60 FIEST COOTTY PARK SYSTEM 



which, as a whole, do not compare favorably with the very 

 many extensive and well-kept public parks in this country. 

 All the papers vigorously and continuously reflected what 

 seemed a popular public sentiment for a forward movement 

 on the same lines and under the same management as had 

 been the efforts thus far to obtain a park system. This 

 view was also accentuated by the action of local associations 

 and some of the personally disinterested friends of the parks 

 in different parts of the county. The only discordant note 

 which was heard out of harmony with this general acclaim 

 favorable to the parks, and the new lavf for creating them, 

 was the action of the Newark Democratic City Committee 

 early in April, 1895, in the adoption of a resolution dis- 

 favoring the law and the appointive, instead of the elective 

 method provided for the selection of commissioners. 



Among the earnest advocates of the park system perhaps 

 there was no one man who had been more earnest or active, 

 or whose influence had been more effectually brought to bear 

 in holding the enterprise on the lines as originally proposed 

 than William, A. Ure. Knowing his sincerity and interest 

 and wishing to learn his conviction on the existing status of 

 park matters, I wrote him April 8, the day before the elec- 

 tion on the park bill, and, after referring to the able editor- 

 ials on the park question that had appeared in The Call, 

 and to the cordial reception of the plans and the new law by 

 the public, expressed my appreciation of the principles 

 which an article in The Call the day previous had indicated 

 should govern in the selection of the new commission. I 

 then added : 



"I am glad you still favor the selection on the same prin- 

 ciples so heartily favored at the time. If any other consid- 

 erations than those of fitness are now allow^ed to determine 

 the new appointments, the execution of the plans will, in my 

 Judgment, be hampered in the same proportion, and the 

 final success of the scheme in just the same degree be im- 

 periled. I have every confidence in Judge Depue, in his 

 strict integrity of purpose and his loyalty to the principles 



