Millennium Guild

A report of the association appears in the Redcliff Review  Vol. 3 No. 10. (Alberta, Canada. 7 March 1913): 3. The Millenium Guild was named to evoke the millennial promise made in Isaiah 1:11. Freshel concludes her Introduction by evoking this biblical passage while imagining a vegan world: “in this millennium, prophesied in Isaiah xi: 9, slaughter-houses, transport cars, and cattle-ships would be empty, and the fields and meadows would be filled with labourers under the clear sky, tilling the ground to provide the food of man.”

Bernard Unti reports that the Guild’s manifesto reads: “All sentient creatures have a right to life, and, except in cases of self-defense, to protection in that life by human beings. … Consistent humaneness cannot be practiced by persons who feed upon the products of the slaughter house, who kill other creatures for food, or whose habits necessitate the doing of this degrading work by others ... Universal peace is a possibility only when man evolves a true sense of the right of all races, human and sub-human.” He continues, “Under Freshel’s leadership, the Guild promoted vegetarianism and other positions consistent with a belief that animal exploitation was immoral. The Guild pioneered such forms of activism as the promotion of alternatives to fur coats and the distribution of anti-veal cards in restaurants. Its literature bore the imprint, 'The object of this Association is to promote by precept and example, a just consideration of the rights of all races, human and subhuman, and to teach that foremost among the unnecessary evils of the world and one which underlies most of the other evils, is the mutilation and slaughter of our fellow creatures for food and other selfish ends.'” Bernard Unti, “'Peace On Earth Among The Orders Of Creation': Vegetarian Ethics in the United States Before World War I.” The Routledge History of Food, ed. Carol Helstosky. New York: Routledge, 2014. 188-189.