Founding
The Simplified Spelling Board was announced on March 11, 1906, with Andrew Carnegie funding the organization, to be headquartered in New York City. The New York Times noted that Carnegie was convinced that "English might be made the world language of the future" and an influence leading to universal peace, but that this role was obstructed by its "contradictory and difficult spelling". Carnegie committed $15,000 (1906 dollars – over $350,000 in 2010 dollars) per year for five years to get the organization off the ground.
The initial 30 members of the Board consisted of authors, professors and dictionary editors, among them Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer, President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, Dr. Melvil Dewey (inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification), Dr. Isaac K. Funk (editor of The Standard Dictionary), former United States Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, United States Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris (and editor-in-chief of the 1909 Webster's New International Dictionary), publishing magnate Henry Holt, professor Calvin Thomas, and author Mark Twain. Offices were obtained at the Metropolitan Life Building at 1 Madison Avenue, and Brander Matthews was selected as the board's chairman.
Charles E. Sprague of the Union Dime Savings Institution, the board's first treasurer, noted that the group was careful to keep the word "reform" out of its name and gave the word "believe" as an example of a word that would benefit from elimination of its unneeded "i", stating that "If believe were spelled 'beleve', I think it would be a good change." Although many consider this change to be phonetically incorrect and a prime example of oversimplification leading to difficulties in logical pronunciation patterns.
On March 13, 1906, The New York Times editorialized in support of the Simplified Spelling Board's efforts, noting that 90% of English words are "fairly well spelled", but that "a vast improvement could be effected by reducing to some sort of regularity the much-used tenth that makes most of the trouble". An editorial in the following day's edition noted that opponents of the board's efforts had suggested that the language be kept as is, only taught better, but that the members of the board would respect the language's history in its improvement efforts without hiding or distorting it. Brander Matthews, the board's chairman, emphasized that the board's primary mission in simplifying the language was to eliminate unneeded letters, noting that "implification by omission – this is its platform; this is its motto". Isaac Funk wrote to The Times on March 20, 1906, emphasizing that the board's first aim was "a conservatively progressive evolution, aiming chiefly at the dropping of silent letters", accelerating a process that had been going on for centuries. This would be followed by the use of a phonetic alphabet developed by the American Philological Association and including the 40 basic sounds used in English. Phonetics would be taught to children in nursery school or kindergarten.
Read more about this topic: Simplified Spelling Board
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