, only 32 percent of Labour Party members were women. Simi- larly, in 1928 Germany, women were only 21 percent of the total member- ship of the SPD.3 Women's contributions to the Esperanto movement also compared well with the Volapukists (10 to 15 percent) and the Idist move- ment (11 percent according to the Yarlibro Idista 1922). (We examine the Idist movement in Part 4.) This relatively high number of women among the Es- perantists did not go unnoticed by contemporaries, who sometimes under- lined the effeminate character of the movement: more emotional than rational, and lacking virile values such as patriotism and militarism.
Compared to their co-nationals, Esperantists were younger. Whereas 53 percent of American Esperantists were between 20 and 40 years old, this age group amounted to only 27 percent of the American population overall. Like their American counterparts, the British Esperantists were also younger than the general British population (59 versus 31 percent in the 20-40 age group). The same can be said of the German-Austrian Esperantists: 54 percent of them were between 20 and 40, but only 36 percent and 30 percent of the German and Austrian populations were, respectively.
Esperantists were also better educated than their corresponding national groups. Only 1.2 percent of Americans were attending a university or a pro- fessional school, but among the Esperantists they represented 28 percent. In the United Kingdom we have a similar scenario: less than one percent of the British population was enrolled in a university, whereas nine percent of Brit- ish Esperantists had a university degree. While less than one percent of Ger- mans and Austrians were attending a university or a technical Hochschule, 17 percent of the German and Austrian Esperantists had a higher education degree. Tanquist's data, thus, indicate that the Esperantists concentrated on the early working age group and were relatively younger and better educated than their co-nationals.4 But, again, Tanquist's survey underrepresents the working-class portion of the movement.
Students were particularly well represented in the movement, especially in the United States and the German-Austrian group, where they amounted to 24 and 16 percent, respectively. But more important, perhaps, is the per- centage of professionals and teachers in the German-Austrian group, around 40 percent of Tanquist's sample. Among the professionals (not showed in the table), public employees (24 percent), and scientists and clergymen (7 and 6 percent, respectively) dominated. Overall, 15 percent of Esperantists who reported their occupation were teachers or enrolled in teaching schools. Given the predominance of women in the teaching profession, this might explain the movement's higher percentage of females. By this time, Esperanto had been experimentally introduced in primary and secondary schools in different European countries. For example, by 1922, Esperanto was a com- pulsory subject in thirteen primary schools and four secondary schools in the United Kingdom, and a positive report of the British Board of Education indicated that the teaching of Esperanto could be extended. A similar thing happened in Poland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic countries.5 This created a demand for qualified Esperanto teachers, who had to have a strong command of the language. Data from The British Esperantist from 1920 to 1930 indicate that this demand was mostly met by women: around two-thirds of those who passed the upper-level Esperanto exams were women. (Another factor that might explain the relatively high proportion of women activists in the move- ment might be ideological, as we see below with regard to the feminist branch of the pacifist movement.)