CHAPTEE XII. 



THE PAEKWATS. 



A fnll record of all that has occurred in connection with 

 the parkways for the Essex County parks would fill volumes. 

 The correspondence, the official communications, the public 

 conferences, the private confabs, the petitions and the liti- 

 gation for the parkways, the protests against destroying 

 them, the resolutions of various civic associations, the pub- 

 lic hearings, the massmeetings, the action of special com- 

 mittees — would each, if given complete, require a chapter 

 or a volume. A chapter, too, might well be devoted to the 

 different phases of the situation during the various changes 

 in this interesting question. 



How, on the announcement of the parkway plans by the 

 Park Commission in November, 1896, the traction company 

 began at once to scheme after the manner of public utility 

 corporations for the defeat of those plans, and to be the 

 first to obtain possession of one or both of the principal 

 avenues that were designated for parkways. How. as this 

 contest went on, with the people and, at the outset, the Park 

 Commission on the one side, and the allied powerful corpor- 

 ate and political forces woridng through the ••'organization'^ 

 machine as dictated by the party boss, on the other side, the 

 proceedings in the county and local governing boards, in 

 dealing with the question, were for years a continuous per- 

 formance of the play of battledore and shuttlecock. 



How shrewd attorneys and the interested politicians, 

 working for the corporations, continued the policy of creat- 

 ing realistic phantoms and legal hobgoblins for the purpose 

 of befogging the public mind and confusing honest officials, 

 in order that the result of preventing the parkways and 



172 



