CONTEST FOR PARKWAYS CO:>^TINUED 197 



fluences referred to determined that the result should be 

 otherwise. 



IN- A COMMITTEE^S HANDS. 



The application to the Orange Common Council from 

 the Park Commission for the transfer of the avenue was, 

 on its receipt, promptly referred to the Street Committee. 

 The chairman was Henry Stetson, who was one of the few 

 men in Orange who had, with Mayor Seymour and others 

 in Newark, strongly objected from the first to an appointive 

 commission. "It's all wrong," Mr. Stetson said to me, 

 when the plans for the first Park Commission were under 

 way. He then assured me, as afterward, that he opposed 

 that plan on principle. That he was emphatic in his ob- 

 jections no one who knew him, I think, had any reason to 

 doubt. His views were not in the least modified when, in 

 1895, the second commission was appointed and the con- 

 trol of that board and its large appropriation was made 

 politically Republican. Like the Massachusetts Democrat 

 in that far-famed home of Republicanism during the ex- 

 citing 1860-65 war times, he was thereafter, in parkway 

 matters, unceasingly, and it seemed almost intuitively, 

 ^'^agin" the prevailing order of things. 



The possession of the two ordinances, in January, 1897, 

 apparently gave Mr. Stetson and his followers their oppor- 

 tunity. They were not slow in availing themselves of it. 

 Theretofore the rule of procedure in the City Council had 

 been that when the owners of a majority frontage on an 

 avenue or street petitioned for an improvement, unless 

 some legal or financial obstacle were in the way, the request 

 would be granted. There had then just been presented to 

 the Mayor and City Council petitions from the property 

 owners on both avenues in favor of the parkways and 

 "against the granting of any and all franchises on Cen- 

 tral avenue for any purpose whatever, as such action on 

 your part would embarrass the action of the Park Com- 

 mission." 



This petition for Central avenue bore the signature of 



