Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.
As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he was always
called, though the name under which he
had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was
so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was
quite ready to lose an hour’s sleep in order to hear
what he had to say.
At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised
platform, Major was already ensconced on his
bed of straw, under a lantern which hung from
a beam. He was twelve years old and had lately
grown rather stout, but he was still a majesticlooking
pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance
in spite of the fact that his tushes had never
been cut. Before long the other animals began
to arrive and make themselves comfortable after
their different fashions. First came the three dogs,
Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher, and then the pigs,
who settled down in the straw immediately in
front of the platform. The hens perched themselves
on the window-sills, the pigeons fluttered
up to the rafters, the sheep and cows lay down behind
the pigs and began to chew the cud. The two
cart-horses, Boxer and Clover, came in together,
walking very slowly and setting down their vast
hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be
some small animal concealed in the straw. Clover
was a stout motherly mare approaching middle
life, who had never quite got her figure back after
her fourth foal. Boxer was an enormous beast,
nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any
two ordinary horses put together. A white stripe
down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance,
and in fact he was not of first-rate intelligence,
but he was universally respected for his
steadiness of character and tremendous powers
of work. After the horses came Muriel, the white
goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was
the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered.
He seldom talked, and when he did, it was
usually to make some cynical remark — for instance,
he would say that God had given him a
tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner
have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the
animals on the farm he never laughed. If asked
why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh
at. Nevertheless, without openly admitting it, he
was devoted to Boxer; the two of them usually
spent their Sundays together in the small paddock
beyond the orchard, grazing side by side
and never speaking.
The two horses had just lain down when a
brood of ducklings, which had lost their mother,
filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering
from side to side to find some place where they
would not be trodden on. Clover made a sort of
wall round them with her great foreleg, and the
ducklings nestled down inside it and promptly
fell asleep. At the last moment Mollie, the foolish,
pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones’s trap,
came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of
sugar. She took a place near the front and began
flirting her white mane, hoping to draw attention
to the red ribbons it was plaited with. Last of all
came the cat, who looked round, as usual, for
the warmest place, and finally squeezed herself
in between Boxer and Clover; there she purred
contentedly throughout Major’s speech without
listening to a word of what he was saying.
All the animals were now present except Moses,
the tame raven, who slept on a perch behind
the back door. When Major saw that they had all
made themselves comfortable and were waiting
attentively, he cleared his throat and began:
‘Comrades, you have heard already about
the strange dream that I had last night. But I will
come to the dream later. I have something else to
say first. I do not think, comrades, that I shall be
with you for many months longer, and before I
die, I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom
as I have acquired. I have had a long life, I
have had much time for thought as I lay alone
in my stall, and I think I may say that I understand
the nature of life on this earth as well as any
animal now living. It is about this that I wish to
speak to you.
‘Now, comrades, what is the nature of this
life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable,
laborious, and short. We are born, we are given
just so much food as will keep the breath in our
bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are
forced to work to the last atom of our strength;
and the very instant that our usefulness has come
to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty.
No animal in England knows the meaning
of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No
animal in England is free. The life of an animal is
misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
‘But is this simply part of the order of nature?
Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot
afford a decent life to those who dwell upon
it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil
of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable
of affording food in abundance to an enormously
greater number of animals than now in
habit it. This single farm of ours would support a
dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep —
and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity
that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why
then do we continue in this miserable condition?
Because nearly the whole of the produce of our
labour is stolen from us by human beings. There,
comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is
summed up in a single word — Man. Man is the
only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the
scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork
is abolished for ever.
‘Man is the only creature that consumes without
producing. He does not give milk, he does
not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he
cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he
is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work,
he gives back to them the bare minimum that
will prevent them from starving, and the rest he
keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our
dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us
that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that
I see before me, how many thousands of gallons
of milk have you given during this last year? And
what has happened to that milk which should
have been breeding up sturdy calves?