A LETTER Ob' APPEAL 
TO HI SHOPS AND C'LE ltd YMEN. 
New York, January l, lsix;. 
Hi<jht lit ihvciuI mid /Aar Sir: 
I trust, to your indulgence while I ask your kind attention to the enclosed 
leaflet- nine: ming Vivisection—us also to the paragraphs I have marked in the 
periodicals sent you under separate cover. 
Our efforts and investigations are fraught with grave difficulties. Closed 
doors confront us—often doubly barred with falsehood and deceit—and only a 
heave student ventures to reveal what is done within. 
Our Society has on record the names of many distinguished medical author- 
ities who oppose Vivisection as practically valueless and unjustifiably cruel: and 
however useful some may deem it. as a means of fresh discovery, in the hands of 
skilled men, we strongly denounce the torture of living animals by, or in the 
presence of students and we beg your assistance as we str ive to create a public 
opinion which shall demand that well-known, cruel, oft-repeated experiments be 
positively abolished from the class room—and restricted within the narrow limits 
of dissection or painless experimentation. 
Many parents are unaware of the nature of these practices, and a word of 
counsel from the pulpit would be to many the first warning given of these soul- 
poisoning influences rapidly increasing among us, which mean death to all moral 
and spiritual gain. 
Without an awakened public sentiment our efforts for improved legislation 
must be vain; and as the matter now stands, while a man may be arrested for 
striking his horse, the most useless and horrifying tortures may be inflicted and 
prolonged, without interference, if the perpetrator claims they are done in the 
name of (so-called) Science. 
And it is not only against the horrors of Vivisection that we ask your longed- 
for assistance; for almost all our dealings with the brute creation are marked 
with great and needless cruelty. 
The ruthless slaughter of birds—estimated at five millions in one year— 
sacrificed for personal adornment—the ranch cattle doomed to a lingering death 
from hunger and cold (recently estimated at two millions in one winter) because 
denied food and shelter—our pitiless methods of slaughtering—as also our equally 
cruel methods of ocean and railway transportation—and countless other cruelties 
(which remain unobserved and without protest save 1p These loeaHtir** where act- ive Humane Societies have made their inlluence felt) need reproof, and testily to 
our inhuman treatment of these defenseless beings 
In England, on the fourth Sunday after Trinity, known there as ‘‘Kindness 
to Animals” Sunday, many sermons were preached upon man’s obligations to the 
brute creation. 
One Sunday recently (Oct.27) in Syracuse, in response to special request, in 
thirty different churches sermons were likewise preached in behalf of our 
humane cause. 
We greatly need your help to bring this subject before the conscience of the 
people, and we would respectfully urge that the clergy of your diocese (as in Illi- 
nois, by pastoral letter through the official organ), be requested to devote one 
Sunday (the fourth after Trinity, if agreeable,) each year, in pulpit and Sunday 
School, to such instruction and admonition: and that financial assistance (on that 
Sunday) be asked and given to the local or State Society for the protection of the 
brute creation. 
For every dollar at our disposal we need a thousand to enable us to increase 
our work, and to extend it to those districts where, as yet, neither humane law nor 
sentiment exists, and where the abuse is distressing to contemplate. The incred- 
ibly cruel cases constantly relieved by existing societies prove how greatly needed, 
in every community, is such protective influence, under whose merciful shadow 
justice and relief may be obtained. 
And for further enlightenment as to that which so closely concerns this 
speechless race, we would urge that a humane periodical should find a welcome in 
every household. ‘‘Our Dumb Animals” (subscription only fifty cents a year), 
edited at great expense, and with exceptional ability, is an anticipated guest in 
thousands of homes of culture and progress—published by G. T. Angell, 19 Milk 
Street, Boston, Massachusetts, who will gladly furnish “lesson papers,” leaflets, 
and any information desired. 
I have hesitated greatly to intrude upon you. I have done so in behalf 
of others. 
Believe me, with great respect. 
Sincerely yours, 
A Vice President of the American Humane Education Society, Uoston. and of the Anti-Vivisec- 
tion Society, Aurora. Illinois. 
For literature above referred to address postal card to Mr. Angell. For this Letter (30c per 100, 
post paid) and other A.-V Literature address the Illinois Anti-Vivisection Society. Aurora. 111.