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chapter 3 Leaders and Followers The New Humanitarians The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized , are secretly kindhearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. . . . Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise . . . and a determined front will do it. —Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger I and my daughters and husband have been regarded as almost fanatical in our care of animals wherever we have been, and in Florida we have seen much to affect us. . . . I for my part am ready to do anything that can benefit the cause. I am glad of this opportunity to say with what wholehearted delight we have watched your noble course, in pleading for the dumb and helping the helpless. May God Bless you. —Harriet Beecher Stowe to Henry Bergh, November 6, 1877 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. B y the second half of the nineteenth century, the larger societal forces necessary for the rise of both an animal advocacy movement and a more receptive audience had taken root. Within a few short years of the founding of the first animal protection group in 1866 (New York’s ASPCA), animal activists had chartered societies in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Providence (Rhode Island ), San Francisco, and St. Louis, as well as twenty other locations.1 At first, much of the public disparaged those who championed animal rights, but over the next several decades, the message of compassion for animals resonated with an ever-widening audience. But who were these voices of the voiceless? For the most part, they were people who already believed fervently in various social justice issues and already participated in other reform movements. Like many reformers of the time, they tended to be financially comfortable urbanites from the East Coast. Women reformers in particular gravitated to the cause, and they represented the majority of the membership of most organizations. In fact, the very survival, growth, and success of this movement hinged on their participation. By putting flesh on the bones of these early founders, leaders , and followers, we can see more clearly some of the legacies bequeathed to today’s movement. Although animal rights groups in the twenty-first century have certainly expanded well beyond the East Coast, they remain primarily white, middle-class, and female demographically. The individuals described in this chapter determined the fundamental ideology, goals, and tactics that would shape and guide the movement throughout its history. In the decade before the formation of the ASPCA, the idea for some sort of anticruelty society germinated in several locations, but Philadelphia —a city with a reformist tradition—seemed to be the hotbed for protomovement activities. Shortly after his marriage in 1854, Philadelphia attorney Richard P. White learned that his young wife, Caroline, emphatically cared about animals and deplored their suffering. He told her of an English humane group he had heard of called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and suggested that she join. Unaware of its existence, she was delighted at the news and immediately expressed a desire to establish a similar group in Philadelphia.2 Just a few years later, in 1860, Philadelphian S. Morris Waln, not knowing of White’s interest in the English movement, sent a letter to the RSPCA detailing his own plans to replicate the group in the United 40 LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. States and requesting advice on how to do so. Just after the Civil War, yet another resident of the City of Brotherly Love, M. Richards Muckle, solicited his circle of friends to start an SPCA, but when his idea met little enthusiasm, he abandoned it.3 Muckle, Waln, and White would all subsequently play integral roles in founding Pennsylvania’s first animal advocacy group. Farther north, Boston attorney George T. Angell recollected that, even as a young man, he had abhorred cruelty toward any living creature and on more than one occasion had intervened to stop such behavior. In 1864 (two years...

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