Overview
John Howard Moore (December 4, 1862 – June 17, 1916) was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator, and social reformer. He wrote on animal ethics, ethical vegetarianism, humane education, socialism, temperance, and evolutionary biology. In The Universal Kinship (1906), Moore set out a secular ethic that applied the Golden Rule to all sentient beings and used Darwinian ideas of evolutionary continuity between humans and other animals. Born near Rockville, Indiana, Moore spent much of his youth in Linden, Missouri, and later lived in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. He studied at Oskaloosa College, Drake University, and the University of Chicago, where he earned an A.B. in zoology in 1896. During his studies he rejected Christianity, adopted vegetarianism, became a socialist, helped found the university's Vegetarian Eating Club, and won a national oratorical competition on prohibition.
He later taught at Crane Technical High School and other schools in Chicago, while publishing books, articles, essays, and pamphlets. Moore was associated with the Chicago Vegetarian Society and the British Humanitarian League. His publications included Why I Am a Vegetarian (1895), Better-World Philosophy (1899), The Universal Kinship (1906), The New Ethics (1907), Ethics and Education (1912), The Law of Biogenesis (1914), and Savage Survivals (1916). His work was read by members of the humanitarian, socialist, and animal protection movements, including Henry S. Salt, Clarence Darrow, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Eugene V. Debs. After years of illness, chronic pain, and depression, Moore died by suicide in Jackson Park, Chicago, in 1916.
Early life and education
John Howard Moore was born on December 4, 1862, near Rockville, Indiana. He was the eldest of the six children of William A. Moore and Mary Moore (). He had three brothers and two sisters. When Moore was six months old, his family moved to Linden, Missouri. Over the next 30 years, the family moved between Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Moore was raised in a Christian household. According to Donna L. Davey, his childhood religious teaching presented humans as having dominion over the Earth and other animals. Moore later wrote that, while growing up on a farm, he hunted and accepted the view that animals existed for human purposes. He later attended Drake University. Davey writes that Moore's study of science introduced him to Darwin's theory of evolution, leading him to reject Christianity and to argue for an ethic that did not treat animals as valuable only for their use to humans.
Moore also studied law under C. H. Hawkins in Cawker City, Kansas.
Early career
In 1884, Moore was appointed as an examiner for the Board of Teachers in Mitchell County, Kansas. In 1886, he ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives and finished last out of five candidates. In the summer of 1890, he studied voice culture in singing and speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. From 1890 to 1893, Moore lectured in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. In 1890, Moore published his first pamphlet, A Race of Somnambulists. Davey describes it as a criticism of the treatment of animals for food, sport, and fashion. In the pamphlet, Moore attacked Thanksgiving as a day of gluttony and killing, and argued that the sympathy that had been applied to slavery and women's rights should also be applied to animals.
University of Chicago studies and activities
In 1894, Moore entered the University of Chicago with advanced academic standing. While studying there, he became a socialist and served as vice president of the university's Prohibition Club. serving as president in 1895 and as purveyor the following year. A newspaper profile described Moore as a supporter of women's suffrage.
Chicago Vegetarian Society
Moore was a member of the Chicago Vegetarian Society and the British Humanitarian League. Bernard Unti writes that he modeled the Chicago society on the League. In reply to Gronlund's critique, Moore asserted that for a carnivore, "every meal is a murder" and argued that explaining why one is "not a vegetarian" is an attempt to justify predation. In 1898, Moore was given a full-page column in the Society's journal, the Chicago Vegetarian.
Teaching career
, Chicago; Moore is seated at center, 1914 After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1896, Moore accepted the chair of sociology at Wisconsin State University, lecturing on social progress, before continuing to teach at the university. In 1908, Moore taught courses on elementary zoology, physiographic ecology, and the evolution of domestic animals at the University of Chicago for three quarters. The board later dropped the proposal.
Better-World Philosophy
In 1899, Moore published his first book, Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis. Davey summarizes the book as an argument that sentience is the basis of ethical consideration and that non-human animals should be included within moral concern. The book also discusses eugenics, procreation, childhood moral education, and the relation between self-love and concern for others.
Fermented Beverages
In 1900, Moore published Fermented Beverages: Their Effects on Mankind. The book examined the physiological, psychological, and social effects of alcohol, discussed both harms and possible benefits, and questioned some strict prohibitionist arguments.
The Universal Kinship
, 1906 Moore published The Universal Kinship in 1906. Moore argued that Darwinian evolution undermined strict human-animal separation and required humans to extend the Golden Rule to all sentient beings. Eugene V. Debs, Mona Caird, Richard F. Outcault, and Ella Wheeler Willcox. It also received favorable mentions in British publications, including The Humanitarian, Reynold's Newspaper, and the Manchester News.
The New Ethics
In 1907, Moore published The New Ethics. Davey describes the book as an extension of his argument that Darwinian evolution required a wider ethics and a rejection of anthropocentrism.
Ethics textbooks
In 1912, Moore published Ethics and Education, a book for teachers responding to the new Illinois requirement to teach morals in public schools. It discussed physical, vocational, intellectual, and ethical aspects of education and argued that moral instruction should include concern for all sentient beings. Before publication, Moore drew controversy after circulating extracts that criticized the courts and marriage. In an interview, he defended the book and invited the Board of Education to investigate him. In the same year, he published High-School Ethics: Book One, intended as the first part of a four-year high school ethics course. It covered school conduct, care for pets, women's rights, birds, animal products such as sealskin and ivory, and habits. Moore also published The Ethics of School Life, a pamphlet based on a lesson he gave to students at Crane Technical High School.
The Law of Biogenesis
In 1914, Moore published The Law of Biogenesis: Being Two Lessons on the Origin of Human Nature, a collection of 32 discourses first developed as lectures for Crane Technical High School. The book includes an introduction by Mary Marcy, a radical socialist writer and editor of the International Socialist Review. A reviewer for Life, in 1915, described the book as authoritative and straightforward.
Savage Survivals
Moore published Savage Survivals in 1916. The book compiled 63 lectures delivered at Crane Technical High School and was divided into five sections on domesticated animals, human ancestry, and the survival of traits that Moore regarded as primitive within modern society. It contained 27 illustrations by Roy Olson and L. F. Simmons. F. Stuart Chapin's 1917 review in the American Journal of Sociology praised the book as a presentation of organic and social evolution for children and as a treatise on prehistoric human evolution, but stated that some of its anthropology was outdated.
Other works
Moore wrote articles and pamphlets for humane organizations and journals, including the Humanitarian League, Millennium Guild, Massachusetts SPCA, American Anti-Vivisection Society, American Humane Association, and the Order of the Golden Age. His subjects included vegetarianism, animal rights, human-animal relations, temperance, and humane education. In 1908, he criticized Theodore Roosevelt and his hunting expedition to Africa in an article. The article provoked discussion.
Advocacy and public speaking
Moore gave public speeches throughout his career as a teacher and lecturer. His speeches were often printed and distributed as pamphlets or handed out for free. Davey writes that he spoke on vegetarianism, fur, socialist candidates, animal rights, ethics, women's suffrage, hunting, war, and alcohol. On October 25, 1908, Moore addressed the Young People's Socialist League in support of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Moore argued that Debs would imprison wealthy people rather than the usual prisoners, and that young people and university students were receptive to socialist teaching. In 1913, Moore was listed as a member of the Boston branch. In 1913, Moore spoke at the International Anti-vivisection and Animal Protection Congress in Washington, D.C.
He argued that vivisection and meat consumption arose from anthropocentrism and that Darwin's On the Origin of Species had weakened claims of human superiority or uniqueness.
Death
, 1916 's eulogy In the early morning of June 17, 1916, at the age of 53, Moore died after shooting himself in the head with a revolver on Wooded Island in Jackson Park, Chicago. In a note found on his body by a police officer, A funeral service was held at Oakwood Chapel in Chicago on June 19. The eulogy was later published in The Athena. Moore's body was returned to his former home near Cawker City, where a funeral service was held at Plainview Church. He was buried alongside his father in Excelsior Cemetery, Mitchell County, Kansas.
Marriage
Moore married Louise Jesse "Jennie" Darrow on February 21, 1899, in Racine, Wisconsin. Both Moore and his wife admired the character Tess from Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Moore used "Tess" as a pet name for his wife. He was also an enthusiast of the works of Alexandre Dumas, which he first encountered at the Cawker City library.
Henry S. Salt
Moore first came to the attention of Henry S. Salt, co-founder of the Humanitarian League and author of Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, when he published Better-World Philosophy in 1899. Salt reviewed the book and began a correspondence with Moore that became a close friendship. Salt dedicated his 1923 book The Story of My Cousins to Moore and, in his 1930 autobiography Company I Have Kept, wrote about their friendship despite the fact that they never met in person. Salt later described Moore's The Universal Kinship as the "best ever written in the humanitarian cause." A selection of Moore's letters to Salt was included in the appendix of the 1992 edition, edited by Charles R. Magel.
May Walden Kerr
Moore was a close friend of May Walden Kerr, the wife of Charles H. Kerr, who published many of Moore's books. After the Kerrs divorced in 1904, Moore and Walden continued corresponding, and Moore and his wife sometimes vacationed with Walden and her daughter.
Lightning strike
In 1885, Moore was struck by lightning, receiving burns to his arm and chest and temporarily losing his sight and speech. He recovered after six days of bed rest.
Wilderness preservation
Moore advocated wilderness preservation. In 1914, he purchased of land in Alabama, near Mobile Bay. In a letter written on his birthday that year, he described the land as containing many kinds of trees. Moore wanted the property to serve as a wildlife sanctuary and a place for public enjoyment, and stated in his will that the land should be preserved as it was. He described it as remote, inhabited by many animals, and containing about a mile of water from a river and brook.
Universal Kinship
Moore's doctrine of Universal Kinship was a secular Darwinian philosophy based on the evolutionary relationship of sentient beings. Moore argued that "moral provincialism" prevented humans from extending moral consideration to animals. Kerry S. Walters and Lisa Portmess write that Moore compared prejudice against animals with prejudice based on race and gender, and argued that animals, as sentient and conscious beings, had claims to fair treatment and to reduced suffering. Moore maintained that animals should be treated as ends-in-themselves, not merely as means for food or clothing. Davey connects Moore's despair over this issue with his suicide. Moore applied the Golden Rule to all sentient beings. He argued that human moral development required people to treat animals with kindness and not as commodities.
Zoöcentricism
Moore used the term zoöcentricism for an ethical view centered on sentient beings. On this basis, he contended that without sentience there would be no ethics.
Ethical vegetarianism
Moore argued that vegetarianism followed from ethical concern for sentient beings. In Why I Am a Vegetarian, he connected vegetarianism with compassion, animal suffering, and Darwinian claims about the kinship of humans and other animals. He argued that Darwin's work widened the scope of ethics by weakening the assumption that humans were separate from other animals.
Socialism
Moore presented socialism as a product of human evolution toward cooperation. In Better-World Philosophy, he compared human society with early unicellular organisms forming colonies and argued that society was moving from individualism toward a more organized social organism. He described socialism as a way to reduce hereditary disadvantages and to make the strong support the weak.
Reactions to Moore's death
obituary, 1916 When reporting Moore's suicide, the Chicago Tribune called him a misanthrope. Relatives and friends, including his brothers-in-law Clarence and Everett Darrow, described him as kind, committed to universal justice, and devoted to education. Felix Ortt wrote about Moore's death in the Dutch animal protection magazine Androcles, describing Moore's work for humanitarian and vegetarian causes, Ortt's translation of Moore's writings, and their correspondence. Louis S. Vineburg, who heard Moore speak at a Young People's Socialist League lecture in early 1910, later published a personal recollection in the International Socialist Review. After Moore's death, London wrote at the head of a printed copy of Darrow's eulogy: "Disappointment like what made Wayland (Appeal to Reason) kill himself and many like me resign."
Reception of Moore's work
Chien-hui Li writes that Moore's views were more readily received in Britain than in the United States because of support from the Humanitarian League, George Bell & Sons, and The Animals' Friend. Jarvis argues that the American humanitarian movement did not become established in the same way, and that, after Ernest Crosby's death in 1907, Moore represented much of what remained of it in the United States. Jarvis also writes that World War I ended the wider humanitarian movement. Unti writes that Moore's Darwinian arguments were respected by contemporaries but did not become central to animal protection after his death, and that no major figure or organization continued his specific approach.
Posthumous publications and translations
In 1915, the International Socialist Review began excerpting Moore's works and continued to do so for three years. After his death, radical publications, including those of the Industrial Workers of the World, also printed excerpts, especially from Savage Survivals. The Law of Biogenesis was translated into Slovak; and four books were translated into Japanese by anarchist and socialist translators, including Ōsugi Sakae, Sakai Toshihiko, Hitoshi Yamakawa, and Yamakawa Kikue.
Ethical vegetarianism and animal rights
Moore received little scholarly attention until The Universal Kinship was republished in 1992 by Charles R. Magel. Historian Rod Preece argues that Moore's ethical vegetarian advocacy was ahead of its time, while also stating that there is no evidence that it directly affected the American intelligentsia. Preece also identifies Moore, Thomas Hardy, and Henry S. Salt as pre-World War I writers who connected Darwinian evolution with animal ethics. Moore's ethical approach has been compared to Albert Schweitzer and Peter Singer; Walters and Portmess write that Moore anticipated Singer's analysis of speciesism. Bernard Unti states that The Universal Kinship may make Moore the first American animal rights thinker. Animal rights activist Henry Spira cited Moore as an example of a leftist who was willing to advocate animal rights.
Simon Brooman and Debbie Legge write that Moore anticipated later criticism of human-centered domination of animals and a philosophy based on the "unity and consanguinity" of living organisms. Environmental historian Roderick Nash argues that Moore and Edward Payson Evans deserve more attention as early philosophers in the United States who moved beyond anthropocentrism. Selections of Moore's works were included in Jon Wynne-Tyson's 1985 book, The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of Humane Thought. Mark Gold cites Moore and Henry S. Salt as the two main inspirations for his 1995 book, Animal Rights: Extending the Circle of Compassion.
Scientific racism
Moore's last published book, Savage Survivals, has been criticized as an example of scientific racism by the prehistoric archaeologist Robin Dennell. Mark Pittenger argues that Moore's racism was influenced by Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Sociology and that similar views were held by contemporary American socialists. Gary K. Jarvis describes Moore as a critic of social Darwinism, writing: "Moore argued that social Darwinists derived their beliefs from the worst examples that evolution offered, not the best."
Perceptions of misanthropy
Bernard Unti argues that the Chicago Tribune's description of Moore as a misanthrope shaped later accounts that placed him within American environmental ethics. Unti states that such interpretations often rely on limited readings that overlook Moore's criticism of human selfishness, his political commitments, and his wider body of work. According to Unti, Moore's views were not based on hatred of humanity, but on opposition to domination among humans and over animals. Unti points to Moore's socialism, his writing on social justice, and the role of Charles H. Kerr, a socialist publisher and ethical vegetarian, in publishing much of Moore's work. Jarvis similarly argues that Moore's criticism of anthropocentrism and Western civilization was misread as misanthropy.
Articles, chapters, and essays
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Books and pamphlets
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See also
* List of animal rights advocates * History of animal rights * History of vegetarianism * Progressive Era * *
External links
* * * * Works by or about J. Howard Moore at HathiTrust * J. Howard Moore at The Animal Rights Library * J. Howard Moore at the Henry S. Salt Society * Letters to and from J. Howard Moore at the Clarence Darrow Digital Collection * Photograph of J. Howard Moore and Jennie Darrow Moore at the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives * Archives of the Chicago Vegetarian at Southern Adventist University