274 



FIEST COimTY PARK SYSTEM 



deliver the franchise that night — or, rather, before daylight 

 the next morning. 



A LEGISLATIVE TRAVESTY. 



The "six" had evidently come to the meeting invisibly 

 tagged, and mentally labeled, by the same power and in- 

 fluences that had insidiously and surreptitiously "held up" 

 the parkways and advanced the railroad interest in de- 

 fiance of public opinion for the preceding eight years. The 

 "deal" was to be put through then. As a legislative pro- 

 ceeding the whole meeting was therefore a travesty, both 

 upon parliamentary rules and deliberate assembly pro- 

 cedure. The rules were, under the ruling of Chairman 

 Vfilliam Cardwell, finally suspended, and against the pro- 

 test of the minority, the ordinance, long after mid- 

 night, was passed. The excitement was intense: And 

 out of this meeting, and the franchise agitation 

 that had grown out of this struggle over the Cen- 

 tral avenue parkway, rapidly grew the agitation for 

 limiting utility franchises. This movement, locally, 

 had its culmination in Orange a few months later, 

 when the traction company, under the usual methods, made 

 another attempt to secure a perpetual franchise there. The 

 public conscience was by this time thoroughly aroused, and, 

 as expressed in a massmeeting of citizens of all shades of 

 opinion (December, 1904), swept everything before it. 



Two days after the passage of the railroad ordinance in 

 East Orange, June 16, 1904, G-. S. Hulbert, H. G. Atwater, 

 A. P. Boiler and J. Colter, as a sub-committee on behalf 

 of the committee of 100, had a conference with Mayor E. 

 E. Bruen. The committee submitted in writing the con- 

 cessions it was deemed imperative that the city should se- 

 cure before any such valuable franchise could be properly 

 granted. Mr. Boiler said that, should the Mayor sign the 

 ordinance, "he would betray a public trust." 



"This is not a defensible franchise, either before the pub- 

 lic, on the platform, or before the people at the polls," 

 declared Mr. Atwater. The Mayor argued at length for the 



