What life was like for animals in America before people learned to love pets | News [Video]

(CNN) — More than 100 years before Morrissey declared that “meat is murder,” before PETA supporters disrupted runway shows featuring leather fashions, before documentaries like “Food, Inc.” galvanized viewers to reconsider their relationship to animal products, there was Henry Bergh, shouting about animal rights on street corners to anyone who would listen.

In 1866, Bergh, who founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), would regularly station himself on a New York street, waiting for a carriage driver to lash their horse. When he witnessed abuse, he often arrested the perpetrator himself and launched into a polemic against animal cruelty. If his theatrics didn’t move the people he arrested, they did attract a good deal of media attention — and set the standard for the punishment convicted animal abusers can face today.

Bergh was a more militant crusader of animal welfare, but his and his fellow advocates’ work revolutionized the way we think about animals and coexist with …