The First County Park System in America—III 
TROTTING TRACK AT WEEQUAHIC PARK 
In most instances, where 
large and diversified interests 
are at stake and conflicting 
claims become a factor for 
adjudication, whether before 
a court, a legislative body or 
an executive official, things 
are not always what they seem, 
and the kaleidoscopic condi¬ 
tions of conclusion may be 
frequently shifted almost from 
day to day as the see-saw of 
contending'influences and vary¬ 
ing elements enter into the 
final disposition of the sub¬ 
ject in hand. 
The question then before 
the court was no exception 
to this rule. True, the judge, in 
announcing the new commission the morning of April 
18, 1895, gave as quoted below some of the reasons 
that appealed to him for making the change against 
what was evidently the trend of public desire, and 
the conclusion left upon Mr. lire’s mind prior to 
the appointment that no change would be made. 
That presentment of the judge, however, gave no 
intimation of, nor made the slightest reference to, 
some of the most important and potential influences 
brought to bear upon him to make the changes as 
he did. 
I have never doubted Judge Depue’s sincerity 
in dealing as he did with the taxation-representation 
phase of the question, or that it was made to appear 
to him as desirable that the sectional or local repre¬ 
sentation principle should then be injected into 
the enterprise—although this very principle of 
sectionalism, as I have already indicated, occasioned 
the wreckage of the park enterprise for Newark 
in 1867-72; was largely responsible for the failure 
to materialize of the commendable efforts of the 
committee of the Newark Board of Trade in the 
same direction in 1892; has occasioned the failure 
of many public park enterprises all over the coun¬ 
try; and was the very thing that the first commis¬ 
sion had made every effort to prevent, and which, 
having been presented, was in reality one of the 
essential elements in the immediate indorsement 
of its plan by the public and the Legislature. 
Reasons for Court's Action. Nor do I doubt 
that it had been forcibly represented to the judge 
that the better plan would be to reverse the 
divisional lines of representation from three from 
the county at large, as he had endeavored to estab¬ 
lish in selecting the first commission, and give the 
majority in the board to Newark, as the portion 
of the county paying the larger proportion of the 
county tax. 
Then again, from the view-point of the court at 
the time and under the swirl of varying influences 
brought to hear upon the judge in selecting that 
board, may he not have been sincere in thinking 
that merely the qualifications of a successful manu¬ 
facturer or man of business, and those of an ener¬ 
getic chairman of a State partisan committee of 
his own political predilections, might constitute the 
very elements of fitness for the responsible position 
of park making.? As one having a mind with 
judicial tendencies and attainments, and who had 
evidently never given the subject of creating an 
extensive park system theretofore special attention, 
a generous thought may, I believe, be accorded 
this action as to its intention, whatever may have 
been its practical results. 
But some of the “interviews on the part of the 
people of the county’’ were not directed to the 
question of geographical representation of the 
new commission, nor of taxation, nor of the con¬ 
servative, or extravagant tendencies of any of the 
candidates who were then under consideration; 
but to other and decidedly different phases of the 
subject. There were ^2,500,000 of county funds 
to expend. “Who was to have charge of the 
handling of this great sum of money?” “Who 
was to control the patronage in this new and im¬ 
portant Department of Parks?” 
Subsequent events indicated, clearly enough, 
what these and other arguments and influences 
were which became potent factors in the final 
selection of a majority of the commission. 
The unexpected had happened. The plan of 
laying out “the best park system that could he 
devised” for the whole county irrespective of local 
and sectional lines, which had been the keynote 
and the foundation structure of the work of the 
first commission, and the reason for its popular 
approval, had been by this act of the court—where 
the appointing power had been placed for the 
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