[1] To the discriminating and energetic work of Frederic P. Bellamy, Esq., the counsel of the society, and of Mrs. William Vanamee, the secretary, the success of this society is particularly indebted. In the public journals, on many occasions, they have definitely and comprehensively outlined the aims of the organization, and in this respect there has been no excuse whatever for any misunderstanding or misstatement.
In its early efforts to secure investigation an attempt was made by this society to secure the co-operation of members of the medical profession, and in union with a large number of persons belonging to various professions over seven hundred physicians in the State of New York signed a petition in 1907-08 in favour of a measure that would have tended to elicit the facts. As soon as the Medical Society of the State of New York became aware of this endorsement, it sent out to each of these physicians a request that he would withdraw his name. What Dr. William James called "the power of club influence to quell independence of mind" could hardly have been more significantly exercised, yet less than forty signers were willing to accede to such demand. Upon the files of the society are now the signatures of over six hundred physicians in the State who have favoured legislation restricting the practice of vivisection to competent men, and providing against cruelty and abuse.
In the fall of 1911 the Society circulated a petition throughout the
State. It asked the Legislature of the State of New York to provide—
"an immediate and impartial investigation by a non-partisan commission into the practice of animal experimentation as conducted in this State. In view of the inherent possibility of cruelty in the practice, and the obvious inadequacy of the existing laws to prevent such cruelty, we deem the existing status of vivisection in this State to be a menace to the community, which calls for legislative investigation."
To this petition more than twelve thousand signatures were obtained.
Again the influence of the laboratory was effective in preventing the
Legislature from granting the investigation desired.
Some of the most scholarly editorials which have appeared in the newspaper press in favour of inquiry have been those of Hon. St. Clair McKelway, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents of the State of New York and editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the leading evening newspaper in the United States. Referring to one of the Bills introduced by the Society for the Prevention of Abuse in Animal Experimentation, Dr. McKelway said:
"The Bill ought to be passed. It would secure an unpaid representative Commission to investigate animal vivisection, protecting it from abuses, and allowing it to be properly pursued within safeguards of necessity and mercy…. The regulation of vivisection is not the abolition of it, but the civilization of it. Such of the medical profession as are a Trade Union on a large scale, as afraid of one another as they are deaf to the voices of humanity and to public opinion, should be forced by the State to courses that should long ago have been volunteered by themselves. The beginning of the end of licensed cruelty has come. The struggle may still take time, but the time will be well spent and the result is as certain as the triumph of every other benign movement for the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men and in the laws of the State."
Of another bill introduced by this society, Chancellor McKelway wrote:
"The Society for the Prevention of Abuse in Animal Experimentation necessarily has an awkwardly long name; necessarily, to state just what the Society is, and to show just what it is not. It is not to prevent animal experimentation, but only to prevent the abuse of it. It is not an antivivisection body, ut it is a body to control the work of vivisection within the confines of actual necessity, and to bring the work under accountability to law as affected by a relation to reason, to humanity, and to the mercy which is mightiest in the mighty, and which becomes a State more than its sovereignty, and a monarch more than his crown.
"The Legislature again has before it a Bill to bring animal experimentation, or the infliction of pain on animals, in the interest of the treatment of human beings, within law and under responsibility to law. Not for the first time is this Bill brought. It will be brought again and again until the Bill becomes law. The instinct of mercy and justice backs this measure and annually augments its supporters. That instinct will not become extinct until God abdicates or creation reverts to chaos. The movement is on the gaining hand. Doubt of its eventual and nearing success is unthinkable, for in its favour are all the forces that maintain and advance justice and mercy in the hearts of men and in the action of States.