by Jack London
Transcribed from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition by David Price, [email protected]
MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
FOREWORD
Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable curiosity thatwas born in me, I came to dislike the performances of trained animals. Itwas my curiosity that spoiled for me this form of amusement, for I wasled to seek behind the performance in order to learn how the performancewas achieved. And what I found behind the brave show and glitter ofperformance was not nice. It was a body of cruelty so horrible that I amconfident no normal person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoylooking on at any trained-animal turn.
Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-pambys Iam esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in the spilled bloodof violence and horror. Without arguing this matter of my generalreputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add that Ihave indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more than theaverage man's share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle andthe prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seenhorrible deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because,being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have seenthe hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen other men,by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling madness. I havewitnessed the deaths of old and young, and even infants, from sheerstarvation. I have seen men and women beaten by whips and clubs andfists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide whips laid around the nakedtorsos of black boys so heartily that each stroke stripped away the skinin full circle. And yet, let me add finally, never have I been soappalled and shocked by the world's cruelty as have I been appalled andshocked in the midst of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences whentrained-animal turns were being performed on the stage.
One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate much ofthe unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that isperpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head.But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded,conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, hasattained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world.
Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to hardship,cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came to manhood, thatI unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of the trained-animal turnby getting up and leaving the theatre whenever such turns came on thestage. I say "unconsciously." By this I mean it never entered my mindthat this was a programme by which the possible death-blow might be givento trained-animal turns. I was merely protecting myself from the pain ofwitnessing what it would hurt me to witness.
But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become such thatI realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate such performancesdid he or she know the terrible cruelty that lies behind them and makesthem possible. So I am emboldened to suggest, here and now, threethings:
First, let all humans inform themselves of the inevitable and eternalcruelty by the means of which only can animals be compelled to performbefore revenue-paying audiences. Second, I suggest that all men andwomen, and boys and girls, who have so acquainted themselves with theessentials of the fine art of animal-training, should become members of,and ally themselves with, the local and national organizations of humanesocieties and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.
And the third suggestion I cannot state until I have made a preamble.Like hundreds of thousands of others, I have worked in other fields,striving to organize the mass of mankind into movements for the purposeof ameliorating its own wretchedness and misery. Difficult as this is toaccomplish, it is still more difficult to persuade the human into anyorganised effort to alleviate the ill conditions of the lesser animals.
Practically all of us will weep red tears and sweat bloody sweats as wecome to knowledge of the unavoidable cruelty and brutality on which thetrained-animal world rests and has its being. But not one-tenth of oneper cent. of us will join any organization for the prevention of crueltyto animals, and by our words and acts and contributions work to preventthe perpetration of cruelties on animals. This is a weakness of our ownhuman nature. We must recognize it as we recognize heat and cold, theopaqueness of the non-transparent, and the everlasting down-pull ofgravity.
And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of us,under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains another way mosteasily to express ourselves for the purpose of eliminating from the worldthe cruelty that is practised by some few of us, for the entertainment ofthe rest of us, on the trained animals, who, after all, are only lesseranimals than we on the round world's surface. It is so easy. We willnot have to think of dues or corresponding secretaries. We will not haveto think of anything, save when, in any theatre or place ofentertainment, a trained-animal turn is presented before us. Then,without premeditation, we may express our disapproval of such a turn bygetting up from our seats and leaving the theatre for a promenade and abreath of fresh air outside, coming back, when the turn is over, to enjoythe rest of the programme. All we have to do is just that to eliminatethe trained-animal turn from all public places of entertainment. Showthe management that such turns are unpopular, and in a day, in aninstant, the management will cease catering such turns to its audiences.
JACK LONDON
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,
December 8, 1915