60 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
which, as a whole, do not compare favorably with the very 
many extensive and well-kept public parks in this country. 
All the papers vigorously and continuously reflected what 
seemed a popular public sentiment for a forward movement 
on the same lines and under the same management as had 
been the efforts thus far to obtain a park system. This 
view was also accentuated by the action of local associations 
and some of the personally disinterested friends of the parks 
in different parts of the county. The only discordant note 
which was heard out of harmony with this general acclaim 
favorable to the parks, and the new law for creating them, 
was the action of the Newark Democratic City Committee 
early in April, 1895, in the adoption of a resolution dis- 
favoring the law and the appointive, instead of the elective 
method provided for the selection of commissioners. 
Among the earnest advocates of the park system perhaps 
there was no one man who had been more earnest or active, 
or whose influence had been more effectually brought to bear 
in holding the enterprise on the lines as originally proposed 
than William A. Ure. Knowing his sincerity and interest 
and wishing to learn his conviction on the existing status of 
park matters, I wrote him April 8, the day before the elec- 
tion on the park bill, and, after referring to the able editor- 
ials on the park question that had appeared in The Call, 
and to the cordial reception of the plans and the new law by 
the public, expressed my appreciation of the principles 
which an article in The Call the day previous had indicated 
should govern in the selection of the new commission. I 
then added: 
“T am glad you still favor the selection on the same prin- 
ciples so heartily favored at the time. If any other consid- 
erations than those of fitness are now allowed to determine 
the new appointments, the execution of the plans will, in my 
judgment, be hampered in the same proportion, and the 
final success of the scheme in just the same degree be im- 
periled. I have every confidence in Judge Depue, in his 
strict integrity of purpose and his loyalty to the principles 
