THE PAEKWAYS 



173 



securing the franchises might obtain. How the effort was 

 made to use both the press, and even forged postal card 

 ballots to accomplish these ends. How such representative 

 organizations as the Xew England Society, the Woman's 

 •Club, the Eoad Horse Association, and other civic and good 

 government associations joined the parkway forces and en- 

 tered into the fray, where they remained to the finish. 



A volume might also be written on the action of certain 

 officials and the majority members in the Board of Free- 

 holders, and of the municipal authorities in East Orange 

 and Orange, who for years were seemingly so anxious to 

 serve '"'the organization'^ (alias, in this instance, the cor- 

 porations), that their official acts resembled those of toy 

 officials and toy boards, where each, in time of emergency, 

 sprang to rescue the situation for their superiors, and 

 against the parkways and their constituents, as moves a 

 jumping- jack when the strings are pulled by the man in 

 power behind the scenes. 



A chapter might also be of interest accurately describing 

 the shifting of position of some of these officials ; first upon 

 the one side, and then upon the other of the same identical 

 question, when their opinions and services were needed to 

 comply with the needs and exigencies of the corporations as 

 from time to time these requirements developed. 



TOPICS OF GEXEEAL INTEREST. 



Much might also be written of the changed attitude of 

 the Park Commission, clothed as it was, and is, by its char- 

 ter, with all authorit}^ and full power, from its original 

 position of active interest toward securing the two principal 

 parkways for a time after their announcement in Novem- 

 ber, 1896, to a somnambulistic condition of non-activity and 

 seeming impotence, and an apparent indifference as to what 

 became of its own plans, and as to whether the board should 

 - secure the parkways as it had planned, and had repeatedly 

 promised the public, or should give them over, through the 



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