GOOD CITIZENSHIP HELPLESS 221 
ers, nothing was heard of it. While the contest between the 
parkway forces and the trolley syndicate was being actively 
waged in 1898, efforts were made by committees of various 
civic associations to ascertain, if possible, why the free- 
holders were non-responsive and why such an important 
request as that of the Park Board remained pigeonholed all 
that time. 
A PUBLIC HEARING. 
Finally, on May 20, 1898, the Road Committee of the 
freeholders gave a hearing on the commission’s application. 
The local committees were well represented. Mayor John 
Gill, of Orange, and other well known officials and citizens, 
were present. The reasons why the avenues should be used 
as parkways were well presented. The petitions, signed by 
nearly all the property owners on both of the avenues, favor- 
ing the transfer, were read, as also the resolutions of various 
civic bodies. The former official and unanimous proceed- 
ings of the Orange and Hast Orange authorities, favorable 
to action being taken, were noted. 
The opposing corporation agents now offered a new line 
of obstructive tactics. The Park Commission would, by 
inaugurating new regulations after transfer at once “re- 
strict ordinary traffic.” The parkways were at best a local 
question, they said: “The freeholders elected by, and the 
direct representatives of, the people, should not surrender 
control of these great highways and thus prevent the free 
use of them as originally intended.” 
Although it was clearly shown that, under the transfer, 
or eighteenth clause of the park law, the commission would 
have no such right of restriction, and that the parkways, in 
extending park treatment through the various municipali- 
ties by directly connecting the larger parks of the whole 
county, could no more be considered a local question than 
could the park system itself, yet the freeholders adopted the 
opposition views and nothing was done. On October 25 
following (1898) another “hearing” was given by the same 
