Social Movements

The Animal Rights Movement traces back to the animal protection movement in Victorian England, which was initiated by aristocratic moral crusaders in response to the poor treatment of urban workhorses and stray dogs. Other early influences include: Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which drew attention to obscured slaughterhouse operations; Henry Salt's treatises on nonhuman animal rights; which drew from human abolitionist arguments for recognizing personhood of people considered to be property; and the Alcott House of New England, a community serving as a stop on the Underground Railroad and requiring its residents to eat a vegan diet