Animal labor

“ Did you ever think how much the American people work for the animal world? To raise hogs, cattle, calves, mutton, poultry etc., constitutes half of a farmer's labor. Think also of the amount of consumption in grain and vegetables to feed these. Were these farmers vegetarians they could live well on half the labor they now expend. Then again, when we contemplate the number of butchers and traffickers in flesh, the scene becomes truly appalling. ”

“ If the reading of these pages shall lead even a few to an active interest in our wild animals, stimulating a desire to preserve and protect a priceless heritage from the past which a heedless present threatens through wanton and reckless waste to deny the future, the labor will have been well worth while.
Only through intimate acquaintance may understanding of the animals in their relations to each other and to man be attained. ”

“ Why should flesh and blood, whether of dumb beasts or of more intelligent beings, suffer the agony of labor when the work can be better done by mechanical means?
“While speaking of the lower animals I may as well say here that we have no wild beasts. All have been tamed; not merely brought into subjection, but made the friends and companions in a sense of our higher race. Every animal, large and small, has lost its power and will to harm us. ”

“ As animals are not used for milk, draught, or food, and there are no pasture lands, both the country and the farm-yards have a singular silence and an inanimate look; a mean-looking dog and a few fowls being the only representatives of domestic animal life. ”

“ We hold that it is no more "cruelty" for an ape or a dog to work in training quarters or on the stage than it is for men, women and young people to work as acrobats, or actors, or to engage in honest toil eight hours per day. Who gave to any warm-blooded animal that consumes food and requires shelter the right to live without work? No one! I am sure that no trained bear of my acquaintance ever had to work as hard for his food and shelter as does the average bear out in the wilds. ”

“ For instance, all animals that work, live on vegetable or fruit food; and no animal that eats flesh, works. The all-powerful elephant, and the patient, untiring camel in the torrid zone; the horse, the ox, or the donkey in the temperate, and the rein-deer in the frigid zone; obtain all their muscular power for enduring labour, from Nature’s simplest productions,—the vegetable kingdom. ”

“ The search for food, the foremost occupation and anxiety of these small wood-folk, would be increasingly stimulated as the ripening season of the seeds and nuts on which they depend advanced, and the impulse to incessant industry, so necessary in the poorer parts of the year, would now be overworked, and each animal, in his haste to be up and doing, would constantly bring home more food than would be consumed, so that it would pile up in the accustomed "dining room." ”

“ In economic uses to man mammals are the most important of all animals. They furnish the greater portion of the animal food of many human races, likewise a large amount of their clothing. Horses, asses, oxen, camels, reindeer, elephants, and llamas are beasts of burden and draught; swine, sheep, cattle, and goats furnish flesh, and the two latter milk for food; the wool of sheep, the furs of the carnivores, and the leather of cattle, horses, and others are used for clothing, while the bones and horns of various mammals serve various purposes. ”

“ When they do their work, they get their pay envelope—and they know it. Beyond this lies, however, another fundamental principle, by which in the last score or so of years the whole animal-training system has been revolutionized. ”

“ Animals are only profitable to the farmer, when they yield a daily income, as in their milk or labor; or annually, by their young or fleece; unless it be in a course of regular improvement, either in their ordinary growth or preparation for the butcher. ”

“ Then if the bull, the wether, the goat, or any other domestic animal is led away from the pasture to the butcher, or if the poulterer brings from the farm a chicken, a hen, or a capon for the cook, could any of these animals be cut up and divided without axes and knives? ”

“ The author correctly says that this is the condition under which animals in the wild state exist, and this is why political economy has been found so well adapted to the study of animal life. Man is, in a pain economy, to all intents and purposes, an animal, living under the biologic law of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. ”

“ Some years ago, one of our learned and ingenious colleagues at the University of Utrecht, Professor Harting, wrote a charming book on the industry of animals, and demonstrated that almost every trade is known in the animal kingdom. We find among them miners, masons, carpenters, paper manufacturers, weavers, and we may even say lace-makers, all of whom work first for themselves, and afterwards for their progeny. Some dig the earth, construct and support vaults, clear away useless earth, and consolidate their works, like miners ”

“ To render it agreeable to our taste, the production of certain substances had to be reduced, and that of others enlarged, that is to say, nutrition and secretion had to be modified. If the functions in wild animal stocks had remained permanent, we should have had none of those races which are distinguished by a difference in the colour of the hair, in the production of milk, in aptitude for work, or in the production of meat. If instinct itself had not obeyed the action of man, we should not have had in the same kennel, pointers, grey-hounds, truffle dogs and terriers. ”

“ Be that as it may, men feed and keep goats, sheep and cattle for greater convenience in procuring flesh food. This is an excellent device. I look forward to the time when we shall see the convenience of erecting mensheds, and keeping and breeding these useful animals for food.
I have already told you of their care for cattle, horses, sheep and goats. But they also keep and feed elephants, camels, asses, dogs, cats, and even birds. It may therefore be said with truth that men are the natural slaves and servants of all other living creatures. ”

“ Usually in experiments with mammals hunger has been the motive depended upon. The animals have been required to follow a certain devious path, to escape from a box by working a button, a bolt, a lever, or to gain entrance to a box by the use of teeth, claws, hands, or body weight and thus obtain food as a reward. There are two very serious objections to the use of the desire for food as a motive in animal behavior experiments—objections which in my opinion render it almost worthless in the case of many mammals. ”

“ A great range of secondary influences is found in the development of the arts of war, by which people who have become provided with pack or saddle ani [105] mals are able to prevail over their savage neighbors, and thus to extend the realm of a nascent civilization. Yet another influence, arising from the domestication of large beasts, arises from the fact that these creatures are important storehouses of food; their flesh spares men the labor of the chase, and so promotes those regularities of employment which lead men into civilized ways of life. ”

“ Always remember that the labor is the most expensive part of the poultry business. Now is the time for forethought and caution—save all the steps, all the work you can. You will never suffer from want of exercise, if your fowls do. ”

“ He is often intractable, but when he works at all he works with a will. Other animals that have been harnessed and trained to do man’s work—horse, elephant, camel, mule, burro, ox, or reindeer—labour for the most part with a sort of stolid indifference and resignation. ”

“ Some, as for instance the elephant, at once reconcile themselves to human association, and directly on being made slaves accept the mastery of their captors. Others, such as the zebra, remain for a lifetime possessed of their original savage nature. A large part of the labor which has been given to the work of domesticating by the breeder's art the score of mammalian species which man has won to his use has been devoted to this task of expelling the wilderness motives from these forms. ”

“ They are kept bound to trees for several days, and a certain number of attendants left with each animal to supply him with food, by little and little, till he is brought by degrees to be sensible of kindness and caresses, and thus allows himself to be conducted to the stable. ”

“ A wild animal has to search, and often to labour, for every mouthful of food—to exercise sight, hearing, and smell in seeking it, and in avoiding dangers, in procuring shelter from the inclemency of the seasons, and in providing for the subsistence and safety of its offspring. ”

“ That every animal should fight or work individually for food is the natural law—the spirit of prey is one from which Man himself is never exempt. But has any one ever heard of several thousand lions or bears taking up a stand against each other and slaying each other wholesale for a disputed portion of territory? ”

“ True, fur farming, like any other business, has its drawbacks; but these impediments are rapidly conquered by the persistent and energetic study and scientific research of enthusiastic men, who are devotedly interested in the welfare of the animals, and the evolution of the industry to a higher and better standard. ”

“ Its keeping was confided to the dog, which, posted on some rising ground of the pasture, its scent to the wind and ear on the watch, followed the herd with [166] vigilant eye and rushed to bring back the runaways or to drive off some evil-intentioned beast. Thanks to the dog, the herd gave abundance—milk and its products, flesh for food, and warm wool for clothing. Then, relieved from the terrible anxiety concerning daily provision, man took it into his head to dig in the earth and make it produce grain. Agriculture sprang into being, and with it, little by little, civilization. ”

“ Animal life, on the other hand, exists and fulfills its functions by the expenditure of this force. Animals receive vegetable productions containing these reserves of force into their systems, which systems contain arrangements for liberating the force, and employing it for the purposes it is intended to subserve in the animal economy. ”

“ A century since the first two stones were joined together from which was to spring a veritable boon to the sick and suffering amongst all sorts and conditions of domesticated animals—an abiding-place where horse and dog, calf and sheep, even down to the maligned and sorely-tried drawer of the costermonger's cart might receive assistance and advice to meet the thousand and one ills to which their flesh and bones are heir. ”

“ There is a great deal of abstract interest in the study of that endowment of the animal economy which enables its possessor to change his place at will and convey himself whithersoever his needs or his moods may incline him ”

“ It is only after the exhibition of the deformity, which is usually concealed within the trappings of the animal, that remuneration, generally in kind, or in old rags and copper coins, is doled out to them.Villagers worship the bulls, when they happen to pass their houses, and, as soon as they enter a village, the females wash the feet of the animals with milk and water. ”

“ But the vigorous workers in the other group survive and secure, too, the survival of their queen, who, since she is also their sister, bears, in her ovaries, the good seed from which a new generation of vigorous workers shall be developed. ”

“ An animal that does not belong to them, might die a thousand times of hunger and thirst before they would think of stirring a foot to give it either food or drink, and I have already described how even their own animals are left to fare and shift as best they can on their own resources, and their surprise that my wife should feed some little chickens that did not belong to her, at a town on the road to Bembe. ”

“ Then the ox was tamed, the horse mastered, the sheep domesticated, and finally came agriculture, preëminent source of our well-being. That is how the tattooed hunters of our country lost the barbarism of their habits and advanced from one stage of progress to another, until they became the cultivated race from which we are descended. First in Asia, then throughout all Europe, a similar development took place: everywhere the dog was the first and most valuable of man’s conquests, and everywhere the dog has represented the first element of progress. ”

“ But luxury cuts off the beast, the pig, the sheep, and the fowl, and ill treatment the horse: vermin of every kind, from the lion to the louse, are hunted to death; a perpetual contest seems to exist between them and us; they for their preservation, and we for their extinction. The kitten and the puppy are cast into the water, to end their lives; out of which the fishes are drawn to end theirs--animals are every were devoured by animals. ”

“ Domesticated Animals.— When man emerged from his savage state on the earth, one of the first signs of the beginning of civilization was the domestication of animals. The dog, the cow, sheep, and especially the horse, mark epochs in the advance of civilization. Beasts of burden are used the world over, horses almost all over the world, certain cattle, as the water buffalo, in tropical Malaysia; camels, goats, and the llama are also used as draft animals in some other countries. ”