Fifty Years in the Doghouse

by Lloyd Alexander

  In 1959, when Rockefeller presented the Society's Medal of Honor to Baker, the space traveling squirrel monkey, the ASPCA President stressed that the award was given "as an expression of the ASPCA's awareness that it is time for the humane movement to record its realization that it is only through carefully controlled scientific research that further progress to the mutual benefit of man and animal can be achieved." Rockefeller has since added: "Animals, as well as man, must on occasion be called on to accept risks, and indeed to make sacrifices, for the general good of the community which includes them both."

  "At the same time, true to the humane purposes for which the ASPCA was founded ... we insist that any experimentation be conducted under conditions that eliminate pain and suffering to the maximum extent consistent with the particular objective, and be limited to areas where proper authority has determined that benefit to the general welfare may be expected."

  However vigorous their leadership, ASPCA presidents have only one pair of hands. Perhaps through kindly assistance by the spirit of Henry Bergh, the Society has consistently attracted other men and women of unique talent and dedication. W. H. Horton, General Manager from 1906 to 1930, was a superb administrator during a period of rebuilding and consolidation. The late Sydney H. Coleman, for 21 years Executive Vice-President until his retirement in 1952, received international praise as a leader in humane work. Born in Bellona, New York, a Ph.B. from Syracuse University, Chairman of the New York State Humane Agency's Legislative Committee, Coleman was instrumental in reaching an anti-cruelty agreement with the movie industry. He helped plan and direct the building of shelters in four New York boroughs, as well as the new Manhattan Hospital and Shelter. Warren W. McSpadden, the Society's General Manager and Assistant Treasurer from 1952 until his death following a heart attack in 1959, was an honor graduate of the University of Texas, member of Phi Beta Kappa, an educator, a faculty member of Columbia University-and a man with apparently unlimited capacity for work.

  The Society still strives to reach McSpadden's goal, a humane slaughter bill for New York State. The present Administrative Vice-President, ex-professor William Mapel, likes to picture the Society's reorganization in university terms. "We've got five main divisions now," says Mapel, "like the colleges of a university, each with its own dean." The 'dean' of Operations, a division responsible for the legwork and the shelter operations of the Society, is Arthur L. Amundsen, who joined the ASPCA in 1937 to take charge of horse-watering. Since then, Amundsen has traveled halfway around the world, studying humane work in other countries. During his most recent expedition, he gained information that helped organize the Sydney H. Coleman Animal port. Mrs. George Fielding Eliot joined the ASPCA in 1950-specifically to aid in fund raising for the new Manhattan Shelter. Well-known radio personality and NBC's assistant director for women's programs, June Eliot, a chic, attractive woman, stayed on with the Society, and now is Director of Publications and Programs. Associated under Mrs. Eliot is a group of volunteer workers presided over for more than a decade by an enthusiast named Maude Hayman, who walked in one day and announced she was a new volunteer worker. Mrs. Hayman, wife of a Wall Street broker, had seen an ASPCA appeal poster in a Fifth Avenue bus. Under Mrs. Elliot’s direction, the volunteers have worked on all sorts of affairs, including the annual Animal Kingdom Ball. Proceeds from these functions help underwrite such activities as the medical examinations and spaying service that are part of the Society's adoption program.

  British-born, benevolent-looking Comptroller Thomas A. Fegan, member of the Society since I 937, does not believe in the green eye shade and the quill pen; he contemplates an automated system for accounting and data processing. Automation in his 'college', Fegan estimates, could in the long run save the ASPCA several thousand dollars a year. Another 'dean', Dr. John E. Whitehead, a handsome young graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, joined the Society in 1954 and now directs the ASPCA Hospital and Clinic. Well known for his clinical work in the diseases of small animals, Dr. Whitehead is particularly interested in radiography and clinical pathology. The Society's reorganization gives new prominence to the Humane Work Division-the Society's reason for existence and, until recently, the department most hampered by lack of facilities. Humane Work now is a separate 'college' under West Pointer and retired army officer, Colonel Edmond M. Rowan, a soft-spoken war hero with a soldier's gift for infinite ingenuity. Rowan was chosen after nearly eighty prospects had been screened and more than a score had been interviewed. "With these colleges and deans," Mapel says, "I guess I'm something like a university provost. Of course," he adds with a chuckle, "I'm also the so-and-so who has to cope with the deficit." Appointed Administrative Vice-President in 1961 'liberated from the pasture to the doghouse' as he puts it, Mapel arrived in time to help direct the $60,000 hospital expansion program. Also, under his guidance, the Society instituted a new system of budget control, and launched a personnel-management program in line with Rockefeller's policy of modern management techniques. To the executive family in 1963 were added two other newcomers: Edward W. Simms and Edward I. Metcalf.

  Simms, at forty-five a retired army lieutenant colonel with several years of personnel training, carries the title of Personnel Manager. Metcalf, forty and an Amherst graduate, brings to the Society ten years of executive experience in the broad field of public relations. His title is Director of Public Relations. Another new venture-and another first in the humane movement-is the ASPCA Management Training Program. The big industrial corporations have been nurturing coveys of future executives for some time now. Rockefeller, head of his own firm's training program, sees the executive incubator as the best way the Society can get long-term assurance of competent management. The humane movement is a special field demanding a temperament different from the typical business personality. Nobody goes into it to build a fortune. In an organization like the Society, management must be efficient-and something more, because the end product is, essentially, kindness. Humane work makes demands on the heart as well as on the head. The number of people able to meet those demands is limited. Some of them already work for the Society, whose policy has always been to promote as much as possible from within. "We hold the top of the ladder open for anybody who wants to climb," Rockefeller says, and the Society encourages personnel to do it. Society employees may apply for the management training. If any of the 258 staff members want more education to help them do their jobs better, the Society will pay, depending on grades, all or part of the expenses.

  To develop its executive reservoir, the Society now takes on a limited number of 'administrative assistants' who receive six months of training in the five "colleges." The Society holds that good supervisors must know the problems as well as the duties of those who work under them. Matters of organization, budget control, law enforcement, and humane education occupy the major part of the indoctrination period, but all trainees spend days on ambulance and squad car detail, on cruelty investigations, and on shelter and kennel routine. And-under Ryan-every administrative assistant learns from experience the swift, sure, .38-caliber way to put a horse out of its misery. Appropriately, these administrative assistants are mature men--or will be by the time they're ready for administrative responsibility. In addition, the Society contacts fifty colleges of agriculture throughout the country and offers summer jobs to suitable junior students with this experience, the student may well be interested enough to apply for training after his graduation. Good executives cost money-frequently more than the ASPCA has. The Society makes no bones about seeking men whose livelihood does not depend entirely on salary. It's a respectable way of buying proved ability and maturity at bargain rates. Money, indeed, has always been a headache for the ASPCA. Red-ink dollars are its greatest liability. On the other hand, imagination and resourcefulness are the Society's biggest assets-plus a special attitude that distinguishes all ASPCA staff. "We are engaged in a great work of mercy," Sydney Coleman once said. "It cannot be thought of as an ordinar
y job. It calls for something a little higher, a little nobler."

  5 - The Latin Lion Tamer

  The Society's work has always been more than the white collar variety. The story goes that Henry Bergh, in the late 1860's, stopped a wagon driver carting a load of sheep and calves. The animals had been ruthlessly jammed together, some dying, some with broken legs, gouged eyes, heads scraping against the turning wheels. When Bergh suggested at least some small measure of comfort for the animals, the driver and his assistant mockingly refused. Bergh, although dressed like a fashion plate, was a powerful, broad-shouldered man; he collared the driver and assistant and emphasized his suggestion by knocking their heads together. Another time, when Bergh asked a horse car driver to lighten an overloaded vehicle, the man threatened to punch him in the nose. Whereupon, Bergh seized the fellow by the seat of the pants and tossed him into a snowbank. In the dead of winter, in slush and ice, Bergh carried hay and water, and with his own hands helped fallen horses to their feet. It has been some years since ASPCA operatives have felt constrained to seize anyone by the seat of the pants, or knock heads together. It is a tribute to the Society's success in improving the status of animals that the public has almost forgotten how bad things used to be. One small segment, unaware of the Society's activities, even tends to look on the prevention of cruelty as no longer really necessary-a harm-less and not too demanding pursuit, somewhat akin to bird watching. Such a man was Captain Ford, a prissy sort of individual with a pencil-line mustache, always nattily dressed and wearing, in addition, a carefully cultivated sunlamp tan.

  The Captain had been appointed to an administrative job at one of the local zoos and, as a result, liked to think of himself as a big game hunter. Somehow he managed to convey the impression that if he hadn't captured each of the zoo's inhabitants with his bare hands, he was nevertheless perfectly capable of doing so. The Society had asked the Captain to deliver a series of lectures to the staff, hoping his experiences would be valuable and instructive. As things turned out, the Captain spent most of his time talking less about animals than about what the Society should be doing. "You men," the Captain exhorted, "have got to get out into the real world. You've got to be willing to work, to sweat, to get your hands dirty! Now, when I was in Nairobi." His remarks had a condescending tone, not improved by his habit of bouncing up and down on his toes, an effect he believed, perhaps, lent some kind of military flair to his comments. Ryan, sitting in the back of the lecture hall, turned indignantly to his friend Tom. "Do you hear that guy?" he asked. "He sounds like we were a bunch of old ladies. What does he think we do? Sit around all day and drink tea?" Ryan himself is one of the last persons in the world anyone would mistake for an old lady. After the lecture, and still irritated, he decided to find out how much the Captain really knew about animals. Ryan made his way to the front of the hall where the Captain was now putting away his notes.

  "Oh, there's something I wanted to ask," Ryan said innocently. "I heard that some animals, when you lasso them, run toward you."

  "Is that what you heard?" asked the Captain. "The cowboys say there's only three that you can really count on to back off a lariat."

  "How interesting," said the Captain. "Which ones would they be?" Ryan asked. "Well," the Captain hesitated, "that depends. Which ones did your cowboy informant tell you?"

  "A horse, for one," said Ryan. "A steer, and a wild bear."

  "Quite possible," said the Captain. "I really couldn't say one way or the other. My field is big game, you know. I never had much time for barnyard animals."

  "Barnyard!" Ryan muttered as the Captain left. "I never heard of a wild bear living in a barnyard!" The Captain evidently classified camels as barnyard animals, too, for one cold night he telephoned to advise that one of the zoo's camels had refused to go back into its stall. "Put a bridle on him," Ryan said, "and just lead him like a horse."

  "I tried that," said the Captain. "It doesn't work. He won't get up."

  "You mean he's sitting down?"

  "Lying down," the Captain corrected. He added, "On his side." Ryan turned to Tom, who was also on duty that night. "We better break out the horse-sling. The Captain's going to need it."

  "Why?" Tom asked. "Did he slip?"

  "Not yet," Ryan said. "But you never can tell." At the zoo, a light frost had already settled on the suffering camel. The Captain paced back and forth, beating his arms to keep warm. "Oh, there you are, men," he said. "Now just give me a hand here." He noticed the horse-sling. "You won't need that. We'll do it the right way, the way the Egyptians do it."

  "I remember one day in Cairo." Waving his hands in the air, the Captain began shouting commands in Arabic. The camel opened one eye and through his lips made a sound more typical of the Bronx than the Near East. "I don't give a damn what they do in Cairo," Ryan said. "This animal's sick and he's going to freeze to death if we don't get him out of here." Disappointed at the camel's inability to understand simple Arabic, the Captain finally agreed to let Ryan and Tom use the sling. In fact, the Captain automatically appointed himself supervisor of camel-raising operations. "You there," he ordered, "tighten that girth! Don't let that strap hang down! Buckle up the other side!"

  "Captain," Ryan said quietly, "just let us handle it. Believe me, it's going to work better that way. You see, if we tightened up the girth and buckled the other side, we could get this camel off the ground all right. There's only one trouble. He'd be upside down." The Captain continued to give helpful suggestions. In spite of them, Ryan and Tom got the camel indoors and bedded down in a corner of the stall. "Thank you, men," the Captain said. "I'll carry on from here."

  "You aren't going to leave him like that!" Ryan said. "He'll have pneumonia by the morning!"

  "Naturally," said the Captain, "I intend to wrap some blankets around him."

  "Blankets be damned!" Ryan snorted. "You've got the best blankets in the world all over the zoo." The Captain gave him a puzzled look. "Manure!" Ryan said. "It'll keep him warmer than anything else."

  "Manure?" asked the Captain. "You heard me," Ryan said. The ASPCA agents were already on their hands and knees, scrabbling at the floor of the stall. "Go cart some manure in here. I don't care whether it's horse, elephant or rhinoceros!" For the next couple of hours, Ryan, Tom and the Captain hauled manure. The three men were soaked and reeking. The Captain's natty suit and overcoat looked as if it had been dragged through every barn in the state. But the camel was warm; he was also highly aromatic but unquestionably more comfortable than any of the humans. The exhausted Captain sat down on the ground. "I ought to change my clothes," he said. "But at this point, I don't think it would make any difference. I might as well stay the rest of the night." "Give him a quart of whiskey," Ryan ordered. "And you might take a shot yourself." Ryan and Tom left the Captain in the stall, meditatively picking bits of straw from his hat. Considering the amount of straw, it would take him quite a while. Next morning, the Captain telephoned to advise that the camel was on the mend. "Something else," he added, hesitatingly. "I want to thank you men. I mean, I didn't realize ... some of the things I might have said the other day about getting your hands dirty ..."

  "Forget it," Ryan told him. "Tell me one thing," the Captain asked. "Do you people always give your animals that treatment?"

  "No," Ryan said, "only if they need it." The Captain's camel made a full recovery. But in New York, not all zoo-type animals are in zoos. They occasionally appear on the street. Ryan, one day, was ordered to report to the theater district. "What is it this time?" he asked. "Trained seals?"

  "No," said the ASPCA dispatcher. "Lions. Twelve of them."

  "All together or in small groups?"

  "The last I heard," said the dispatcher, "they were in cages. For your sake," he called, as Ryan started out the door, "I hope they still are." On one of the side streets of the theatrical section, Ryan did indeed find twelve lions, arranged neatly along the sidewalk. He also found one enraged truck driver and a brunette who would have been pretty were she n
ot in the midst of hysterics. "Lady," the truck driver was saying when Ryan drove up, "I got a hauling business, not a charity foundation. You want me to move them lions, you pay me in advance."

  "Tonto! Imbecile!" screamed the brunette. "I am Carmela the Magnificent! I pay you twice when I get my vaudeville booking!"

  "Just pay me once," the truck driver answered, "only do it now."

  "But I tell you I have no money yet," Carmela the Magnificent cried. "And how can I get bookings without lions? I cannot take them to my hotel. Do you want me to leave them on the street?"

  "Lady," the truck driver said, "I don't care if you hitch them together and pull a hansom cab through Central Park." He slammed the door and pulled away. Carmela the Magnificent caught sight of Ryan and threw her arms around him. "You, senor, you are the one who must help me!" When Ryan eventually disentangled himself, and Carmela the Magnificent had calmed down a little, he ascertained that the lions actually did belong to her; that she did have a vaudeville act but not right at the moment. Carmela the Magnificent showed him a theater poster of herself, dressed in a gold-braided uniform and surrounded by her twelve performers.

  Ryan had heard of lady bullfighters and he saw no reason why there shouldn't be lady lion tamers as well. What he could do for the animals was something else again. "I'll take them to the shelter," he said. "After that, we'll see." The ASPCA has never been known to turn a deaf ear to the roaring of hungry lions--or, for that matter, the entreaties of a lady in distress. The Society agreed to house the animals rent-free until Carmela the Magnificent could book the act again. In addition, the Society offered to provide food free of charge. There was one stipulation. The ASPCA demands a great deal from its staff in the way of dedication and courage; nevertheless, it does not consider its employees expendable. Carmela the Magnificent would have to feed her own lions. "But that is wonderful!" Carmela cried happily. "Of course I feed them. They will be no trouble. You will not even know they are there!" Carmela the Magnificent exaggerated slightly. No one, not even the ASPCA staff, can hear a series of deep-throated roars without pausing to realize lions are in the vicinity. The dogs in the next-door kennels, born and raised New Yorkers, had never smelled lion in their lives. They did now and decided they didn't like it. They might have thought themselves back in Africa with some of their ancestors. Even the cats were a little uneasy, like children with distant relatives visiting. The Latin lion tamer arrived daily to give her cast their meat rations. Her act included playing a guitar in the lions' cage. Carmela didn't try this at the Society but she always brought the instrument with her and spent some time strumming and crooning at the lions in Spanish. "They are so nice," she said, "just like little kitties. Even Metro." Metro was the big, tawny male, the star of the show.