180 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
The Park Commission had the law and public opinion in 
its favor. The traction company, grown greedy and arro- 
gant from former franchise spoil, had the power of con- 
centrated wealth, and the party machine, with the resource 
and influence of a domineering party boss to do its bidding. 
For years the corporate interest, then demanding the sacri- 
fice of the parkway for the coveted franchise, had had full 
sway. The old Essex County Road Board, before it was 
abolished years previous by a reform Republican Legisla- 
ture, was their willing tool. The succeeding Board of Free- 
holders, in control of the county roads, although riding 
into power on the popular wave which in 1893 and 1894 
engulfed the race-track, coal-combine, corporation-ridden 
State-and-County-Democracy was equally subservient. 
From those unsavory legislative days of 1890, ’92 
and ’93, the street railway companies had readily 
passed their own bills, both at Trenton and in 
Essex County, as they desired, and in their own 
way. The law permitting a traction company to prac- 
tically pre-empt a street or avenue by merely filing a map 
and certificate of intention with the Secretary of State, and 
the payment of a small fee, had, prior to 1896, been availed 
of, and both Park and Central avenues were “on the map” 
of the traction company’s routes as prescribed. 
The Storrs bill of 1894 was intended to curb this hydra- 
headed giant of financial and political power by requiring 
the filing of consents of the owners of a majority of the 
street frontage before any road could be constructed under 
this “pre-emption lay.” As introduced, the bill exempted 
all non-taxable property from consideration in the matter 
of these consents. But, under this clause, the Cemetery of 
the Holy Sepulchre property, with its 966 feet of front- 
age in Hast Orange, would have prevented the company 
from procuring the necessary “consents” for appropriating 
Central avenue there, so the “reform” Legislature followed 
the example of its predecessors by amending the bill and 
striking out the objectionable clause as the corporations 
desired. 
