The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-05-07
LAND FOR LARGE FAMILIES.
SUGGESTS THAT STATE PROVIDE
FOR HOUSELESS ONES.
The Corporation Attorney OF HOboken
Quotes History TO Prove Repusnance
TO Race Suicide and Urges "the
Peoples Safety Is the Highest Law"

Corporation Attorney James F. Min
turn of Hoboken transmitted an opinion
TO the Counoilmen of that city yesterday
defending the rights of landlords to dis
eliminate against tenants with large fami-
les. The opinion was sought by the Coun-
cilmen in response to a petition from the
Hoboken Longshoremen's Union for the
passage Of an ordinance prohibiting the
discrimination.
According to Mr. Minturn the question
suggested by the petition is "at this stage
of governmental progress one Of a socio-
logical and not legal order. 1t is not
modern one and not peculiar to this age of
civilization. The great law-giver of the
New Testament complained, like these
men in our day, that foxes have holes and
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of
Man hath not where to lay his head.
"Our clergymen preach homiles urging
marriage as the true social state and advo-
cate the propagation of the species as the
Divine injunction of Genesis, but when
their congregations are confronted by
father and mother with their progeny,
the sermon and divine injunction are for
gotten and the roof that was intended to
shelter human beings and protect the
prattle OF little ones is surrendered rather
TO Misunderstanding puppies and emascu-
lated felines- the only family OF the modern
American citizen.
thoughtful minds to the consideration OF
reform, not only in the interests of justice
to the law-abiding citizen who is thus dis
eliminated against, but in the general in
terests of the nation, that it's crop of men
may not fail; and in this spirit the Presi-
lort Of he I1pifaH
has called public attention to this abuse.
As early as B. c. 227 the laws of Rome
obliged every man to marry and to educate
his children. and censors with duties to
perform, like our trqant officers. were APP
pointed to enforce this law.
Cesar reverenced those who had chill
dren, penalized those who failed to marry
and addressed the Senate in these words:
1.-THE city does not consist of houses,
of porticos. Of public places; men alone
constitute city.
Augustus revived the Julian laws which
gave the public places to the man Of family,
removed his wife from servitude, absolved
both from taxes and imposed severe penal
ties on unmarried men. Louis XIV. of
France appointed pensions to those who
had ten children and larger in proportion
TO those who had more. In the Middle
Ages owing 10 the tendency OF great princes
to claim the land, the question of popula-
ton became rife.
Men ana women WE'RE coIlResteu Ill tne
cities very much as they are now, and the
economic writers of the time, beginning
with Adam Smith and Ricardo. discussed
the problem without result, until finally
Nautilus reached the conclusion that the
population increased in too great a ratio
for human subsistence. and that the only
remedy consisted in cessation OF the pro-
duction OF the species. This philosophy
carried great weight, even in our own
times, when Prince Bismarck affirmed
it in 1890 by the statement that blood
letting or war, was good for nation.
But it met its logical and unanswcrab!e
opponents in that great school OF German
and French philosophers. beginning with
Karl Marx, Fourier and Proudhon, and in
England, Herbert Spencer, whose conclu-
sions, to my mind, are best voiced by Gold
smith in that charming idyll of English
literature, The Vicar of Wakefield, wherein
he says. i was ever of the opinion that
the honest man who married and brought
up large family. did more service than he
who continued single and only talked of
population.
at may be inferred from this brief pre-
sentation OF this economic question that
some of the enlightened principles of exist
ing social conditions are not in accord
with divine or natural law and that some
OF the principles of modern state socialism
best cons list with the laws, with true social
progress and with that principle OF en-
lightened popular government which find.
expression in the maxim 'Salus populi
supreme est lex Certain it is that these
principles are finding expression in modern,
law, as Is evidenced by the
Tenement House law in New York and that
Just proposed in this State. as well as by
those laws Of our State which encourage the
formation Of trusts and which must eventu-