In New York, Conscientious People Are Outraged at the Cruel Treatment of Horses, an Important Part of the City's Tourist and Entertainment Industry

Incidentally, I am sure this is a common problem for all big cities where horse labour is exploited for amusement: the wretched animals work from morning till night, have no chance to rest, are underfed and, good Lord, often go without even the amount of water needed to live.

It has long been said that owners and cabmen deliberately underfeed their horses so that there is less dung in the city, but evidently the torment does not stop at food, and now it turns out that they are not given water either. For some reason it is considered normal that an animal must toil in any weather, in heat, cold or wind. It was man who invented for himself the working day and labour legislation, whereas the beast has no rights: go and haul, on pain of a beating. There is no such natural phenomenon as a horse that ploughs all day and then comes home from work at night to rest. In nature the life of an animal, however strong, is arranged quite differently.

How is it possible that driven, exhausted animals, given no respite, drop dead in the streets of a metropolis? I shall not share yesterday's shocking video of a New York cabman beating a horse until it simply falls on its side. And yet, for all that modern people are so attentive, so easily offended on every conceivable ground, so given to staging global campaigns of public shaming, this shameful and inhuman use of animals before the eyes of millions of passers-by still, for some reason, goes unpunished.

Mayakovsky came to mind:

“A horse has fallen!”
“The horse has fallen!”
Kuznetsky was laughing.
Only I
did not mingle my voice with the howling at it.
I went up
and I see
the horse's eyes...
The street had overturned,
flows along in its own way...
I went up and I see:
drop after huge drop
rolls down the muzzle,
hides in the coat...
And some common
animal anguish
splashed out of me
and spread out in a rustle.
“Horse, don't.
Horse, listen:
why do you think you are any worse than they?
Child,
we are all a little bit horses,
each one of us is a horse in his own way.”