Can you spell socialist?

There's nothing in the Constitution about spelling.

But that didn't stop President Theodore Roosevelt from forming the Simplified Spelling Board.

With funding help form Andrew Carnegie, he sought to to simplify the strange, contradictory spelling of English -- particularly American English.

Started in 1906, the panel immediately met with resistance, first from newspapers. "We dont neid know speling rools," was the common claim of the day. Or something like that, given I made up that sentence entirely.

Even the nation across the pond, England, complained there was only one English member of the board that would standardize spelling of, um, English. So, to appease the British, Roosevelt appointed three more Englishmen to help standardize spelling.

(That reminded me of the great second paragraph of a short story by Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, writing in about 1900: "But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England and takes place in and around Knotacentinum Towers (pronounced as if written Nosham Taws), the seat of Lord Knotacent (pronounced as if written Nosh). But it is not necessary to pronounce either of these names in reading them."

Aggrieved as the panel might have been by biting journalistic and cartoon commentary, they pushed forward and issued a list of 300 words with more to come.

This form the wikipedia entry about the board:

"The Board's initial list of 300 words was published on April 1, 1906. Much of the list included words ending with -ed changed to end -t ("addressed", "caressed", "missed", "possessed" and "wished", becoming "addresst", "carest", "mist", "possest" and "wisht", respectively). Other changes included removal of silent letters ("catalogue" to "catalog"), changing -re endings to -er ("calibre" and "sabre" to "caliber" and "saber"), changing "ough" to "o" to represent the long vowel sound in the new words altho, tho and thoro, and changes to represent the "z" sound with that letter, where "s" had been used ("brasen" and "surprise" becoming "brazen" and "surprize")."

But both people and institution had enough. a U.S. representative -- from Indiana no less -- submitted a bill that said the government would have none of this new spelling. The bill passed unanimously.

The next year, Roosevelt was watching a naval review with a boat launched by a newspaper passed by. It's name was "Pres bot." Roosevelt laughed and waved at the boat named jokingly at his effort to fix American spelling.