The Slaughter of Birds for Hat Trimming
A great and continuous slaughter is in progress to supply trimming for women’s hats. There was a factory fire recently at Wataugh, L. I., and among the property destroyed were 10,000 stuffed sea-gulls, 20,000 wings of other birds, 10,000 heads of birds, from the plumed birds of the South to the Long Island crow, designed for the trimming of tender-hearted woman’s head-gear. This firm has men stationed all along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida, says the Country Gentleman of Dec. 14, 1899, to kill birds for this purpose. One man killed, one season in Florida, 141,000 birds. O, it is cruel! “Was it not cruel to rob that nest of its young ones?” a Sunday-school teacher is said to have asked a boy, who was telling of his act. “I guess not,” replied the boy, half insolently, “you’ve got the mother-bird on your hat.” If the incident is not true, it might well be. There are great evils in it all: (1) The wanton cruelty involved in taking the lives of millions of God’s innocent creatures, at the behest of a cruel tyrant; (2) the cruelty it is teaching the rising generation; (3) and all its evil will return upon the country in the increase of insect life, which the birds destroyed. It is time to reform now.