The Meat Fetish : Two Essays on Vegetarianism
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ftyOSu£iVL<fiv>- m% faw^t- THREEPENCE NET The Meat Fetish. TWO ESSAYS ON VEGETARIANISM. BY ERNEST £ROSBY and ELISEE RECLUS. Revised Edition LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD E.C. ! 44, Fleet Street, 1O05 —— — — THE HUMANITARIAN LEAGUE'S PUBLICATIONS. NEW SERIES. UNIFORM GREY COVERS. ANIMALS* RIGHTS : By henry s, salt. In Relation tO Social ProtfrCSB. New and revised edition. 6d. nett. Post free 7^d. " Many of Mr. Salt's pleas will win universal assent. "—The Times. " We heartily commend this appeal for the adequate recognition of the rights of the so-called lower creation." Week's Survey. FACTS ABOUT By Joseph collinson. Revised edition. 64 pages. 6d.net t. FLOGGING * Post free 7d. " A vigorous plea against the efficacy of flogging in our penal and prison systems." Scotsman. "Mr. Collinson gives a minute detail of the punishment meted out to our criminals." Dutuiee Courier. VTVT- Two By EDWARD CARPENTER. SECTION, Lectures. 32 pages. 3d. nett. Post free 3|d. " Mr. Carpenter makes a strong point of the fact that the greatest triumphs of recent medical progress have been in the way of preventing rather than of curing disease." Glasgow Evening News. THE HORRORS By Lady FLORENCE DIXIE. OF SPORT. Revised edition. 32 pages. 3d. nett. Post free 3^d. "The hideous cruelty of the Barnstaple cat case gives aspecial point to this new edition, which ought to be in the hands of all who respect the rights of ' animals. ' Daily News. WHAT IT COSTS TO B Joseph collinson. BE VACCINATED : * _, _ . , _ ... m New and revised edition, with ap- Thc Pains and Penalties of pendix, and two illustrations. An UfljUSt Law. 6d. nett. Post free 7d. x±xx, it*^^x FETISH.llj1 ^"' By ernest crosby and THE MEAT ELISEE RECLUS. Two Essays on Vegetarianism, Revised edition. 3d. nett. Post free 3$d. FOOD AND FASHION : New and revised edition. Thoughts on What Some We 64 pages. 3d. nett. Post free 4d. Eat and What We Wear. BRITISH New and revised edition. BLOOD SPORTS. 64 pages. 3d. nett. Post free 4<i. Published by ARTHUR C. FIFIELD, 44, Fleet Street, London, E.C., for the Humanitarian League, 53, Chancery Lane, W.C. 6?tt THE MEAT FETISH BOOKS and PAMPHLETS by ERNEST CROSBY. RPHAH Just published. Crown 8vo, 128 pages, cloth gilt. DI\KJftU- x *.6rf. nett. Post free, x*. gd. f* A QX A new volume of Chants and Songs of Labour, v^rtO « 1 Life, and Freedom. _^ SWORDS AND Demy 8vo, cloth gilt. 2s. 6d. PLOUGHSHARES. nett ***".«** Mr. Crosby's 1003 volume of stirring prose poems,poe dedicated to " The ,f Noble Army of Traitors and Heretics. Cheapier edition. PLAIN TALK IN c^lXtK" PSALM AND PARABLE. gfrrjngZ is. nett ; post free, is. 2d. " The book is crammed with vital matter."—Israel Zangwill. '' These prophet chants are a noble protest against the wrongs and failures of civilization."— Edward Markham (author of " The Man with the Hoe"). TO LSTOY AN D 3 rd edition, foolscap 8vo, 96 pages, Cloth gilt, is. nett post free, is. 2d. 111^ HUCCO APT ; td. nett post free, 7*/. rilO IY1 C O OAVJ C • P»P«r ; " This is the most lucid and graphic account of Tolstoy and his works that I have yet read. If some rich man were to distribute a few thousands of this book broadcast, it would do an immense amount of good."—Silas K. Hocking. TOT QTHY AC A 5th thousand, foolscap 8vo, 1 KJUO lUl t\0 f\ «6 pages. Cloth, ix. nett ; post oL» HUU LlVlAb 1 C K. p^t'free, 7d. wfthn'ew portrait of Tolstoy. "A brilliant study . * immensely fresh and interesting."— The Coming Day. "This little volume goes to the very root of the whole problem of punishment in school, gaol and elsewhere. It is bound to arouse reflection even among habitually conventional thinkers. ... A most suggestive booklet."—/. Morrison Davidson " Our thanks are due to Mr. Crosby for putting the views of Tolstoy on education into this neat and compact form. We commend the book- let to all teachers. Many will discern, in the delightful account of Tolstoy's school for peasant children, the germ of things that will live and bear fruit in the good time coming, when each child shall have an education exactly adapted to its needs and capacities."—British Friend. 7^°"* EDWARD CARPENTER: 8v^6 wS POET AND PROPHET. KS^ET* A fresh and illuminative study of this remarkable man. CAPTAIN JINKS. A satirical military romance, LICDr^ fully illustrated. Cheaper edition, n tKU . 4*. nett, post free. London : ARTHUR G FIFIELD, 44 Fleet Street, E.C THE MEAT ^-e^8-"" FETISH Two Essays on Vegetarianism By ERNEST CROSBY and ELISEE RECLUS NEW EDITION LONDON : A. C. FIFIELD 44, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1905 Published by A. C, Fifield, for the Humanitarian League, 53, Chancery Lane> London PRINTED BY A. BONNER, I & 2 TOOK'S COURT, LONDON THE MEAT FETISH. By Ernest Crosby. From the aesthetic point of view slaughter-houses are blots upon the face of the earth, and in half-unconscious recognition of this fact we usually hide them away out of sight. It is quite possible, indeed, to go through life without ever seeing one. At the present moment I can onlv recall three which have ever come into my field of vision. One was out in the country, in the midst of the beautiful intervale of New Hampshire. An ugly board shanty in the fields, with a pile of hideous offal at one side and a sickening stench to leeward, to us children it was like an outpost of hell in the midst of heaven, and we shunned it instinctively and turned our eyes away. The second was the municipal abattoir of Alexandria in Egypt, for once built out in plain view of the railway, with melancholy strings of buffaloes and other cattle waiting their turn in front. Once I walked along the shore of the Mediterranean behind it, not far from the foundations of Cleopatra's palace, but I had to leap across rivulets of blood running down into that poetic sea, and the smell was almost overpowering, so that I never passed that way again. The third slaughter- house of my experience wa$, of alj places, at Venice. I had secured a gondolier of singular resourcefulness, and after he bad exhausted his list of churches and gal- leries, he brought me through out-of-the-way canals to the Palace of Butchery, and was chagrined when I declined to go in and insisted on being conveyed else- 5 6 THE MEAT FETISH. where. I shall never forget the forbidding look of the place nor the lowing and bellowing of the kine concealed somewhere in its foul recesses. Where are our artists, that they can enjoy and edify themselves in their doges' palaces and academies of belle arti, with such a back- ground to it all, and discuss beauty and colour over a table d'hdte dinner fresh from the shambles? Are they really so much more dainty and civilised than the old doges themselves, who used to feast while the rats gnawed their living captives in the dungeons below- stairs? \f •» But there is a beauty in ugliness (if I may use a Hibernicismj whenever it reveals a wrong, and who shall say that it aoes not always do so? An evil deed ought to look ugly, and has no business to look anything else. There is no hypocrisy, at any rate, in ugliness, and it hypocrisy is th^ worst sjn f because is the sin of grj- ? tended beauty. Ugliness can at least tell the truth, and in the case of the slaughter-house it tells a great truth, which, though we suppress it to the best of our ability, will utter itself louder and louder until we give heed to the fact that in butchering our fellow-animals we are indulging in a totally unnecessary cruelty. That butchery is cruel is so self-evident that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon the fact, and cruelty usually attends the life of the victim from the beginning. On the cattle-ranges of the West the animals are left to themselves all winter, the thermometer often falling to 40 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and the herbage be- ing frequently buried in snow. A large number are expected to die from cold and starvation every year. They are transferred for thousands of miles on trains in the dead of winter or in the scorching heats of summer, left for hours and even days without food or water. Finally, at the abattoir they are received by men who have been drilled into machines, who must kill so many creatures to the minute, and wbcV begin the process of skinning before life is extinct/ In some cases death must be prolonged to make the meat white* THE MEAT FETISH. 7 The animal comes to the place of execution, as a rule, in a state of frgngy, and to overcome its resistance the eye must^Tgouged or the tail twisted till the gristle cracks. It i^futile to preach humanity to men engaged in such a trade/ You or I, enlisted in such a profession, would act in the same way. The essential idea of butchery for food is cruel, and 4< you cannot be cruel humanely, How could you select 5 such^Business? * askecf a horrified officer of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, upon his first visit to the stock-yards of Chicago. " We're on|y, ^ ^mg jour dirty workj sir," was the true and si{g{j(Stn^ &<^ rggjyT "*TF^^tsmfCTafising" work as well as cruSTwork, ana those who create the demand for it, are resjHjnjyy&le fjgyufT ^^refasln ruraTregloris, slaugKteFis less of a machine-like occupation it is hardly less revolting.