4. During the early 20th century it was predicted that all non-domesticated animal life would be made extinct. Instead, modern conservation efforts have sought to achieve precisely the opposite.
Perhaps unsurprising given the popularity of racialist theory at the turn of the 20th century, most notably the emergence of the concept of the “Übermensch”, in addition to the existing and historical use of animals for tasks such as carriage pulling or riding, several inhabitants of the early 1900s predicted that in the future animals would fall entirely under the dominion of humans as our servants. The earliest known example of this prediction stems from the December 1900 edition of Ladies Home Journal, in which a piece by author John Elfreth Watkins Jr. asserted all other wild animal life would become extinct in the near future. The exception to this annihilation would be those of use to humanity and thus domesticated, with Watkins claiming that there would be “no wild animals except in menageries”.
This train of thought continued at least until the above article, dated from the November 11, 1926, edition of the Galveston Daily News, in which an article was run entitled “To Find Some Use For Every Wild Animal”. Predicting that rather than merely existing as they had throughout the preceding millennia, “the day will come when the wild creatures of the earth will have to pay their way or become as extinct as many forms of animal life have in the dim distances of the past” and that “unless an animal can contribute something definite to human life – food to be eaten, clothes to be worn, labor to lighten the burden of man – then his doom is sealed and the last of his tribe will one day pass out of the picture”.