The Automobile as a Reformer (1899)

AUTHOR: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

KEYWORDS: animal labor, animal rights, carriage horses, cars (automobiles)

SUMMARY (Deborah Madsen):

In this very short article, Gilman contrasts the moral implications of horse-drawn versus motorized transport. The claim that the manner of treating animals shapes the human capacity for, alternatively, sympathy or cruelty, has long shaped humane discourse and opposition to the exploitation of animals for many purposes including labor and transportation. Gilman identifies the very different mechanisms of horse-drawn carriages and motorcars as the source of very different moral influences on the "driver" (of horses) as opposed to the "motorman":

... where the means of promoting the activity of your motive power is by hurting it, there is a constant temptation to turn pain to
speed, The motorman has no whip. It does no good to his battery to kick it If his machinery does not work to suit him, he has to use a more complex tool than a club and more patience than profanity. He may be at the start no gentler man than was the driver when he started; but the process of running an engine develops different qualities from the process of driving a horse, and they differ most in this that there is no room for cruelty. ... the daily habit of using pain as a motive power naturally develops that indifference to pain in others, even pleasure in inflicting it. This we call cruelty (778).

If the driver of an automobile were to use violence against the engine of the car, the damaged caused would result in costly repairs. Thus, the car driver must adapt to the machine he controls. "He is dealing with the laws of physics now, not seeking to
coerce an intervening will." Gilman concludes, "The use of mechanical motors for our city traffic will raise the moral standard of the whole community. We shall all be nobler when the whip is utterly outgrown" (778).