232 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
such request. The rule was not enforced. All the 
old points in the controversy were gone over; a few new 
newrones were brought out. Mr. Atwater protested against 
the consideration of the ordinance on the ground “that the 
statutory number of consents of property owners fronting 
on the avenue had not been filed.” H. H. Hall, in address- 
ing the City Council with much earnestness, said that it 
made his “blood boil, as a citizen of this town, to see. the 
representatives of that corporation stand up here and snap 
the whip over you.” The proceedings of the traction com- 
pany are “a disgrace to the Christian State of New Jersey,” 
he declared, and he said that he would “rather continue to 
walk twelve minutes to Main street, than to barter away the 
sacred rights of this city, and give away a perpetual fran- 
chise which, when your children read of your action, will 
make them hide their faces in shame.” G. R. Howe said: 
“There is no possibility of parkways if we surrender the 
only two avenues left.” 
AS TO THE FRANCHISE. 
Counsel James B. Dill held that “the gentlemen inter- 
ested have had five years to build a parkway, but up to the 
present time we have only a verbal parkway.” He denied 
that the perpetual franchise applied for was perpetual, or 
that there was anything properly in the way of using the 
old “consents.” Arthur Baldwin, a lawyer, joined in this 
demagogic argument for class distinction, and, with much 
vehemence, asked: “Who is going to use these parkways? 
Will those who are away three months in the summer? 
How is the man who is compelled to stay at home to get the 
benefit of the parks? He must walk,”—thus perverting the 
fact that parkways, like the parks, are for all the people, 
the great majority of whom, remaining at home, all the 
more require such places for recreation. 
No action was taken by the City Council that evening, 
but it was freely predicted that the members had, before the 
hearing, become fully converted to the interested corpora- 
