274 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
deliver the franchise that night—or, rather, before daylight 
the next morning. 
A LEGISLATIVE TRAVESTY. 
The “six” had evidently come to the meeting invisibly 
tagged, and mentally labeled, by the same power and in- 
fluences that had insidiously and surreptitiously “held up” 
the parkways and advanced the railroad interest in de- 
fiance of public opinion for the preceding eight years. The 
“deal” was to be put through then. As a legislative pro- 
ceeding the whole meeting was therefore a travesty, both 
upon parliamentary rules and deliberate assembly pro- 
cedure. The rules were, under the ruling of Chairman 
William Cardwell, finally suspended, and against the pro- 
test of the minority, the ordinance, long after mid- 
night, was passed. The excitement was intense: And 
out of this meeting, and the franchise agitation 
that had grown out of this struggle over the Cen- 
tral avenue parkway, rapidly grew the agitation for 
limiting utility franchises. This movement, locally, 
had its culmination in Orange a few months later, 
when the traction company, under the usual methods, made 
another attempt to secure a perpetual franchise there. The 
public conscience was by this time thoroughly aroused, and, 
as expressed in a massmeeting of citizens of all shades of 
opinion (December, 1904), swept everything before it. 
Two days after the passage of the railroad ordinance in 
East Orange, June 16, 1904, G. S. Hulbert, H. G. Atwater, 
A. P. Boller and J. Colter, as a sub-committee on behalf 
of the committee of 100, had a conference with Mayor E. 
E. Bruen. The committee submitted in writing the con- 
cessions it was deemed imperative that the city should se- 
cure before any such valuable franchise could be properly 
granted. Mr. Boller said that, should the Mayor sign the 
ordinance, “he would betray a public trust.” 
“This is not a defensible franchise, either before the pub- 
lic, on the platform, or before the people at the polls,” 
declared Mr. Atwater. The Mayor argued at length for the 
