228 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
along been to obstruct the transfer and thus, to all appear- 
ances, serve the corporate interests desiring that object, the 
action of the full board at the July meeting, in sustaining 
the Road Committee’s recommendation, caused little sur- 
prise. It was only another indication of the tenacious con- 
trol the traction interests held over the proceedings of that 
board. The ostensible reasons for the action then taken 
were, as usual in such cases, specious and misleading. For 
four years the position of the freeholders in not taking any 
action favorable as to the parkways had been, that the 
municipal authorities should act first; while, for all that 
time, both in law and in fact, the entire control of, and 
jurisdiction over those county avenues, with the exception 
of very minor rights in the cross streets, were vested abso- 
lutely in that board. What logic or justification, therefore, 
could there be in the announced excuse for persistent inac- 
tivity, that the local boards, holding only these insignificant 
right, “must first make the transfer?”: Then, years after 
East Orange had thus acted, in adding the farther excuse 
that “it was not good policy on the part of the Board of 
Freeholders at any time to relinquish control of a limited 
‘section of a county avenue’—which was the additional 
“reason” included in the report of this latter refusal of the 
Park Board’s request. 
The inconsistency of the other alleged reason, as to trans- 
fer, “that such avenues shall be permanently maintained 
in at least as good condition as heretofore,” when the dis- 
tinct object of the transfer was to improve them as park- 
ways, is apparent. The Newark News of May 24, 1900, 
editorially gave the gist of the matter in a few words in 
commenting upon the hearing referred to, as follows: “It 
is not difficult to discern corporation influences behind the 
opposition to parkway development through the Oranges, 
that was manifested at the hearing before the Board of 
Freeholders’ Road Committee on Monday.” 
In December, 1900, there was introduced into the Orange 
Common Council, for the third time, an avenues transfer 
ordinance. This document was carefully drawn with the 
