The Logic of Vegetarianism (1898)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

PUBLICATION: “The Logic of Vegetarianism.” Food, Home and Garden  Vol. II, no. 13 (January 1898): 22-23.
https://archive.org/details/foodhomeandgard00unkngoog/page/n224/mode/2up

KEYWORDS: animals, animal welfare, food, labor rights, social reform, women's rights

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this “speech delivered at the Thanksgiving Banquet of the Vegetarian Club, Chicago” in 1897, Moore explicitly promotes ethical veg*ism as an intersectional endeavor. He elaborates on the idea of “vegetarianism” as not merely “the neglect by one being to suppress another for nutritive purpose,” but part and parcel of “a wide and profound philosophy” (22). Moore clarifies: “The exploitation of birds and quadrupeds for human whim or convenience is an offense not different in kind” from meat eating. In fact, Moore thinks these acts are all part of a more general logic, the logic of “exploitation: the suppression of the interests, lives or welfares of some beings for the whim or convenience of others; the neglect to recognize the equal, or the approximately equal, rights of all to life, consideration and happiness; the crime of doing to others as you would that others would not do to you” (22). Since “biological evolution” works according to the survival of the fittest, Moore thinks the “great task of reforming the universe, therefore, is the task of eliminating from the natures of its inhabitants the disposition to be inhospitable, egoistic and merciless, which has been everywhere developed by evolution” (22). He also thinks that in its “highest form” life is already developing “rapidly and irrepressibly towards the ideal” of a universe in which “the life and happiness of no being are contingent on the suffering and death of any other” (22).

Accordingly, for Moore, “ethical progress” is tantamount to the “cessation of, or abstinence from, exploitation” (23). While vegetarianism is thus but one aspect in the endeavor to achieve “universal solidarity,” it assumes an importance akin to “the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the modern movements of social reform” (23). By the same token, it intersects with all attempts to fight exploitation and oppression. The sympathies of the “consistent vegetarian,” Moore writes, reach out “to Cuba in her struggle for autonomy; to Ireland in her misery; to the helpless quadruped quivering under the pole-ax, and to the pitiable proletarian who goes up and down the monopolized universe seeking in vain for opportunities to earn honest nutrition” (23). Moore ends his speech by vowing to devote his energies “to the amelioration of the deprived and the unpitied of this world,” whether “the lone worm wandering in the twilight of consciousness, the feathered forms of the field and forests, the heifer of the meadows, the simple savage on the banks of the gladed river, the political slaves whom men call wives, or the economic exiles of industry” (23).