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•Rev. 9.6.07 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2007
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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2007
This Month In Humane History
BY MERRIT CLIFTON
EARLY STEPS OF THE HUMANE SOCIETIES |
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The Republican pack of contenders (R), prior to Tancredo's defection. Practically all cater to hunters, as do the Democrats. Worst of the lot: Romney, Edwards and Richardson. |
Humane History: How kow-towing to hunters started
As of this writing, in November 2007, leading Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Bill Richardson, Rudolph Giuliani, and John Edwards have each prominently pandered to hunters, as has Democratic contender Barack Obama. Romney in March and April 2007 postured as a hunter while having verifiably hunted only twice in his life. Richardson in July 2007 boasted of having shot an oryx at a "canned hunt" in Texas owned by media baron Ted Turner. Giuliani recanted strong criticisms of the gun industry and private possession of automatic weapons, issued when he was mayor of New York City.
Obama in April 2007 pronounced himself a "strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsment to have firearms.."
Edwards in October 2007 announced to an Iowa audience his support of a "Hunting and Fishing Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" that would give hunters vastly more access to federal land. "When national parks need to cull their game species because of overpopulation, I think they should look into having local hunters do the job," Edwards added, and declared that he also favors a federal program that would pay landowners to open their property to hunting.
As the 12.5 million hunters in the U.S. now constitute just 4.2% of the U.S. population, while the estimated 20.4 million illegal drug users constitute 8.3%, according to the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, we anxiously await Edwards' proposals to attract the support of pot-puffers, crackheads, speed freaks, and heroin addicts.
While pro-hunting politicians posture, in obsequious deference to the disproportionate economic and political clout of the hunting lobby, every form of hunting and fishing is in steep decline, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The total number of hunters is now falling at 1% per year, and is expected to fall even faster as the Baby Boom generation passes the age range in which hunters most avidly participate.
Despite the demographics, most U.S. humane societies remain remarkably reticent about criticizing hunting and hunters--which is part of why Romney, Richardson, Giuliani, Edwards, and Obama feel they can pander to hunters without significant political risk.
Humane movement veterans tend to believe this was always the case. Many remember that the late Cleveland Amory had to form the Fund for Animals in 1968 as a rump caucus within the Humane Society of the U.S., and six years later took it entirely separate, to shame HSUS into taking a firm position against hunting. The American Humane Association, the other major national pro-animal organization of that era, was even slower to forthrightly oppose sport hunting.
The Fund for Animals in 2005 was reabsorbed into HSUS, and HSUS is now strongly opposed to hunting, but much of the rest of the U.S. humane community prefers to downplay or sidestep taking any overt position against hunting, largely from fear of the possible political and economic consequences of annoying hunters.
Almost entirely forgotten is that a generation before Cleveland Amory forced HSUS to take a stand, not only the organized humane movement but much of the U.S. public was sufficiently opposed to hunting that for nearly 20 years no U.S. president was seen with a gun in his hand.
Dwight D. Eisenhower changed all that by openly shooting ducks--but he did not do it without criticism, and his vice president, Richard Nixon, apparently took note, avoiding any pretense to being a hunter throughout his long political career.
By 1960, when future First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy rode to foxhounds and wore fur, humane opposition to hunting had considerably diminished, sapped by hunter-led takeovers of several leading pro-animal organizations--most notably, Defenders of Wildlife, formed in 1947 to oppose leghold trapping. The initial corporate structure enabled hunters to join en masse in 1957, throw out the founders, and turn Defenders into a bulwark of conventional hunter/conservationism.
Hunters had not yet flexed their political muscle against the humane movement in December 1952, 55 years ago, just after Eisenhower was elected. The lead feature in The National Humane Review, the AHA membership magazine, was a denunciation of hunting entitled "Lust To Kill," by one Jonathan Fieldston. Fieldston pointed out that of the 20 million hunters then active, among a U.S. population of half the present size, only 13 million were licensed.
"The reasons that hunting as a sport should be abolished from our civilization are two," Fieldston wrote. One reason, he explained, is that "Hunters are inflicting unspeakable agonies upon living creatures--unnecessarily." The other was that, "Because this cruelty is propagandized as a sport, it distorts moral judgement, and corrupts the public conscience."
Fieldston's commentary was no fluke, and not at odds with public opinon, either. Fifteen years earlier, in December 1937, The National Humane Review reported about a case in which St. Louis resident Lloyd E. Holderfield shot a red-tailed hawk, and took the remains to the offices of the St. Louis Star-Times to pose for a photograph.
Then as now, many newspapers routinely published photos of local hunters with their trophies--but not the Star-Times. The Star-Times published a multi-paragraph editorial denunciation of the shooting.
From inception in 1877, the American Humane Association opposed hunting and the practice of parents giving boys toy guns to play with. The child protection division of the AHA pointed out in 1937 that one school for the blind then housed more than 300 children who had been blinded by pellet gun accidents, an injury toll of a magnitude almost incomprehensible today.
Throughout World War II, the National Humane Review and AHA on the one hand supported the war effort, against opponents whose inhumane behavior toward fellow humans was already infamous, and continued to warn at every opportunity against treating killing of either animals or humans as play.
The editors accurately anticipated, unfortunately, that one consequence of the war training a generation of men to use firearms and kill without hesitation might be a post-war proliferation of hunters, and of politicians catering to hunters' interests.
This Month In Humane History is a www.AnimalPeopleNews.org online feature produced to promote awareness and appreciation that some people have always cared enough about animals to act on their behalf.