WOMAN’S CRUEL DEMAND by Pentecostal Herald

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Nov 1, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 44.

WOMAN’S CRUEL DEMAND.

By Pentecostal Herald

ARE women, as a class, unkind or inhuman? We do not consider them so. As the old saying is, “Woman thinks she is always right until she knows she is wrong.”

In thousands of American homes where refinement holds sway, birds of various climes are cherished as a source of delight. This mission is one of gentleness and mercy, as they appeal to the finer nature of children. Their beauty, helplessness, and power of song are God-given lessons to all. We have known them to roam at will through a home and then return to their cage.

Suppose after years of caressing and care you call your children around you, take this sweet singer of the sunny South in your left hand, and with a sharp stiletto in your right hand begin at its throat, cut it open, and skin it alive while yet the tender form is quivering with pain. What would the lesson be to your children?—One of direst cruelty, and one that years would not banish from their memory. And yet this occurs by the wholesale as a money-making traffic. “Man’s inhumanity to man” is evil enough, but this inhuman torture to the innocent birds is a thousand-fold more to be condemned.

Let us read some of the authentic statistics in regard to this evil: In one province of India thirty thousand birds were killed within three days to meet this cruel demand. One consignment brought to England contained thirty-two thousand humming-birds, eighty thousand water-fowl, and eight hundred thousand pairs of wings.

Three hundred and sixty thousand bird skins were sold at one time; and these beautiful birds are stripped of their skins while throbbing with life. Even the slaughter of birds for food should be denounced. It is stated that London receives daily in early spring from twenty to forty thousand larks.

Careful estimates have resulted in the positive assertion that eight millions of birds are annually sacrificed at the shrine of fashion. What would we conclude if we should behold a beautiful dead bird fastened to the side of a man's hat? We would raise our hands and exclaim, He must be crazy!

One ornithologist, walking through the Washington city market, once counted three hundred bluebirds in one stall. Many parts of the country are already paying the penalty of this bird banishment, as the rapid increase of insects is proving alarmingly destructive to both grains and fruits.

Women alone are responsible for this barbarous custom, and it is our earnest desire that they refrain from the use of them as ornaments and only invest in the living songsters. There is no study that children can engage in that will be more helpful than the habits of birds, butterflies, and other insects. It tends to make them thoughtful and kind.—Pentecostal Herald.