A CHANGE OF COMMISSIONERS 165 
or leave the service of the commission. The traction com- 
panies up to that time had had quite smooth sailing in their 
successful efforts to secure coveted franchises, and the more 
valuable the public franchises were, the more successful the 
managers of the companies appeared to be in their efforts 
to secure them. Any individual aggressively opposing this 
“gift enterprise” business was soon made to feel that his 
future, politically or otherwise, would be far more agreeable, 
or, perchance, successful, if he should not “stand in the 
way” of what the “organization’”—or in other words, what 
the corporations, then, as afterward, so closely allied with 
the party bosses—wanted. A park commissioner who would 
-insist that the people should have what had been promised 
them, provided the execution of the promise interfered with 
the corporation plans for a valuable public franchise—not- 
withstanding the promise may have been for a park system 
that was being paid for from the tax budget—was not the 
kind of man the corporations wanted. The pressure brought 
to bear upon Judge Depue as the appointing power to leave 
me off of the commission, was, now that the die for the 
parkways had been cast and my outspoken position well 
understood, materially increased. 
Commissioner Franklin Murphy’s political craft had also 
up to that time had smooth sailing, and if he could unify 
the various elements in both the corporate and political 
fields, there was a fair prospect of his reaching his ambition 
in the climb for the Gubernatorial chair. Counsel Joseph 
L. Munn was regarded as one of his active political workers 
for furthering that object. 
Commissioner Frederick M. Shepard, as the principal 
owner of a valuable water plant, which, with the assistance 
of “Counsel” Munn, it might be during the next few years 
desirable to sell at a good price to the municipalities of 
East Orange and Bloomfield—(as was accomplished in 
1903)—was in full sympathy with, and extremely friendly 
to, these corporation influences and interests. 
There were, perhaps, not many men in Essex County who 
then had a keener appreciation of these underlying condi- 
