PLAN FOR ESSEX COUNTY PARKS 21 
The provisions of this law, providing for a temporary 
commission, scarcely call for extended reference here. In 
brief, the presiding justice of the Supreme Court was 
authorized to appoint a commission of five persons for the 
term of two years, to “consider the advisability of laying 
out ample open spaces for the use of the public * * * 
in such county,” with “authority to make maps and plans 
of such spaces and to collect such other information in 
relation thereto as the said board may deem expedient ;” 
and “as soon as conveniently may be,” to “make a report 
in writing of a comprehensive plan for laying out, acquir- 
ing and maintaining such open spaces.” 
The commission was also authorized to employ assistants, 
and to be reimbursed for actual traveling expenses incurred 
“in the discharge of their duties.” The total expenditures 
were limited to $10,000, the payment to be provided for by 
the Board of Freeholders* in the usual manner. 
The attitude of the public at the time of the approval of 
the bill had continued to grow more and more favorable. 
The suggestion that those identified with the enterprise had 
merely adapted the scheme of the metropolitan park system 
of Massachusetts, entirely overlooked the fact that it was 
merely the preliminary stages of that undertaking—the 
initial legislation for the first commission—which had been, 
in a general way, followed. The Orange committee had in 
the early part of that year, 1894, gone quite fully into the 
various phases of many of the larger park systems. It was 
found that the Metropolitan Park plan, embracing, as it at 
that time did, thirty-nine separate municipalities, and vari- 
ous counties about Boston, and having an entirely new and 
untried system of financing, was wholly unsuited to the 
needs of Essex County. Indeed, we had all along under- 
stood that, under the New Jersey Constitution, such a dis- 
trict as had been mapped out and included in the Metropoli- 
tan Parks area could not be legally laid out or established 
here; and that this State would not be likely, even if it 
*Board of Chesen Freeholders is the official title of the county 
gZoverning bodies in New Jersey. 
