Michael Gebert: Basically, your book says that vegetarianism not only goes back to the 18th century, but that it parallels a lot of other reform movements of the time—the Great Awakening, abolition, temperance, the first stirrings of feminism. How did vegetarianism fit into that whole picture?
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Adam D. Shprintzen: Vegetarianism starts out as this small religious reform group that imports itself to the United States from England, the Bible Christian Church. They come to the U.S. with this idea that religion can actually be understood through science. Which is sort of a remarkable idea through our modern eyes, but wasn’t so strange at the time. Part of their ideology was the notion that vegetarianism—they didn’t use that term at the time—but that abstaining from meat can sit at the center of a total reform ideology. So meat is one way that the body kind of becomes overheated and overexcited and apt to make people act in improper ways. Whether it be violence, or holding slaves, or oppressing women.
That’s a great line; I hadn’t thought of that but you’re exactly right. The Civil War becomes the splitting point for vegetarianism in the 19th century. The communal aspect starts to break down, by 1862 people are starting to be less interested in that movement because they’re more concerned about other things like the war and abolition.
The momentum from the exposition starts sort of this tidal wave of vegetarian organizations and establishments popping up within the city. The first vegetarian establishment in the city opens up near the fairgrounds, on 63rd Street in Englewood, to house people at the fair, because there were vegetarians coming to the fair from around the world who needed a place where they knew that they could get a meal they could trust.
That’s a great question, and it’s one that I’m starting to look at now—what happened to vegetarianism in the intervening years. My book ends in 1921, with the end of the Vegetarian Society of America. Some of the vegetarian businesses did manage to keep on; the one that comes to mind is Berhalter’s, which as far as I can trace did survive up until around 1930.
