Blackmail in the Home

The appalling thought that a generation of cowed U.S. parents may be rearing a generation of coldly opportunistic super-brats was voiced this week by the governor of New York.

After heated debate, the New York legislature had passed and sent to the governor a bill making parents financially responsible, to a limit of $250, for willful or malicious property damage inflicted by their marauding offspring.

Legislative proponents of the bill suggested that much juvenile delinquency is rooted in parental irresponsibility. "We have reached the point," trumpeted Republican Walter J. Mahoney, senate majority leader from Buffalo, "where too many children are running the home."

But from Senator Fred G. Moritt, New York City Democrat, came a note of caution.

"If the kids were to learn about this law," he worried, "I can see what would happen. The kid would come in and say, 'Pop. gimme a dime.' Pop says no. So the kid replies: 'You better, or it's going to cost you two hundred and fifty bucks.' "

Last week Governor Averell Harriman vetoed the bill. It could, he ruefully concluded, "give to troublesome delinquents a weapon against their parents which they would not hesitate to use."

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