Friends and Helpers

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
1899
The object of this book is to teach children to treat all living creatures with considerate kindness and to appreciate the services of man's helpers in the animal world.
In many homes this teaching is entirely neglected, and it is left for the school-teacher to arouse interest in the animals dependent upon us, and to encourage pity and compassion for their suffering.
Sir Arthur Helps says: The great advancement of the world, throughout all ages, is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the decrease of cruelty.
Cruelty in any form is a species of savagery. Civilization can be brought about only by education. The savage does not know that he is a savage. The child does not realize that he is cruel, until he is shown the ways in which the lower animals suffer and are made miserable.
The thoughtless child makes the selfish man or woman, and selfishness lies at the root of crime.
Evil is wrought by want of thought As well as want of heart.
Children have tender hearts and quick sensibilities, but they sometimes lack imagination and sympathy through their ignorance of actual conditions. They are easily influenced by one whom they love and respect, and the teacher's power to make the world better by pointing out the great duty of humanity should find more scope than it has done in our educational systems.
The humane movement is a broad one, reaching from humane treatment of animals on the one hand to peace with all nations on the other. It implies a step beyond animal's rights. It implies character building. Society first said that needless suffering should be prevented; society now says that children must not be permitted to cause pain because of the effect on the children themselves.
Mr. Frank M. Chapman has kindly written for the book the chapters on Our Friends the Birds, Feathered Travelers, When the Birds Return, Birds' Homes, and The Robin.