Stelo
The stelo ("star"; plural: steloj) was from 1945 to 1993 a monetary unit of Esperantists, one of whose aims was to achieve a single world currency.
On 14 April 1942, the 25th anniversary of the death of L. L. Zamenhof, a group of faithful Esperantists had gathered in secret in a private residence in The Hague to remember him.
Esperantists had been among the groups especially persecuted and even exterminated by the Nazis, and they now wanted jointly to undertake a concrete task to help save mankind from "world catastrophe."
After discussion, the Esperantists agreed to form the Universal League as an organization whose principal purpose would be to implement Zamenhof's original program: to unite humanity in peace through a common language.
With the founding of the Universal League, an express wish of the now-deceased Zamenhof and of Esperantists from many different lands both before and during the Second World War was coming to fruition.
The 1294 members at the meeting approved a constitution, one of the stated goals of which was the issuing of Stelo currency with a stable, internationally agreed value.
Soon, however, it was announced that the value of a Stelo would equal the price of a standard loaf of bread in the Netherlands, which at that time cost 0.25 Dutch guilders.
At first the Esperantists had to forgo further steps, such as the establishment of their own bank with a worldwide cheque endorsing and payment system and the issuing of coins and banknotes.
The Universal League founders wanted to show their good will by maintaining a constant value for the Stelo, but their efforts were doomed to failure.
The ratio remained four Steloj to the guilder, and bank currency conversion tables were used to fix the value of the Stelo in other countries.
Moreover, even the Universal League gave up the idea of recording bookkeeping transactions in Stelo monetary units, so nobody gained experience with a coin of constant value.
Rich from worldwide commodity sales receipts, the Universal League had placed a large order for with the Royal Dutch Mint (Rijksmunt) in Utrecht to strike the coinage.
This investment was swiftly recouped, with the result that in 1965 the League was able to issue a fourth denomination, a silver 25 steloj coin, which also sold very well.
His basic idea was that regardless of its level of development each country could calculate in its national currency an average family's monthly expenditure.
Op 't Roodt and Willem P. Roelofs, who were eager to quickly establish a procedure to keep the Stelo's value constant and to publish the result within the framework of the Esperanto movement.
Under the editorship of Op 't Roodt, the Universal League's new periodical Bulteno was guided by the idea that the value of the Stelo would remain constant, unaffected by inflation.
Dr. Roelofs believed that the Stelo should serve as the basis for international financial transactions, but only between countries that refused to deal with commercial banks.
After his departure from the Universal League he tried to apply Dr. Roelofs's currency values, but quickly concluded that the data on the purchasing power of the Stelo were erroneous.
From the mid-1980s he began to collect statistical data on inflation in various countries, gaining the unexpected support of an economics instructor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
An honorary member of the library at Erasmus University, Mee occupied much of his free time in researching statistical data on the 25 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The progress of Mee's research accelerated in 1981 as he began distributing tables of nine countries' currency relationships, with which he could make rapid and trustworthy calculations.
It shortly became apparent, however, that the Italian data were not sufficiently dependable for him to make reliable inferences about that country's currency values.
The basic calculating system was so adapted that could he but obtain regular and reliable data, he could fix the currency relationships among many more countries.
Lawrence Mee had already reported an arbitrary decision on fixing the basic purchasing power of the Stelo in other countries outside the Netherlands.
To fix its accounting basis he applied other arbitrary decisions, each time with the goal of presenting acceptable currency rates.
The publisher of a monthly magazine receives subscription money, requires the services of a printer, and must pay for stationery and postage, etc.
In developing countries lacking a strong tradition of labour relations law, these confrontations can result in human rights abuses or even in police or military intervention.
