The arranging of this help for those who are seeking to obey the call to a higher humanitarianism, which is put forth by non-flesh-eating men and women, has been a labour of love: the labour, the result of an earnest endeavour to so write the receipts that “the way-faring woman may not err therein,” the love, of a kind whose integrity may not be questioned, since it has inspired to the never easy task of going against the stream of habit and custom, and to individual effort in behalf of the myriads of gentle and amenable creatures, which an animality that defiles the use of the word has accustomed man to killing and eating.

The name Vegetarian has come to mean one who abstains from animal flesh as food; and, as some designation is necessary, it is perhaps a sufficiently suitable one. This term did not, however, originally classify those who used a bloodless diet, but is derived from the Latin Homo Vegitus, which words described to the Romans a strong, vigorous man. The definition of the word Vegitus, as given in Thomas Holyoke’s Latin Dictionary, is “whole, sound, quick, fresh, lively, lusty, gallant, trim, brave,” and of Vegito, “to refresh, to re-create.” Professor Mayor of England adds to these definitions: “The word vegetarian belongs to an illustrious family; vegetable, which has been called its mother, is really its niece.”

The word has unfortunately become intermingled with various dietetic theories, but the Vegetarian who is one because his conscience for one reason or another condemns the eating of flesh, occupies a very different place in the world of ethics from one who is simply refraining from meat eating in an effort to cure bodily ills.

Indeed, the dyspeptic frequenting the usual Vegetarian restaurant has little opportunity to know much about vegetables as food, the menu being, as a rule, so crowded with various mixtures which are supposedly “meat substitutes” that vegetables pure and simple find small place. This book contains no meat substitutes, as such, but receipts for the palatable preparation of what is called by many “live foods,”—that is, food which has no blood to shed and does not, therefore, become dead before it can be eaten.

There will also be found lacking from the index such dishes as “Vegetarian Hamburg Steak,” “Pigeon Pie, Vegetarian style,” etc., which should repel rather than attract, by bringing to mind what Bernard Shaw has graphically spoken of as “scorched carcasses.”

It has been proven by myself and my household that flesh eating may be safely stopped in one day with no injury to health or strength, and that a table supplied from the receipts in this book can make those whom it furnishes with food well and strong as far as food can make them so.

There are many reasons why thoughtful, cleanly, humane people should not feed upon animals, but there is a surprising deafness to this fact shown by the majority of those active in humane charities. One marvels to see hundreds of consecrated workers in session, putting forth every effort for the enacting of laws for the amelioration of the sufferings of cattle travelling to slaughter by car and ship, who are still content to patronise the butcher shop to buy food supplied by the dead bodies of these tortured victims of a false appetite. Mere thoughtlessness can make the kindest act cruelly inconsistent, for I once saw a woman presiding at a meeting held to discountenance the wearing of aigrettes with a sheaf of them decorating her bonnet. This looks much like receiving stolen goods while denouncing theft.

It is well to write, and legislate, and pray for better and kinder treatment of these frightened, thirst-maddened, tortured creatures on their journey to our tables, but the surest, quickest way to help (and this can be done even while continuing to work for the alleviation of their sufferings) is to stop feeding upon them.

In a recent issue of a paper devoted to humane matters there is an indignant protest against the sufferings endured by crated chickens in a certain market, and another article deplores the cruelty shown to turtles in the same place, but when we know the writers of these protests to be still willing to use these creatures on their tables, it is not always easy to fully credit their tender-heartedness. In another such paper there appear from year to year sentimental pictures and poems extolling the kindliness and virtues of “the cattle upon a thousand hills,” while those same pages print instructions on the most humane way of slaying them, giving as a reason for the sudden and painless death described that suffering “poisons the meat.”

The favourite phrase, “our four-footed friends,” seems rather an anachronism in the face of our acknowledged relations to them as eater and eaten, for the phrase indicates a mutual pact of friendship, which, however well sustained by them, is dishonoured by man; for even cannibals, we are told, sink no lower than to eat their foes.

The demand for butcher’s meat may not seem materially lessened because I do not eat it, but it is lessened notwithstanding, and I rejoice to know that in the past seven years my abstinence from flesh must have resulted in a little less slaughter, and I am glad to have reduced by even one drop the depth of that ocean of blood. I have heard the Biblical statement that man was to have dominion over all the earth quoted as a justification for the eating of the lower animals. We will some day be so civilised that we will recognise the great truth that dominion implies care, and guardianship, and protection rather than the right to destroy.

The first objection voiced against Vegetarianism is not usually against its principle, but its practice; we are told that the refusal to eat meat causes inconvenience, and that it is best to “eat what is set before you, asking no questions for conscience’s sake.” I could respect the position of one who literally believed and consistently acted on this mandate, but where in Christendom can he be found? Few of us could or would eat the flesh of a pet lamb, or partake knowingly of horse flesh, or could or would feel called upon to dine on these lines with the peoples who eat dog, or with so-called cannibals. The host might have secured, in a broad spirit of hospitality, just the particular carcass which most pleased his own palate, but courtesy seldom forces us to eat any flesh other than the sorts to which our own habits have accustomed us.

There is a well-known story of an American statesman who was reared by Vegetarian parents in the country, and taken while still a small boy to dine at a neighbour’s. During the progress of the meal a large platter was borne into the room, on which lay something the like of which he had not seen on any table. He stared in wonder, and finally located the resemblance and shouted, “Why, mother, if that isn’t a dead hen!” Habit had not overcome his horror of that particular dead thing as food, as it would have done had he seen dead hens served as food all his life.

As to the inconvenience caused my friends when I am at their tables, I consider it of such small consequence compared to the fact that even one child should be standing almost knee-deep in blood in some slaughter-house, working to supply my wants, that it is not worth a second thought. No one need go hungry from any well-planned dinner, even though no extra preparation has been made for the non-meat-eating guest; but if my hostess knows in advance that I do not eat meat, and wishes to have prepared an especial dish, I give her the benefit of the doubt, and believe that she is as pleased to do it as I would be in her place. We like to take a little extra trouble to entertain our friends, and the thought expended to give others pleasure is perhaps the real joy of hospitality.

Another class of objector likes to remind us that we take life when we eat vegetables, or drink, or breathe. A friend, who has since ceased to consider the unnecessary and cruel slaughtering of thousands of creatures daily a fit subject for joking, once sent me in raillery a sonnet which rehearsed the sad death suffered by a cabbage to satisfy a Vegetarian’s selfish cravings. I find no qualms in my own conscience on this subject, but should I ever come to feel as these over-sensitive claim I should, I hope I will not then eat even the “innocent cabbage.”

Again, if the germs in the water we drink and the air we breathe do die by reason of our drinking and breathing I endure no self-condemnation. Man cannot be required to do the impossible by any Principle of Good, and to do each day what good he is able to do, to avoid the evil he can avoid, and in every difficulty choose what he thinks to be the lesser of two evils, is perhaps as much as even Divine Love expects of him to-day.

It is well to face the unpleasant fact that there are occasions when in our present state of development it seems necessary to kill in self-defence, as it were, moths, rats, etc.; but even in this we can “do our best,” and it has been well said, “angels can do no more.” We can by care in our households greatly reduce this necessity, and we can always see that no creatures, although destroying our property, pilfering or stealing, are in their death made to suffer. In this connection I would urge every one who reads these lines to never permit a piece of sticky fly-paper to be brought into the house, for of all cruel ways of destruction, this slow method, by which the unfortunate fly almost dismembers itself in its frantic efforts to escape, is one of the most fiendishly contrived.

An advocate of Vegetarianism has truly said, “A vegetable diet is as little connected with weakness and cowardice as meat eating is with physical force and courage.” That Vegetarians are not physical weaklings is no mere matter of opinion, but is proven by the giant Japanese wrestlers; the ancient Greek wrestlers; those Indian regiments of the British army showing most endurance; by the peasantry of the world, which is seldom able to afford meat, and above all, by those famous Vegetarians who march around the globe doing the work carnivorous man is too weak to do,—the horse, the ox, the camel, and the elephant. One of our best-known cooking teachers and food experts printed this statement not long ago: “While meat seems necessary to the rapid development of the American, I must contend that a well-selected vegetable diet will give greater health, bodily vigour, and mental strength,” which would seem contradictory, for even an American would not seem to require other food than that which will give him greatest health, bodily vigour, and mental strength.

Nor have we cause to feel ashamed of the mentality of the guests at Ceres’ table, which is graced by a goodly company; the list of names encircling the cover of “The Vegetarian Magazine” reads, “Adam, Hesiod, Gautama, Isaiah, Daniel, Plato, Zoroaster, Aristotle, Seneca, Ovid, Plutarch, Pope, Swedenborg, Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Franklin, Westley, LinnÆus, Shelley, Tolstoi, and King Oscar II.” Others are Bernard Shaw, and Maurice Maeterlinck (who is said to have become a non-meat eater to gain greater endurance for his favourite pastime of mountain climbing), Richard Wagner, and General Booth.

But after all, the one great argument for a fleshless diet is the humanitarian one, and it does not seem possible that persons exist to-day who do not know of the horrors of cruelty which take place hourly, in order that meat may be eaten by men and women who could not look without sickening at the process which has made possible the roast upon their tables, but who are nevertheless the employers of every fainting child in the stock-yards, and every brutalised man in the shambles, whose wages they pay with every pound of meat they buy. The real butcher of an animal is the one for whom it receives its death blow, not the one who actually deals that blow.

A man who recently visited some stock-yards writes: “We were sorry to see the Thor man make mislicks at a pretty heifer. His first stroke did not fell her, and she staggered and looked at him so wonderingly and pathetically. He could not strike her while her head was in that position, and after giving her two or three more ineffectual blows, she looked at him so reproachfully, as if pleading, ‘Why do you treat me so cruelly? What have I ever done to you?’ Finally he got her down and out of her misery. I shall never take a bit of steak on my fork without seeing that pretty heifer lifting her stunned head to that awkward pounder.”

Perhaps nothing more revolting than this same writer’s remarks anent pig-killing has been written, but since the words are accurately true, they should be fit to read, for if the words which tell the truth about meat as food are unfit for our ears, the meat itself is not fit for our mouths. He describes the pig-sticking, the skinning, and the process which makes the pig into pork, and then adds: “He goes into the cooling room, and the whole effort from that time is to keep him from crumbling back into dust, attacked by worms. Salt and brine and smoke and cold prevent the corpse from utter dissolution. The refrigerator is a sort of Purgatory where the brute stays until he finally finds a cemetery in the human alimentary canal.” Yet this man expects to again have meat “on his fork”!

The “Cosmopolitan” calls attention to the remarkable procession daily passing through a certain slaughter-house, as follows: “Imagine a procession of 10,000 cattle marching two by two, in a line fifteen miles long; let 20,000 sheep follow them, bleating along twelve miles of road; after them drive sixteen miles of hogs, 27,000 strong; then let 30,000 fowls bring up the rear, clucking and quacking and gobbling, over a space of six miles; and in this whole caravan, stretching for nearly fifty miles and requiring two days to pass a given point, you will see the animals devoted to death in the packing houses of —— & Co. in a single day. Surely a Buddhist would think that the head of that establishment had much to answer for. Never before in the world’s history was a massacre of the innocents organised on such a stupendous scale or with such scientific system.”

People are surprisingly callous to the sufferings of those animals destined to become food. Recently some well-dressed, well-mannered men were on a train returning East from a Western visit, and the train coming to a standstill for some reason, their conversation was plainly overheard by their fellow-passengers. They were discussing a visit to the stock-yards, and one of them, quite convulsed with laughter, cried out that he really thought the most comical sight he had seen while away, in fact one of the funniest things he had seen in his whole life, was the antics of a pig “which had escaped out of the scalding pen!” The pig-sticker had evidently been as awkward that time as the man who missed the pretty heifer.

It is daily less possible to buy turkeys and chickens minus their heads. The delicate death without the use of the old-time axe (which we degraded men and women have thought a pretty symbol to place on Thanksgiving Day table cards) is brought about by hanging the fowls up by the feet, in what fright can be imagined, an incision is then made in the roof of the mouth, and after bleeding to death, which, as in the case of calves or veal, insures solid white flesh, they are served as food to dainty women who can scarcely bear to kill a fly, and alas! to some members of the societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals!

One crate of chickens can encase more suffering than I want endured for me. There is first the terror in capture, then the suffering of being thrust, legs often tied, in the small over-crowded crate, then the journey in the shrieking train, and the thirst-tortured hours in the sun before the final twist of the neck or the blow of the axe, given in many cases just before natural death would render the fowl unfit for sale. And such food, poisoned by fear and suffering, is considered the most delicate, and thought fit to feed to invalids!

That all chickens do not endure the same suffering before death is no excuse for eating them, for some will have to submit to it while chicken is an article of food. The modern invention of fattening fowl by the machine-stuffing method, to make what are called in England “Surrey fowls,” and in America are given various fancy names, is so revolting that it almost makes one faint to read a true account of it. We are selfishly prone to comfort ourselves when these things are brought to our notice with the thought that the lower creatures do not suffer as we would. The fact is that no two live beings suffer the same in any event, physical or mental, but the lower animal or bird or fish suffers in its fear and death all it is capable of suffering, and we have no right to make any creature do this for our pleasure.

Mr. E. Bell has written, “Dreadful are the revelations made by humane men, who, setting aside personal comfort and peace of mind, have endeavoured to sound the depths of animal agony and bloodshed. The process of flaying alive, and even of dismembering animals before the breath has left their bodies, is far from uncommon in private slaughter-houses.”

When we witness the cruelty to horses on our streets, though they are property which the most unwise would naturally seek to care for, we can only imagine what must chance to the unfortunate creatures, already condemned to death and only regarded as food, at the hands of the hardened men whose miserable lot it is to be employed by Christendom to do its most evil work.

In a pamphlet called “An Epitome of Vegetarianism” C. P. Newcombe writes: “Our opponents are quick to point out the supposed resemblance between the canine teeth of man and those of the carnivora, forgetting that they are even more prominent in the ape, the horse, and the camel. We accept the challenge and appeal for an authoritative statement of the facts to the great masters of science, among whom there is complete agreement, viz., that expressed by Baron Cuvier, the Professor of Natural History in the College of France, who wrote in ‘The Animal Kingdom,’ vol. i, page 88: ‘Fruits, roots, and the other succulent parts of vegetables appear to be the natural food of man; his hands afford him a facility for gathering them, and his short and comparatively weak jaws, his short canine teeth, not passing beyond the common line of others, and his tuberculous cheek teeth would not permit him either to feed upon herbage or devour flesh unless these aliments were previously prepared by the culinary process.’ Similar opinions are expressed by Sir Charles Bell, F. R. S., Prof. William Lawrence, F. R. S., Sir Richard Owen, K. C. B., F. R. S., and Dr. Charles Darwin, with many others.”

While interesting in stating a case, this interests me as an argument but little, for if we were carnivorously made, with our minds, our hearts, our capacity for love and charity, and that great hope we have of finally manifesting the perfection of the sons of God, we still should control our tendencies by a higher law, and no more be carnivorous than we are apes, or marauders, or any other mental or physical manifestation from which spiritual evolution has lifted us high.

But this humanitarianism does not consider alone the animals slaughtered, but the men, women, and children who do this revolting work. One packing-house in the West advertises over 18,000 employees; multiply this by thousands and one can estimate the numbers of human beings who are thus degraded and brutalised. In my own household I have made it a point of honour to demand no labour which I would not be willing to do myself; I might fail in strength, but morally I would be willing to undertake any work required by me, and from the day I realised what I required from others if I ate meat, I became an abstainer from it, for no surer ethical truth can be stated than that we have no moral right to demand from the hands of another, work we would not be willing to undertake ourselves.

Mr. Henry Salt has written, “Of all recognised occupations, the work which is looked upon with the greatest loathing (next to the hangman’s) is that of the butcher—the trade of doing to death countless numbers of inoffensive and highly organised creatures, amid scenes of indescribable filth and ferocity—is delegated to a pariah class of slaughter-men, who are thus themselves made the victims of a grievous social wrong.”

So large a percentage of the murderers of to-day have been butchers, they or their fathers before them, that these statistics alone constitute a sufficient argument for Vegetarianism.

Man’s inhumanity to himself in this matter of flesh eating is rapidly being uncovered by meat inspectors, food experts, and hundreds of physicians the world over. The statistics comparing meat-eating and non-meat-eating races with regard to tuberculosis, cancer, appendicitis, etc., are of the greatest interest to those who care not only for the health but for the mere cleanness of their bodies.

Dr. B. W. Richardson, in a book called “The Field of Disease,” says: “In Jewish communities there are a number of men set apart to act as inspectors of animal food. They attend at the slaughter-houses, and after an animal is slain and dressed they submit it to inspection; then, unless they put upon it their sign, that it is free from disease, it is not permitted to enter a Jewish family. It enters into the families outside the Jewish community, so that we who are not Jews actually accept into our bodies food which the Jews have rejected as diseased.”

The statistics taken from two small abattoirs alone, for one year, as given by a secretary of one Jewish ecclesiastical board are as follows:

According to this very nearly one-third of all the meat sold to Christian families is tainted by parasitical disease. If an animal dies of cancer, tuberculosis, etc., our laws protect us from the carcass, but, if slaughtered, the diseased portion is cut away and the remainder is sold as fit for food. Such blood is squeezed from beef and poured by the gallon by loving hands into the willing lips of consumptives and anÆmics!

The true Vegetarian will not be seen adorned (?) by any of the reapings from a dead body, whether they be feathers or furs, for these have no beauty in the sight of those who see them in thought, dripping with the blood from which they can never be truly cleansed.

Those who would “strain at gnats” while swallowing camels, criticise the Vegetarian for his kid gloves and his leather shoes; but perfect conditions do not yet prevail for the absolutely consistent carrying out of his principles; his effort is to help to bring these to pass, and he does not refrain from beginning for the reason that he cannot yet do all. An adequate substitute for leather has been made which experiments have proven of value, but, as yet, there is no demand which justifies its manufacture.

Many express the fear that, were wholesale slaughter abolished, the earth would be overrun by the lower animals; but were artificial and unnatural breeding discontinued we can safely trust that the animal creation would find its proper place in the world, as everything does, under the guidance of the controlling Mind which is Creator.

Stop and think for a moment what the world would be like to-day if it were Vegetarian. If the world were Vegetarian, the endless caravans of doomed creatures would not be ambling to the shambles; not a man would be brutalised by the daily slaughter of hundreds of gentle creatures; not a woman would be engaged in sorting edible parts from the dissected carcasses, making all red around her; not a child would be standing deep in offal, seeking useful bits of dead bodies; “where sympathy is, cruelty is impossible,” therefore, not a dog would be maltreated, not a cat selfishly deserted to starve, not a horse cruelly beaten, and not a vivisectionist could be found on the face of the earth! Those who had learned to be just to the lower animals would not fail in their duties to man, and in this millennium, prophesied in Isaiah xi: 9, slaughter-houses, transport cars, and cattle-ships would be empty, and the fields and meadows would be filled with labourers under the clear sky, tilling the ground to provide the food of man.

M. R. L. S.

Providence House, Chestnut Hill, Mass.