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Cimerican Civilization.
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DR. LEFFINGWELL AND VIVISECTION.
We see that the Brooklyn Eagle has been
interviewing Dr. Albert Leffingwell on vivi-
section and kindred abuses. In its issue of
April 12 there is a long and interesting ac-
count of the experiences and opinions of the
doctor, who for many years has investi-
gated this subject in its various phases. He
speaks of his enthusiasm, many years ago,
on the side of vivisection, and how that
grand and humane teacher, President Coch-
ran, of the Polytechnic Institute of Brook-
lyn, N. Y., led him to question that position.
He tells of the cold-blooded indifference to
suffering he has witnessed in laboratories in
different parts of the world, and comments
strongly on the infamous doctrine of many
vivisectors and some others who defend
them, that the vivisector should be “above
the control of any law whatever.” On the
(The Parkest stain
on CImerican (Cipilization.
By Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske.

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WHAT A DOCKED HORSE TELLS.
(1.) That the owner does n
suffering of dumb animals.
(2.) That the owner does not care one straw for the
good opinion of nine-tenths of hi
18 fellow-Ci
witness the effects of his cruelty. citizens who
ot care one straw for the
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eft :*N/º/*N) e *
Art often seems of little innportance when con-
trasted with the actualities that surround us.
We are astounded by the misery that confronts us
whichever way we turn. The suffering in the
world bewilders. The artist dreams. Perhaps it
were better if he would enlist himself under the
humble discipline of the Salvation army at actual
work with an immediate human purpose.
There are beautiful lives, unselfish lives, lives
devoted to the highest conceptions of duty and to
noble pursuits. There are pure dreams of art and
there are lives given to the worship of the ideal.
But, broadly viewed, life here upon the earth is
frankly hideous.
Man's inhumanity to man often taxes one's cre-
dulity, but there is one thing still more monstrous
—a thing that dwarfs all else in compelling the
conclusion that mankind is as yet morally and in-
tellectually unfit to govern the affairs of a planet.
I speak of man's almost complete inability to
perceive or understand his duty towards the dumb
beasts of the earth which are placed here at his
mercy. Man’s cruelty to animals transcends all
his other crimes, all his sins of omission or com-
mission.
Ever since I have been able to think this one
fact in life-man's cruelty to dumb beasts—has
seemed to me the most terrible and terrifying
fact of life. The feeling is not born of morbidity
| intelli | }-t} lai f_the-
bei Cººl hould bef the-elai
of-the-dumb-beast. But that does not alter what
I believe to be the fact—that man’s cruelty to ani-
mals is the saddest thing that may be contem-
plated in life.
The numerous organizations devoted to the
protecting of animals almost invariably are the
poorest societies in the world. Nearly all of
them strugglé to exist. The work prospers be-
cause of the devotion of the few. The rich rarely
help. Money in aid of the work comes for the
most part from the poor. As in all humane af-
fairs where the gentler, finer, sweeter and more
sensitive instincts of mankind are appealed to,
the poor seem to have a great advantage over
the rich. -----" " - - - - - - - - - - -
I do not think there ever was a rich man who
was a generous man. Rich men give lavishly, but
they never are generous in the true sense of the
word. They never give in proportion to what
they have. The poor man often is generous.
Half the world of society is absorbed in its
own crude pleasures. There is indeed a better
half which sometimes may be appealed to, and of
course a few rich men easily could abolish all the
more terrible features of cruelty of every kind.

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But the subject for the most part does not seem
to interest them.
Now, for the facts. I shall begin with the
better known abuses and come later to the most
terrible and least known—the blackest blot that
exists on our American civilization.
*-*m.
Let us take first the abuse of vivisection. Le
me quote what one great man once said: “Vivi-
section is the inquisition, the hell of science. All
the cruelty which the human-or rather the in-
human-heart is capable of inflicting is in this one
word. Below this there is no depth. The word
lies like a coiled serpent at the bottom of the
abyss.
There are some phases of immorality so dark
that men speak of them in whispers or do not
speak of them at all. Vivisection is one of these
phases of immorality. No prisons, no death cells,
no obscure haunts of vice ever have sheltered
beings who have so perfectly achieved the an-
nihilation of the common sense of mercy as the
vivisectors have achieved it. All cruelty to help-
less things is cowardice. But to my mind the
exquisite cowardice of the vivisector is the most
perfect thing in . immorality that the mind of
man can conceive.
After vivisection, trapping is the next degree
of crime towards animals. Look out of the win-
dow. Presently you will see a carriage drive by.
In it there may be a pretty woman, who lies







5
back in her furs. Forgive her. She is not wicked
She is only dull and stupid and half alive. She
knows not what she does. There may be dead
bodies of birds on her head. Mink tails may dan-
gle about her. To one who realizes, she is not
charming. She is repulsive and she is pitiable
Listen to what one man says of trapping—a man
who has studied the business of trapping for
years
“Of all the accessories gathered from every
quarter of the earth to garnish human vanity
furs are the most expensive, for in no way does
man show such an indifference to the feelings of
his victims as he does in the fur trade. Fur-
bearing animals, many of them, are intelligent
enough to require the exercise of his highest cun-
ning and perfidy to effect their capture. Yet, in
addition to death, they are compelled to undergo
suffering so inhuman as to be utterly unjustified,
even though the proceeds of this sacrifice were
masses of living gold instead of a skin. I
read the other day of an otter that was pursued
by a band of men and boys for hours, when she
gave birth to two little ones, and the account
stated that she was pursued for two hours after
that before she finally was killed. Most skins
used for furs are obtained by catching the owners
in traps, and death in such cases usually comes
at the close of hours and even days of the most
intense suffering and terror. The particular
device used by the professional trappers is the
steel trap, the most villainous instrument of ar-
rest that ever was invented by the human mind.
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“In order to guard against escape of the cap-
6
tive by the amputation of its own limbs, trappers
are advised by their guide books to use traps with
small pans, so that the limb of the captive com-
ing directly in the center of the trap will be
clutched close up to the body. No amount of
self-mastication then can free the unfortunate.
It is doomed. It may gnaw its fettered foot and
in the frenzy of its agony break its teeth on the
unyielding steel, but it never can get away. The
'spring pole' is another device used by trappers
to prevent the escape of their prey by self-muti-
lation. This consists of a flexible pole set in the
ground near the trap. The upper end of the pole
is bound down and fastened in such a way as to
be liberated by any slight wrench. The chain of
the trap is fastened to the pole, and when the
creature is caught its struggle to escape release
the pole and the trap and prisoner are jerked into
the air and held there. Here the unhappy cap-
tive must hang until it starves to death, or freezes
or perishes from thirst or pain, or until the par-
ticular “paragon” who carries on this accursed
business comes along and confers on it the favor
of knocking out its brains. The poor creature
may have to hang in this distressing condition for
a day or two or even a week.”
This is what trapping means-this is what a
woman's furs cost. -
And after trapping we come to what is the
darkest stain on our American civilization. We
come to the story of the cattle on our great
ranches. I could tell you much from my own
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observation-much I have seen when merely pass"
ing through these regions on my way to the Pa-
cific coast from time to time. I have seen more
than enough to prove to me that all that has been
said, all that can be said on the subject cannot
exaggerate the horror of the actual facts. But it
might be claimed that I am misinformed or that
I am a mere sentimentalist. Let me, therefore,
quote from a letter from a distinguished citizen
of Montana who says that “No human tongue can
portray the miseries and sufferings that have
come from what is known as pastoral stock rais-
ing in the United States,” and that “ Human
greed is the cause of all this suffering of plains
cattle, and so long as the people of the land
quietly submit to it without protest the business
will be continued while there is money to be
made from it.”
Dr. William O. Stillman, president of the Ameri-
can Humane society at Albany, N. Y., who is ac-
complishing splendid results in investigating and
exposing the facts as to the oondition of the cat-
tle on the plains, under the title of “A Record
Unparalleled for Greed and Heartlessness in the
World’s History,” writes as follows:-
“The Spanish and Mexican bull fights, which
Americans self-righteously condemn, are trifles
in suffering compared with the slow agony of
millions of live stock which all winter long fight
unaided for life on the Western cattle ranges.
Countless numbers are weeks in dying. Scenes
which would disgrace a Roman ampitheater. It
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is not famine, but sordid greed and heartlessness
which is the cause.
“As I write these words there literally are
millions of cattle on the great ranges of the West,
from Texas to Montana, which are on the extreme
verge of starvation. They will continue to starve
until spring. Hundreds of thousands will die,
and the rest of those already starving will almost
die, but not quite. This happens every year.
Stockmen count regularly every year on a certain
percentage of loss from starvation, thirst and cold.
“There is a disposition on the part of many peo-
ple in the West and a few people in the East to
effect to believe that statements like the above
are largely exaggerated and are caused by an
excess of sentiment rather than by real conditions
of suffering. The anti-cruelty crusade is past
representation is not necessary in cases like this.
The actual condition is too unutterably and un-
believably bad.
“Let me quote the statement of another West-
ern man concerning these conditions. The fol-
lowing was written by ex-United States Senator
Paris Gibson of Great Falls, Mont.: “Add to-
gether all the sufferings of the animals in the
Eastern and Central states, the tortures inflicted
upon horses, dogs and all the domestic beasts of
field and city streets, and you have not sufficient
cruelty in your enumeration to equal one-half
the sufferings of the freezing and starving cattle
on our Western plains when the terrible storms
come upon them and prevent them from securing
food and shelter. No human mind can comprehend
the degree of suffering caused during one winter
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storm, that leaves tens of thousands of skeletons
of cattle upon these plains; and this picture only
faintly tells the story that God alone realizes in its
awful truth and anguish.’”
According to the report of the United States
Bureau of Animal Industry, there were in 1904
over 48,000,000 cattie in the United States. I am giv-
ing the figures in round numbers. Of these cattle
over 30,000,000 are range stock. To be range
stock means that cattle must take care of them-
selves as best they can from December to April,
when the ground is covered with snow and there
is no shelter and not a drop of water to drink. In
nealry all cases not a pound of hay is provided,
nor a windbreak or shed, nor even a well.
The range cattle business in the United States
covers about 18,000,000 square miles. This is al-
most thirty times the size of all New England. A
great part of the area of eighteen states and ter-
ritories is occupied by it. The value of the range
stock represents over $500,000,000, not to mention
nearly $100,000,000 in sheep.
Such are conditions which confront humanita-
rians. It was much the same forty years ago,
only now the conditions for the cattle are much
worse than they were then. Streams have been
fenced off by barbed wire fences and much of the
land has been fenced in. Ten times the number
of cattle now are dependent upon the same soil.
Water has been taken for other uses, grass is
trampled under foot and gnawed to the ground
by starving mouths. And yet the number of
cattlemen increases, and their indifference or blind
stupidity, continues just the same, while their
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losses increase. They expect to lose from 5 to 15
per cent by starvation anyway. If it becomes
from 25 to 50 per cent it merely is a bad year.
The number of skeletons dotting the great plains
is nothing to them, except that they represent
dollars and cents. They make no efforts to im-
prove conditions.
This work has gone on year after year, and it is
time that the voice of civilization and intelligent
humanity should be heard. The owners of these
range cattle can be educated. They can be made
to see that if it is a pleasant thing for them to
have three meals a day and comfortable beds, it is
wrong for them to have their helpless beasts
deliberately exposed to conditions where linger-
ing death inevitably must ensue. These respect-
able men bitterly resent any criticism. One
prominent Western newspaper, when its atten-
tion was called to these conditions on account of
recent writings of mine, jauntily remarked that
I would better center the efforts of the humane
world on the factory and mining towns of New
England, where human beings are ground down
year after year. There is more suffering in one
winter day among the thousands of dying-and
starving but not dying-cattle of the ranges in
the West than could be represented by any two
years of suffering among factory and other opera-
tives in the East.
These conditions should be exposed. There is
no blacker stain on the civilization of this nation
than is represented by this deliberate and un-
feeling sacrifice of stock in unnumbered quanti-
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ties in a species of commercial gambling. These
respectable citizens, owning the range stock,
take their chances on enough surviving the star-
vation and front each year to pay them a profit.
The rest they are indifferent to.
I have before me a word picture by a man liv-
ing in the West for a great many years who is
familiar with present conditions affecting live
stock. “Imagine,” he says, “a single animal in
December, already gaunt from hunger, cold and
thirst-of the three thirst is the most terrible-
imagine this wretched creature wandering about
on an illimitable plain, covered with snow, with
nothing to eat except here and there buried
under the snow, a sparse tuft of scanty, mosslike
grass; eating snow for days and weeks because
there is nothing to drink; by day wandering in
the snow, by night lying down in it; swept by
pitiless winds and icy storms; always shivering
with cold, always gnawed with hunger, always
parched with thirst, always searching for some-
thing to eat where there is nothing, always star-
ing with dumb, hopeless eyes, blinded, swollen
and festered by the sun's glare on the wastes of
snow. Imagine that and imagine yourself endur-
ing one hour of it. Multiply that hour by twenty-
four. Multiply that period by the slow-moving
days and nights from December to April—if life
lasts that long. Multiply that by forty millions,
and you have the statistics of brute suffering
in this one way for one year and every year in
this unspeakable trade.”
This is what I call the blackest blot upon our
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civilization. It is a condition which cries aloud
for immediate remedy. I think this correction
can be brought about, first through the rousing of
public feeling on the subject and then through
legislation. As one writer from Montana says:
“Determined opposition to this barbarous busi-
ness should come from the east, after which the
law should be invoked. In my opinion, if the
newspapers and magazines of this country would
ascertain the truth as to this business and deal
with the subject as they would with other great
evils it would be followed by proper legislation.”
And a man from Oregon, writing to the Port-
land Journal and commenting upon statements
contained in an article of mine which had appeared
in the paper, declared that he “was in a position
to know that the writer in no way overdraws the
matter of which she writes, nor does she tell one-
hundredth part of the suffering to which the poor
dumb creatures are subjected, nor yet does she
speak of the disease and death that are caused the
human family every year by the unmerciful ex-
posure to which these great cattle and sheep barons
subject their stock.”
This man, who is in the midst of the existing
conditions, writes further that “there are only
two ways which I can see in which this trouble,
cruelty, and dishonesty can be stopped. The
first is to clothe men with power who have strength
enough to perform their duty to go out on the
range and prosecute to the last niche of the law
every man or woman who causes his or her stock
to suffer by carelessness.
Second, a bill might be passed by Con-
gress which would prohibit any party or com-
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pany of parties from keeping more stock of any
kind than they could provide food for and partial
shelter for in the winter. And all shelter needed
by range stock can be provided cheaply and per-
manently. But this bill must be got up by East-
ern representatives, as no man could be sent to
Congress from here who would even be suspected
of giving his support to such a law.
“If we ever get such a law you easily can see
it must come from the East, and it is a question
, if ever our lawmakers from there will give us the
needed relief until pressure is brought to bear on
them by the medical profession for the safety of
the human family. Still, I do believe if a few of
our Eastern Senators would come out here in the
spring and look at the miserable, sickly condition
of dogs, coyotes and wolves which feed on the
carcasses of those animals during one of these
winters, they easily would see the danger which
lurks in the meat.”
It is to bring about the betterment of these ter-
rible conditions that Dr. Stillman and the Hu-
"mane society are striving at present. Money is
needed, however, in order to carry on the investi-
gations and give publicity to the facts. Contri-
butions, no matter how small, will help the work,
and Dr. Stillman has authorized me among others
to receive whatever sums persons interested in
the great undertaking may care to give. Such
contributions may be sent to me at 12 West
Fortieth street, New York, at any time, and they
will be immediately forwarded to Dr. Stillman.
That the contributions may be liberal is earnestly
to be hoped, for, while this, supposed to be an ad-
vanced nation, there is nowhere else in the world
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where dumb animals are made to suffer as they
are here. There is no parallel in the history of
misery of our cattle on the pājñST
Whenever I contemplate these fearful condi-
tions I feel full of sympathy with Mr. Howard
Moore when he writes: “I cannot express myself
when I get to thinking about these terrible
crimes that man is inflicting year after year on
millions of his helpless brothers. I become in-
dignant and desperate. . . . I am ashamed of
the race of beings to which I belong. It is so
cruel and bigoted, so hypocritical, so soulless and
insane. I’d rather be an insect—a bee or a butter-
fly-and float in dim dreams among the wild
flowers of summer, than be a man and feel the
wrongs and sufferings of this world.


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Don’t kill your dog trying to make
him run with your bicycle. Dogs were
intended for no such purpose.
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Always keep your dogs and cats
nights where they will not disturb
the Sleep of your neighbors and so
come in danger of being poisoned.
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In moving don’t forget your
Cat.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 08207 8489
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