212 TjRAXSACTJOyS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



which must have been proportioricately large. The above gives a 

 total revenue of over $2,000,000,000, almost as much as our existing 

 national debt. Add to this the value of the animals, and we have in 

 1860 the enormous wealth of over $3,000,000,000. As an illustration 

 of the increase from 1850 to 1860, the yield of wool in the Pacific 

 States is most striking ; in 1850 it was but Y7,330 lbs., while in 1860 

 it was 4,000,000 lbs. This is one of many items that shows the 

 increasing importance of our live stock. From these dates it appears, 

 and they are official, that during the four years that the lords of 

 creation were engaged killing, burning and outraging these States, 

 the abused animals they were replenishing the fearful waste so far as 

 they were able by money value exceeding annually the entire national 

 debt. If we add to this the able and effective cooperation of our 

 Southern brethren in that desolating strife, the disparity of which I 

 spoke becomes the more apparent. Such, then, are creatures which 

 the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is striv- 

 ing to defend from their worst enemy. Notwithstanding the astonish- 

 ing apathy or reckless indifference to it, there is no subject affecting the 

 temporal well-being which deserves as serious consideration as the 

 mode of transporting cattle, destined for human food, to market. I 

 venture to declare that not one person out of five thousand pauses 

 to reflect on the probable health and general physical condition at the 

 time of the death of the animal he is about to dine on. Were he to do 

 so, or, what is still better, were he to journey to the "West as far as 

 Chicago, and after observing the cattle-yards there, and the manner 

 of treating the helpless brute consigned to the care of beings wearing 

 the form of men, but possessed by the instinct of devils, then take 

 "passage back to this city on a cattle train, and note the accumulating 

 tortures heaped upon these inoffending prisoners, even to the moment 

 when the unfeeling butcher murders what little of life remains in 

 these feverish, bruised, maddened animals — were he to do this, I say,, 

 I hazard little in affirming tliat his appetite for such kinds of animal 

 food would receive a shock not to be forgotten for the remainder of 

 his days. From the confines of Texas even to the wharves of the 

 metropolis are these creatures, the offspring, like ourselves, of Omni- 

 potent Power, doomed to endure on foot tlie ceaseless motion of the 

 train, deprived of food and water from four even to six days, as I 

 have been informed, exposed to the blazing rays of the summer's sun 

 and the freezing blasts of the winter's wind, with no spirit to care for 

 them but the soul of stinted avarice. And yet, gentlemen, the 



