Silent Martyrs of Civilization
By J. Howard Moore
A large part of the energy of civilization has come out of the bodies of the great four-footed races. The horse, the ox, the mule, the elephant, the camel, the reindeer, the water-buffalo, the yak, the dog, and the donkey — on the powerful and patient backs of these beings civilization has been borne for unknown hundreds of years. The power and mobility of these races have enabled man to carry out enterprises he never could have dreamed of undertaking single-handed. Without horses or other beings able and willing to wield the great implements, agriculture, the most basic of human industries, would be almost impossible. 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. From the time they start out in the morning till they come back at night, aching with weariness and covered with stripes, they are doomed to an existence that contains all the essentials of a living death. And it is not for a day, or a week, or a year. It is for a lifetime. They have absolutely nothing to look forward to. No wonder horses become downcast and apathetic! No wonder they become broken-hearted! No wonder their faces become drawn, and out of their eyes streams the solemnity that darkens the faces of the doomed! And when man has extracted from them every benefit he is able to extract, he casts them out, as the money-hog does his worn-out workmen, to rot. The stars of heaven never looked down on more pitiful sights than that of horses or men, after having drudged faithfully all their lifelong days in the service of others, and after receiving for their lifelong devotion a compensation chiefly of pain, turned out in their helpless old age to starve to death. The great law of love — the abstaining from that which we do not like when done to ourselves — reciprocity — is the only relation to exist among associated beings of any kind.