268 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
Traction Company to the East Orange City Council for 
another Central avenue franchise. 
ANOTHER CORPORATION MOVE. 
The former defect in the “consents” had beeri made good 
by Bishop O’Connor’s having signed a new consent for 
more than 900 feet of cemetery property fronting on the 
avenue, the deed of the property having in the meantime 
been transferred to him. This new railroad application 
brought the question squarely to an issue. It was generally 
believed, as indicated by public utterances and.by the press, 
that much depended upon the attitude of the Park Com- 
mission, and that, if that board should enter an emphatic 
protest, the East Orange authorities would not again re- 
spond to the behest of the traction company, even under a 
repetition of the former methods of exercising its persuasion 
through the party “organization.” 
The pressure upon the Park Board to do something was 
continually being strengthened. On March 22 the commis- 
sion issued a lengthy statement to the public, and a copy 
was sent to the freeholders. It was also published in full— 
pages 23 to 27 of the eighth annual report of the depart- 
ment, issued in August, 1904. The statement recited the 
“constant effort” that had been made “to obtain the ave- 
nue for a parkway”; that “whatever the commission could 
do in a proper and dignified manner” to that end “has been 
done”; that the action of the courts in setting aside the 
trolley grant in East Orange “does not alter the attitude 
of this board”; that it “was bound to respect the action of 
the Common Council and the Board of Chosen Freeholders” 
as “the direct representatives of the people”; and that “the 
Park Commission must decline to take a partisan stand” 
on the trolley question, although “it desires to obtain the 
avenue as a parkway, and has repeatedly said so, and its 
requests for the transfer are now on file with the East Or- 
ange Common Council.” 
The statement then refers to the Duffield bill, above men- 
tioned, “introduced into the present Legislature to cure the 
