258 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 



tension can be built over another route which will just as 

 well serve the public convenience. By utilizing existing 

 avenues as parkways the cost of improvement is moderate/' 

 The Orange Chronicle asked: "Why, then, should the 

 Park Commissioners now remain silent in the matter of 

 carrying out their own plans? Why should they not now, 

 by their action, show a creditable desire to have the park 

 system carried forward to a creditable completion?" 



THE public's position. 



Another press comment was : " The absolute inertia of this 

 ^better class' board has resulted in taxpa3^ers going to great 

 expense to contest the trolley grab ; and, still worse, the very 

 people who have been the stanchest supporters of the Park 

 Commission find themselves obliged to organize in commit- 

 tees, and to almost demand of the Park Commission that 

 its latest pre-election pledges be carried out." 



Appeals were also made direct to the new management of 

 the traction company. The Public Service Corporation had 

 been organized, and had absorbed, by exchange of its stock 

 and otherwise, all the leading traction, electric light, and 

 gas companies of N'orthern New Jersey. Although the cor- 

 poration was purely a "business" company, it consolidated 

 and combined into one ownership the direct control of all 

 the various financial pyramids that had been created with 

 fictitiously watered capital, for the purpose of absorbing and 

 retaining in the hands of the stockholders the millions of 

 clear profits made out of the free franchises that had been 

 mulcted from the county and local governing bodies. This 

 scheme enabled a few men to thus concentrate vast financial 

 and political power, to perpetuate, and, as far as might be 

 possible, in the future, to control and hold the vast public 

 privileges obtained, and to become an important, if not a 

 controlling factor in shaping State and local legislation 

 accordingly. 



But the new ownership control was, under the new man- 

 agement, largely in the hands of Essex County institutions, 

 and of men who, it was thought, could not be entirely 



