If you missed part one and part two of this story, check them out first!

By June of 1904, the Henry Bergh Humane Society had begun to shift their focus away from solely calling out the incompetencies of the A.S.P.C.A. and toward developing an agenda for work. They alternated between mudslinging at the A.S.P.C.A. itself and it’s President, John P. Haines, and saying that they simply wanted to work alongside the A.S.P.C.A. since the area that the A.S.P.C.A. covered was too large for the organization to fulfill it’s duties.

Meanwhile, John P. Haines defended the A.S.P.C.A.’s right to be the sole provider of services, saying “More than once it has fallen to our lot to defend the cause of animal protection not against it’s enemies, but against false or too officious friends. More times than a few it has been our painful duty to expose the cheap clap-trap of pretenders seeking to gain noteriety as champions of humanity while they neither knew nor cared one straw for the cause they professed to serve.”

While the article below goes on to specify an example surrounding carriage horse owners in Westchester, a town just outside of the city, the subtext here is that it’s the “pigeon shooters” who are organizing the new society due to their dislike of the new anti-cruelty laws that surrounded hunting and pigeon shoots.

The ultimate goal of the Henry Bergh Society was to obtain the same powers of the A.S.P.C.A. to enforce cruelty laws in New York City. However, since the A.S.P.C.A. was in a legal position to be the sole provider of services, The Henry Bergh Society set upon an agenda to raise funds, establish some credibility and work “in spite of the old society.”

Their agenda items included “the most urgent feature” of setting up drinking fountains for horses. Drinking fountains for horses have an interesting history in and of themselves within the humane movement; they were commonly used as a vehicle for fundraising and some of them were quite elaborate. You could say they were the original Humane Society naming opportunity. (They also spread cholera, but that’s another story.)

The Society ran a contest across papers in New York City and Brooklyn advertising 200 dollars awarded for the best designed fountain, and said that it would be known as “The Henry Bergh Society Model” and secured by copyright. What an opportunity!

In addition to that, they laid an agenda for humane education, with the formation of children’s clubs and distribution of literature for said clubs. They also generally offered prizes for humane treatment to animals and “the rescuing of animals and birds from perilous situations.” It’s interesting to note the “and birds” here. One of their board members was Miss Virginia Pope, a well known bird doctor and the founder of a hospital in Manhattan for birds and other small pets.

At their third public meeting, John P. Uhle (The same gentleman who called the board of managers of the A.S.P.C.A. “dummies” at the first public meeting) gave a speech entitled “The Right of a Citizen to Arrest in Cases of Cruelty to Animals.”

With their agenda duly set for the upcoming months, funds began to come in and soon the Society was working in the capacities that they could. They certainly were savvy about getting each and every development into the press.

This paved the way for their primary goal; soon, a bill would be introduced to challenge the A.S.P.C.A.’s right to be the sole provider of services. Next week, I’ll cover what happened in court.

-Audrey