272 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
Hulbert, Gardiner Colby and other representative citizens, 
with Attorney F. H. Sommer, spoke for the parkways. 
These arguments covered the usual wide range, including a ° 
suggestion by Mr. Hulbert for the appointment of a “com- 
mission to investigate the whole subject and report.” The 
corporation attorneys made the usual meaningless promises 
and defined “curbing the gutters, laying brick pavements, 
paving the roadway as desired, planting grass between the 
rails, keeping it watered and cut,” as “parkway treatment.” 
The usual tactics of the traction company’s representa- 
tives were followed, when Lawyer A. J. Baldwin exclaimed: 
“The Essex County Park Commission never kept a promise 
made to East Orange, and never made a promise!” 
The final struggle over the franchise was postponed. On 
May 16 the limited franchise question was officially injected 
into the situation on Councilman Farnham Yardley’s mo- 
tion to limit the terms of that ordinance to twenty years. 
This was unanimously agreed to. The public was excluded. 
The executive sessions doors of the Council Chamber were 
opened just wide enough to admit E. W. Hine and Attorney 
Baldwin, of the traction company. This gave the interested 
corporation the ‘secret session” secrets and the opportunity 
of watching and “checking up” their own representatives 
at that important juncture of their franchise affairs. 
The trolley agents said the company would not accept a 
limited franchise; would not allow the city more than 
$1,000 a year compensation; or make any more favorable 
terms than the perpetual franchise adjustable at the end 
of fifty years, the same as the franchise of two years be- 
fore. That settled the question, apparently to the satis- 
faction of six of the councilmen, who continued to espouse 
the trolley company’s cause to the last. 
The test came at the council meeting May 23. The ordi- 
nance was then passed on first reading. Every amendment 
offered by Councilmen Lloyd, Brownell and Yardley for the 
protection of the city, was, by “the six,” voted down. The 
matter of transfers, limit of franchise, even of decent com- 
pensation and other important restrictions, all went by the 
