Our Kindred Creatures: A Book Review
New Book Sheds Light on the 19th Century American Animal Movement
I recently finished reading “Our Kindred Creatures,” a new book about the birth of the American animal protection movement: 1866–1896. (See here for its 5–15–2024 NY Times review.)
The book chronicles the rise of the first animal welfare societies, often founded by anti-slavery advocates who saw animal protection as a natural extension of their crusade in the wake of abolition.
Discussing prominent abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child, the authors write that for “Stowe, Child, and so many other anti-slavery activists, the end of the Civil War would mark a new era, in which their moral energies were freed to be channeled into other causes, and their imaginations, trained for decades on ghoulish narratives of cruelty to enslaved people, would turn to the misery of other beings.”
Newspapers that lampooned post-abolition Reconstruction efforts for newly-free Americans simultaneously railed against the new animal protection efforts, too. The most widely circulated paper in the US — the Daily Herald — even editorialized in 1866: “The negroes, who were groaning under the lash a year or two ago, are now aspiring to seats in Congress, instead of thanking Providence for the boon of freedom. So the animals are no sooner relieved from cruelty than they at once desire to be our masters.”
The initial cruelty cases of the early animal welfare groups mostly didn’t relate to dogs or cats, but rather to horses and animals used for food, from calves to turtles. Countless criminal cruelty cases were brought after the passage of new laws. The authors claim that by 1879, “animals had gone from being seen as objects, mere things that humans were justified in treating however they might like, to becoming creatures whose joys and sufferings had to be taken into consideration.”
Vegetarianism was a hotly debated topic among early animal movement founders, with some, like ASPCA founding member Horace Greeley endorsing it, while most did not.
They passed numerous state and even federal laws relating to the treatment of farmed animals, with the transportation of farmed animals a major focus federally, leading to the 1873 federal “28-Hour Law.” Animal protection was a real political force, causing heated congressional debates and serious public policy concern. President Teddy Roosevelt even banned one animal welfare magazine from being used in DC schools, in part because of his passion for killing wildlife.
The book also details the major effect fiction had on propelling the movement, notably with the publication of Black Beauty (by Anna Sewell), then widely referred to as “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the horse.” The book purportedly sold more copies than any book other than the Bible at the time. Beautiful Joe (about a dog) also became a blockbuster, being the first Canadian novel to sell 1 million + copies (by Margaret Marshall Saunders). Both books were unusual in that they were autobiographies written in the first-person voice of an animal.
The book gives granular detail on numerous 19th century campaigns on behalf of animals used for food, experimentation, fashion, circuses, and more. It’s sobering to realize that more than a century later, while attitudes about animals are very different in America, the actual treatment of many animals used in industry isn’t radically different today, and in some cases is worse. In reality, many of the improvements for animals came about via new technology: cars liberating horses, refrigerated rail cars reducing the need to ship live animals, and new methods of sterilizing dogs/cats ameliorating the urban stray problem. In other words, it was largely new technology, not humane sentiment, that ended many of the cruelties the early humane advocates fought.
The animal movement, having campaigned for better working conditions for horses, largely celebrated engines as a means of liberating horses. One animal newsletter even published a poem by a horse praising horseless carriages. The Pennsylvania SPCA, for example, proclaimed, “We hail with joy the advent of the steam passenger cars as being the only avenue open for the release of the overloaded horses.”
In the end, the authors note that today’s farmed animals are treated much worse during their lives than those in the 19th century. They conclude: “It’s not that they’re less intelligent, or less capable of suffering [than dogs and cats]. It’s not that we owe them any less; our patterns of consumption lead to their existence and their treatment. We simply don’t care enough about them — at least not yet.”
Paul Shapiro is the author of the national bestseller Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, the CEO of The Better Meat Co., a five-time TEDx speaker, and the host of the Business for Good Podcast.
(Note: For my review of a related book that came out a four years ago, see https://paulshapiro.medium.com/technology-to-animals-rescue-a-book-review-of-a-traitor-to-his-species-548b0fa9bbea )
