258 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
tension can be built over another route which will just as 
well serve the public convenience. By utilizing existing 
avenues as parkways the cost of improvement is moderate.” 
The Orange Chronicle asked: “Why, then, should the 
Park Commissioners now remain silent in the matter of 
carrying out their own plans? Why should they not now, 
by their action, show a creditable desire to have the park 
system carried forward to a creditable completion ?” 
THE PUBLIC’S POSITION. 
Another press comment was: “The absolute inertia of this 
‘better class’ board has resulted in taxpayers going to great 
expense to contest the trolley grab; and, still worse, the very 
people who have been the stanchest supporters of the Park 
Commission find themselves obliged to organize in commit- 
tees, and to almost demand of the Park Commission that 
its latest pre-election pledges be carried out.” 
Appeals were also made direct to the new management of 
the traction company. The Public Service Corporation had 
been organized, and had absorbed, by exchange of its stock 
and otherwise, all the leading traction, electric light, and 
gas companies of Northern New Jersey. Although the cor- 
poration was purely a “business” company, it consolidated 
and combined into one ownership the direct control of all 
the various financial pyramids that had been created with 
fictitiously watered capital, for the purpose of absorbing and 
retaining in the hands of the stockholders the millions of 
clear profits made out of the free franchises that had been 
mulcted from the county and local governing bodies. This 
scheme enabled a few men to thus concentrate vast financial 
and political power, to perpetuate, and, as far as might be 
possible, in the future, to control and hold the vast public 
privileges obtained, and to become an important, if not a 
controlling factor in shaping State and local legislation 
accordingly. 
But the new ownership control was, under the new man- 
agement, largely in the hands of Essex County institutions, 
and of men who, it was thought, could not be entirely 
