Taking by violence or force or threat of violence or force....

"....Even now, it seemed to her, people had what they had from foundations built by the sweat of horses. Their hoofbeats should echo in human hearts. But what statues had been placed in their honor? What horse-named streets and counties? What volumes of poetry...?"

pages 77-78, Reprisal, by Mitchell Smith

I ran across the above passage in a novel I was reading the other day and it made me think about all the effort and work that has been taken from the other animals by us human animals over the thousands of years this extorting has been going on. Oxen, donkeys, mules, dogs, horses, elephants...too many kinds of animal people to think of have been made to do work for human animals. And the slavery continues even now. (Here I am deliberately avoiding consideration of the killing or the infliction of suffering that we have visited on our sister and brother animals.)

Think of all the work, the plowing, the pulling of wagons, the pulling of sleds, the riding, the grinding of grain...and on and on for thousands and thousands of years.

If a reckoning were to occur, a balancing, a returning of what was wrongfully taken did happen, I wonder how many humans and for how long would they have to work to give back to all those many millions or billions of donkey people and mule people and dog people and the others...part what had been taken from them?

The time taken from their lives could not be returned but reciprocal time from human lives could be offered in expatiation. The benefits of that work could be given to those who actually performed the tasks (or to their relatives)...and taken from the criminals who stole those benefits. What would be left for humans? What would human animals have that they had actually earned or gained from their own effort?

The immensity of the wrong that has been done and is continuing eludes comprehension.