Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1916 — IS RIGHT TO ANNOY SACRED? [ARTICLE]

IS RIGHT TO ANNOY SACRED?

How Jersey City Courts, by a Recent Decision, Allow Property Owners to Exalt Ugliness. The sacred right of the property holder to make himself a public nuisance Is reaffirmed by the decision of the New Jersey supreme court, says the New York Tribune. It appears thnt this right was menaced by a statute which made it unlawful to disfigure with advertisements the Palisades along the Hudson. The statute is found to be unconstitutional on the ground thut the legislator may deprive the owner of the right to use his land for such purpose only when the signs are a menace to public health or morals. This kind of Individual liberty Is one of the unfortunate limitations under which our whole system labors. The public has other interests to conserve besides those of health, safety and morality. It Is a mark of indifference to beautybordering on barbarism that esthetic considerations receive so little recognition in the eye of the law. The zealousness with which the courts are bound to protect the Individual in the use of that which is his own permits the defacing of our scenes of nStural beauty with every conceivable form of hideousness. Something more than a right of property is invaded when one individual may ruin for millions of people the beauty of a plecerof nature’s handiwork.