Gerald Carson

Gerald Carson is a Fellow of the Society of Fellow Historians. His articles have appeared in American Heritage, Natural History, and Smithsonianmagazines. His books include The Old Country Store, Cornflake Crusade, One for a Man, Two for a Horse, and The Polite Americans.

If the active humanitarians are still in the minority they are also in the right, for they sense that the treatment we as individuals accord animals reveals our true character and as a people the character of our civilization. Men, Beasts, and Gods, 1972.

The American Automobile Association says we destroy about a million animals each day on our highways. Ibid.

It is with good reason that New York's Bronx Zoo has placed a large mirror in the Great Apes House. When a visitor looks at the mirror - through the realistic bars of a cage - he sees this legend: 'You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world.' . . Ibid.

The hunting brotherhood are rich in sophistries. The animals must be killed for their own good. The species being hunted is bloodthirsty, a danger to livestock and human life. Ibid.

Something in the range of half a billion birds and animals fall before the guns of American hunters every year, producing more than a million tons of carcass. Ibid.

. . . it has been estimated that for every clean kill two maimed animals escape to die later of gangrene, fever, starvation, or predation. Ibid.

Probably no animal is the victim of more ingenious forms of cruelty than the friendly raccoon. Ibid.

The American Indians . . . held 'that the capital of life existing in the universe is constant, and every share taken from the animal kingdom must be compensated by a shortening of the life of a man.' Ibid.