'On the Ethics of Caging Birds' 159 



with "all her heart" of caging wild birds, yet since "birds are caged 

 we must deal with circumstances as we find them." 



Undoubtedly Mrs. Miller is right in sounding a note of warning 

 for those who keep birds as pets, by impressing upon them the care 

 that should be given these utterly helpless little creatures. She 

 says, "Not one bird in a thousand is properly cared for," and she 

 might add to that the fact that thousands die every year of hunger, 

 thirst, lack of care, — forlorn prisoners, utterly unable to help them- 

 selves. These facts being true, the inconsistency of her position is 

 that she gives the slightest encouragement to the bird trafftc which 

 results in so much cruel suffering. She says that the discomfort they 

 suffer in the bird stores is so great that she feels it to be "a work 

 of charity to purchase them," yet she does not seem to see that every 

 purchaser is in a measure accountable for this suffering. If no one 

 would buy the birds, the traiSc would soon cease. 



But Mrs. Miller appears to be utterly hopeless as to the cure of 

 this evil, for she says: "If a bird-lover should worry and fret 

 himself to death he could not put an end to their captivity." It is 

 exceedingly fortunate that there have been, and still are, and prob- 

 ably always will be, a few men and women in the world who believe 

 with Emerson that "Nothing is impossible to the man who can will," 

 and who, in spite of the perplexing outlook, go forward, and bring 

 about the world's great reforms. 



The first step in repressing any wrong is for some individual to take 

 a firm stand, even in the face of the greatest discouragement. An- 

 other will follow, and then another, and by and by, when we have 

 hardly begun to believe anything has been done, a wave sweeps 

 over the country, and the wrong is righted. This, how^ever, can 

 never be brought about unless by individual action and the abiding 

 faith that every one counts. 



Mrs. Miller advances as her "strong argument" the great value 

 of caged birds as pets in the education of the child, and upsets her 

 own argument by saying: "Nothing is more important than the 

 training of our youth in humanity, and respect for the rights of 

 others." "Respect for the rights of others" means justice to all the 

 dumb or helpless creation. Even a child can reason out for himself 

 that a bird was created for freedom in the upper air, not for con- 

 finement in a cage, and that, even if it is bred in a cage, it is no 

 more just or right to put it to such purposes than it would be to 

 keep a dog chained all day, or a horse tied in a stable all his life, 

 or a man confined within the narrow limits of prison walls. 



Children have ample opportunity to be taught kindness, and, what 

 is even better than kindness, justice to the animal creation by having 



