The Martyrs of Civilization (1909)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

PUBLICATION: "The Martyrs of Civilization." The Herald of the Golden Age  Vol. XII, no. 8 (October 1909): 150-151.
https://archive.org/details/heraldofgoldenoctl1909exetuoft/page/150/mode/2up

KEYWORDS: animals, capitalism, morality

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Moore advocates for animal welfare on the basis of mutuality, contradicting the prevalent exploitative relation between humans and animals). He points out that throughout history, humans have relied on the labor of animals. What is called civilization would not be possible, not even thinkable, without the help of animals such as “[t]he horse, the ox, the mule, the elephant, the camel, the dog and the donkey” (150). But the relation between humans and these animals is purely exploitative. “In his conduct toward those associated with him in the labor of life, Man violates every principle of morals and humanity,” Moore writes (150). Horses, for example,

are chained to a slavery so hopeless, and subjected to sufferings so incessant and horrible that no human being of intelligence would endure them for a day. They are overloaded, overworked, poorly sheltered, beaten without cause, neglected, starved, misunderstood, cut with brutal whips, deprived of leisure and liberty, and doomed to a round of wretchedness and toil such as only machines, with no desire for happiness and no capacity for despair, would ever voluntarily enter upon (150).

Moore singles out Egypt and Spain as particularly dire places in terms of animal welfare before directly addressing his readers in order to elicit empathy:

Can you realize what it means to be in life-long subjection to a being who has almost no thought or care for you and no understanding of your real nature and sufferings – to be alive and sensitive and filled with desires, and yet treated always as if you were a mere inanmiate lump – to be even without the power to plead for compassion, and yet be in such utter bondage as to be at the absolute mercy of every brutal whim of your overling? (150)

In passing, Moore also condemns vivisection, maintaining that the way particularly horses are treated in the streets basically amounts to a kind of everyday vivisection (151). As elsewhere, he likens the plight of domestic animals to that of workers under capitalism:

Man treats those co-operating with him in the labor of life as mere means to his own selfish purposes. He feeds and shelters them for the same reason that the capitalist feeds and shelters the poor human things who serve him – simply to make them last as long as possible. There is no equity in the matter – no brotherhood – no thought of the Golden Rule. They are to him simply lemons – things to be squeezed, nothing more. And when he has extracted from them every benefit he is able to extract, he casts them out (151).

Instead of such an exploitative relationship, Moore calls for a relationship based on mutuality. “In the ideal State,” he writes, “man would treat the races of beings affiliated with him, not as objects of pillage, but as beings with rights and feelings and capabilities of happiness and misery, like himself” (151). “The Arab” serves him as an example to emulate in this respect, as someone who “treats these beings at all times as associates, not as slaves or machines – as his best friends and most faithful and valuable allies” (152). “The Great Law of Love,” Moore concludes, “the abstaining from that which we do not like when done to ourselves – Reciprocity – is the only relation to exist among civilized beings of any kind” (152).