Unknown Barnum Elephant--1885

This male has an upturned left tusk. Is it "Fritz?" Or is "Fritz" the mounted specimen with straight tusks below?

I suggest that back in the 1900's an animal had "human rights" and somehow lost them, which has all the animal activist's whining and trying to get them reinstated. Remember this was back when an animal was actually guilty of an intended crime, over a century before "accidents" with no intent or fault(with the exception of a guilty as hell fence post) started occurring.

While I am not suggesting that "technically" they were judged by a jury of their peer's, that is unless Gyp, Babe, Columbia, Pilate, Chief, Queen, Juno, Coco, Bessie, Mary or Ruth passed judgment, we have to suppose that the folks who were members of the jury were "from all socioeconomic classes of the general population", considering the policemen, show owners, trainers, and grooms. A jury of your peers means anyone in your peer group. Back when this was created it meant that if you were a farmer your jury would be filled with farmers. If you were a peasant, your jury would be full of peasants. Your peers can also mean people of your skin color, such as: An African American defendant means his peers are fellow African Americans, etc..

Today, it is a jury of your fellow citizens. Unless the names listed above were on that jury, it may seem like "Fritz" got railroaded unless you consider that he was a "performing elephant" and he was found guilty by other "performers" as well as management of said performance. In that case he got a fair trial and was found guilty of murder, a menace to society and was given the death penalty(let's hope the death penalty was legal in France at that time. If not, we are in another pickle. and possibly he should have been extradited to stand trial in the United States. The crime occurred in France, but was he not an American citizen? Oh shit, was he maybe an Indian citizen? Maybe a Siamese citizen? Possibly a Burmese citizen? Was he in the circus of his own free will, and got an American citizenship? If he was a citizen of India, Siam, or Burma did he have "free will" if governed by a monarchy? While it may look like "Fritz" had human rights and was found guilty by a jury of his peers, I think there are way too many "if's and buts" to come to a solid conclusion. But I suggest he had more human rights in the 1900's then he would have had today. Today they would have only made excuses for him and blamed everything from the wall to the moat to his social upbringing.

Understand now why the animal rights activist's suddenly went, "whoops, asking for human right's isn't going to work. The world is not as ignorant as we once assumed and they are not the lemmings we thought they were, who are going to blindly follow each other off the cliff, like they did when they banned tobacco(cell phones are reported to possibly cause cancer. Not many folk's on that bandwagon. You gotta wonder why?) greasing the skids for a bull hook ban, eventually elephant ban, eventually travel of circus animals ban, eventually this, eventually that. Better we demand "non-human animal rights. Yeah, that will work." Welcome to none compromising Private Idaho, the world of the bleeding, whining liberal. If the first mix you whip up and bake doesn't taste like chocolate cake, whip up another mix and bake it. Whip up enough different mixes and bake them, law of averages say's eventually one will taste like chocolate cake.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)