A LEGISLATIVE TRAVESTY 275 
traction company. It was expected that he would sign the 
ordinance. It was currently reported that he had agreed 
to do so weeks before its passage. His signature was soon 
attached to that document. 
The goal of the traction company for Central avenue 
in East Orange was now reached, save for the approval of 
the franchise grant from the freeholders. The pro-corpora- 
tion proclivities of a majority of that board were well 
known. So well, indeed, was this condition understood, 
that none of the civic organizations which had been deeply 
interested in the parkway-trolley question deemed it worth 
while to attend the August meeting, when the matter was 
to come up before the freeholders for action. This under- 
standing of the board’s position grew out of its previous 
adverse action at various meetings, as already described, in 
acting on the parkways in the interest of the traction com- 
pany ; and the indifference or contempt with which Director 
Thomas McGowan and a majority of the board had treated 
the citizens at the previous “hearing,” as though present- 
ments favoring the parkways and protesting against the en- 
croachment of the corporations on the parkway reservations 
were not worthy of the slightest consideration. 
TRACTION MEN’S BOAST. 
The traction company’s officials had also boasted of their 
power over the county and local governing boards. When 
the attention of one of the head officials of the Public Ser- 
vice Corporation was called to the possibility of trouble 
growing out of the agitation over the parkway-trolley con- 
test in the Oranges, his reply, in referring to the franchise, 
in language more forcible than polite, was: “We've already 
got it; it’s all set to music to go through.” This view 
was evidently shared by the corporation managers generally, 
for early in August, 1904, before the application for Cen- 
tral avenue in Orange had even been considered by the City 
Council, and before any action had been taken by the free- 
holders on the East Orange ordinance, the company dis- 
