222 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
freeholders’ committee. Frank H. Scott, F. W. Baldwin, 
A. P. Boller, G. R. Howe and others made earnest and able 
pleas, urging early action. But the listening freeholders ap- 
peared deaf to the appeals, and the conditions of persistent 
inactivity were continued as before; although Chairman 
J. B. Bray assured the petitioners “that a simple resolution 
passed by the committee would not be sufficient to complete 
the transfer”—a fact that was gradually beginning to dawn 
on the minds of those who had heretofore believed that the 
logic of the situation and merit of the transfer proposition 
might be a potential factor in the proceedings befnre the 
freeholders. 
While the powerful hand of the Consolidated Traction 
Company was clearly visible back of this inconsistent and 
continuous inactivity, still it was a condition, not a theory 
of official inactivity, which confronted the parkways move- 
ment. Attention was then again turned to the Park Com- 
mission. Here much the same uncertainty existed. What- 
ever may have been the cause, the wabbling attitude of that 
board, aside from its executive session statements, was an 
indisputable factor of large proportions in still farther ex- 
tending the uncertainty of the conditions. 
The commission was appealed to. The board was im- 
plored to galvanize some life into its repeated claims of 
intention. It was asked to show by its acts, as well as by its 
words, what it meant; and was reminded that, “after the re- 
peated reiteration of its plans and purposes as regards these 
avenues, both the friends and most of the opponents of the 
county park undertaking had formerly accepted that ac- 
tion as final,” and that it was now being currently reported 
“that the commission did not want the avenues, and that it 
had never intended to make them parkways.” 
From the records it appears that the elements of uncer- 
tainty as to these parkways were also acutely active 
within the Park Board rooms by or before the summer of 
1899. At the meeting of August 1 of that year, Commis- 
sioner Shepard’s motion was adopted requesting the land- 
scape architects “to make a special report on the proper 
