Wikipedia

Why I Am a Vegetarian

Why I Am a Vegetarian is an 1895 pamphlet by American zoologist and philosopher J. Howard Moore. Based on a lecture delivered to the Chicago Vegetarian Society, it sets out ethical, scientific, and humanitarian arguments for vegetarianism. Moore presents vegetarianism as an application of the Golden Rule, connects it with evolutionary theory, and criticizes anthropocentrism.

Why I Am a Vegetarian
First edition cover
AuthorJ. Howard Moore
LanguageEnglish
SubjectVegetarianism, animal ethics
PublisherPurdy Publishing Company
Publication date1895
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (pamphlet)
Pages44
OCLC39674424
TextWhy I Am a Vegetarian at Wikisource

The pamphlet was published by the Purdy Publishing Company and reissued in several editions and formats in the late 1890s. Extracts also appeared in contemporary periodicals. It received favorable notices in vegetarian and health-reform publications, a mixed review in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and a published rebuttal by Laurence Gronlund, to which Moore replied.

Background

edit
Moore, c. 1899

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916) was an American zoologist and philosopher, and a prominent member of the Chicago Vegetarian Society.[1]

Around 1886, Moore became a vegetarian for ethical reasons.[2] He advocated for the ethical treatment of animals and wrote books, essays, and pamphlets on vegetarianism, animal ethics, evolutionary history, and humanitarianism.[1]

Carrica Le Favre, a health lecturer, dress reformer, child-rearing writer, and physical culture advocate, founded the Chicago Vegetarian Society around 1890. Moore joined soon afterwards while attending Chicago University.[3] He earned a baccalaureate degree in zoology from the university. While there, he helped found the Vegetarian Eating Club, of which he became a leading figure.[2]

Moore later wrote several books, including Better-World Philosophy (1899), The Universal Kinship (1906), The New Ethics (1907), and Savage Survivals (1916).[1]

Addresses

edit
Great Northern Hotel, 1900

Moore wrote "Why I Am a Vegetarian" in early 1895. The paper discussed the benefits of a vegetable diet and Moore's views on the animal rights movement.[4][5] He delivered it before the Chicago Vegetarian Society at the newly constructed Great Northern Hotel, on the northeast corner of Dearborn Street and Jackson Boulevard in Chicago, on 3 March 1895.[6] Moore was persuaded to publish the paper, and it was printed later that year.[7] The preface is dated 3 May 1895.[4]

Moore delivered another address on the subject around June 1896 at the Philosophic Club in Englewood, Chicago.[5] The monthly newsletter Food, Home and Garden reported that the lecture was well received and followed by discussion. Viola H. Ludden wrote that "the paper was broad and most excellent; full of scientific suggestion and humane thought."[7]

Publication

edit
Advertisement in the left column, appearing in issue 7, volume 6 of The Vegetarian Magazine

Why I Am a Vegetarian, subtitled An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society, was published by the Purdy Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois, in 1895.[8][9][5] The 44-page pamphlet measured 5.5 by 18 centimeters. An advertisement in the 15 April 1902 issue of The Vegetarian Magazine described it as arguing that vegetable food was better for human health and as a plea for applying the Golden Rule to animals killed for food.[10][11] It was also published in the same year as a 42-page pamphlet by the Ward Waugh Publishing Company, at 5496 Ellis Avenue, and appeared in the periodical Good Health.[12][13] It was printed in the September 1897 issue of Chicago Vegetarian.[14]

An early edition was sold for 10 cents.[7] A 48-page third edition, printed in 1898, was sold for 25 cents, or five copies for $1.00.[8][11] It was advertised as having a green cover fastened with a silk cord and as being suitable as a gift.[11] The publisher was the Eastman Kodak Company.[15] By 1899, the publication had reached its seventh thousand and was being sold in crepe paper, still for 25 cents.[13] Why I Am a Vegetarian is held by university and public libraries in the United States.[10]

A response to Moore's pamphlet, Why I Am Not a Vegetarian: Why He is Wrong, was written by Danish-born American lawyer, lecturer, and political activist Laurence Gronlund.[16] Moore replied to Gronlund, saying that for the carnivore, "every meal is a murder," and that to "tell why one is 'not a vegetarian' is to give justification, or to attempt to give justification, for being a predatory animal."[17]

Content

edit
Opening page in the seventh edition

The Journal of the American Medical Association described the pamphlet as a "booklet" by a "zoöphilist vegetarian" who "uses no scientific arguments in favor of his thesis."[18]

The preface to Why I Am a Vegetarian opens with an analogy comparing successive human generations to a snake shedding its skin: "the human race is like a snake—it sheds. Ever and anon, as the ages bloom, old forms of thought are superseded by intellectual bran-news."[4] The following page contains extracts from several works, including Oliver Goldsmith's The Hermit, an anonymous poem beginning "What more advance can mortals make in sin?...", and quotations from Sir Henry Thompson, Richard Owen, and Plutarch.[19]

Moore opens the address by telling his audience that he hopes "in half a hundred minutes to rinse from your brains sand bars that have been ages in depositing", referring to habits and assumptions around meat eating. He then criticizes what he sees as a contradiction between professed morality and the treatment of animals, writing that human beings preach the principle of treating others as they would wish to be treated and then take "the most sensitive and beautiful beings all palpitating with life, and chop them into fragments with a composure that would do honor to the managers of an inferno."[20] Moore asserts that English and American meat-eating habits exist because their forebears were cannibals.[6]

Moore states that he is a vegetarian because he believes "that present-day ethics is founded on that puerile, pre-Darwinian delusion that all other kinds of creatures and all worlds were created explicitly for the hominine species." He describes vegetarianism as "the ethical corollary of evolution", arguing that evolutionary theory has taught "the kinship of all creatures."[21] His concluding paragraph begins: "Enjoy and let others enjoy. Live and let live. Do more. Live and help live." He urges readers to "Pity the grub and the ladybug, and have mercy on the mole", describing animals as "our fellow mortals."[21]

The last page of the pamphlet contains an advertisement for twenty publications by Frances L. Dusenberry, at the McVicker's Building in Chicago.[22]

Reception

edit

The journal Boston Ideas described the pamphlet as "one of the most eloquent treatises on the subject that we have read", and praised Moore's "convincing sincerity". It concluded that "vegetarianism is the coming practice for the intelligent and sincere, and its inroads are already more rapid than is generally realized."[11] In its review, the periodical The Public wrote that the pamphlet raised questions for people who continued to eat what they described as "corpses", adding: "we do kill men as well as animals; and, both having been killed, what difference is there between making food of one of the other?"[23]

The Vegetarian described the pamphlet as "worth the savings of a lifetime to every human being who desires to be honest", and argued that it should be issued cheaply and distributed widely.[12] The Pacific Health Journal wrote that Moore "portrays very vividly the relation which we as rational beings sustain to the whole animal creation, if we viewed it in a sensitive light, such as we would if we had never been educated to live upon flesh meats."[24] A review in Good Health said that "every meat eater ought to read" the pamphlet and that it was difficult to see how anyone "possessed of a really human soul" could "look a cow or a sheep in the face without blushing" after reading it.[13]

A quotation from the pamphlet, in which Moore states that "vegetarianism is the ethical corollary of evolution" and "the expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations of Charles Darwin", appears at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Adam D. Shprintzen's 2013 book The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817–1921.[25] The pamphlet has also been made available in eBook format by several digital publishers.[14]

Criticism

edit
Review in the left column, in the Journal of the American Medical Association

In a mixed review in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the reviewer wrote that vegetarianism was "being taken up with more vigor; its propaganda is more active than for some time past." The reviewer criticized Moore's tone toward meat eaters, citing his phrases "Christian cannibals" and "ghoulish clowns of science" as examples of his language toward "those who disagree with his dietetic opinions."[18]

The New Church Life newsletter described Moore's writing as "vigorous", but found the argument unconvincing from a New Church perspective, while acknowledging that it contained statements that might raise scruples about eating animals.[26]

See also

edit

References

edit

Citations

edit

Sources

edit
edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_I_Am_a_Vegetarian&oldid=1353528984"