From another reader: 

Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW states with a most distressing combination of vowels and outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear from your readers on the subject....  Z is not a pretty letter, and to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is far from gratifying to the eye....

Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in vowel sounds that prevail in the United States?  The New Englander’s mouthing of a differs from that of the Northern New Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the Southerner—­indeed, in the different Southern States there is variation....  At first I was interested in simplified spelling, but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me long since, so I beg of you, drop it.

From our answer: 

    I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
    should be time for you to see the April-June number.

    I hope you are feeling better now.

If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you, because when a man has been irritated into that position where the alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is probably beyond mortal help.

I have no desire “to reach the differences in vowel sounds that prevail in the United States”.  There is not much difference among cultivated people.  Probably a fair standard would be the conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in pronunciation.

    There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
    simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
    children....

Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I have received on the subject.  I single yours out because you have had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in our January number.  I have fought on the Executive Committee of the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English S.S.S.’s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as outlandish.

    As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
    April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.

From his reply: