S. P. C. A. v. Cocks

Place two game cocks on opposite sides of a knothole in a fence and place a bowl of food beside each. The birds will then starve to death, watching each other.

Unique among living creatures in their sinister and unending hatred, it would be cruel to deprive gamecocks of fighting, a thing they most love to do. No such abuse exists. In the U. S. there are not less than 75 million dollars worth of gamecocks and although for many years the sport has been illegal, cockfights are carried on in a secrecy that is rarely interrupted by constabulary or the agents of the A. S. P. C. A.*

Breeders in New York State, where there are about 3,000 gamecocks, were outdone last week, not because agents of A. S. P. C. A. had invaded pits and interrupted fights; not because the owners of fighting cocks were fined $10 each; not because the contesting birds were automatically condemned to death in accordance with a proviso in the state law. They claimed that it was useless and cruel to kill the gamecocks by placing them in chambers filled with carbon monoxide gas, making them unfit to eat; that since gamecocks are carefully fed, housed and usually young, it would be kinder to wring their necks and donate the carcasses to the poor.

*So generally accepted is this illegal sport that last week advertisements introducing to the U. S. the Austin, smart diminutive vehicle, using a caricature of a bantam cock for an emblem, carried a bright series of colored pictures showing five crises in the course of a cockfight (TIME, March 3).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.