House and Garden 
some sheltered corner if well covered with straw, 
leaves or some such material. 
The summer care of tubbed plants is more 
exacting, their roots being confined in such a small 
space, they depend entirely upon the gardener for 
water and food. The latter should be given to them 
at regular intervals in the shape of liquid manure, but 
this constant attention is usually amply repaid. 
THE FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM IN AMERICA V 
By Frederick W. Kelsey* 
[Continued from the September Number of House and Garden) 
A FULL record of all that has occurred in con¬ 
nection with the parkways for the Essex 
County parks would fill volumes. The correspond¬ 
ence, the official communications, the public 
conferences, the private confabs, the petitions 
and the litigation for the parkways, the protests 
against destroying them, the resolutions of vari¬ 
ous civic associations, the public hearings, the 
mass-meetings, the action of special committees— 
would each, if given complete, require a chapter 
or a volume. A chapter, too, might well be de¬ 
voted to the different phases of the situation during 
the various changes in this interesting question. 
How, on the announcement of the parkway 
plans by the Park Commission in November, 1896, 
the traction company began at once to scheme 
after the manner of public utility corporations 
for the defeat of those plans, and to be the first 
to obtain possession of one or both of the principal 
avenues that were designated for parkways. How, 
as this contest went on, with the people and, at the 
outset, the Park Commission on the one side, and 
the allied powerful corporate and political forces 
working through the “organization” machine as 
dictated by the party boss, on the other side, the 
proceedings in the county and local governing 
boards, in dealing with the question, were for 
years a continuous performance of the play of 
battledore and shuttlecock. 
How shrewd attorneys and the interested poli¬ 
ticians, working for the corporations, continued 
the policy of creating realistic phantoms and legal 
hobgoblins for the purpose of befogging the public 
mind and confusing honest officials, in order that 
the result of preventing the parkways and secur¬ 
ing 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 New Eng¬ 
land Society, the Woman’s Club, the Road Horse 
Association, and other civic and good government 
associations joined the parkway forces and entered 
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 
*Coartcsy of the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 57 Rose St., New York. 
240 
the Board of Freeholders, 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 corpora¬ 
tions), 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 General Interest. Much might also be 
written of the changed attitude of the Park Com¬ 
mission, clothed as it was, and is, by its charter, 
with all authority and full power, from its original 
position of active interest toward securing the two 
principal parkways for a time after their announce¬ 
ment in November, 1896, to a somnambulistic con¬ 
dition 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 assistance later of the commission’s 
own counsel, to the corporations for private uses. 
Then, too, an extended account of the evolution 
of the parkway question into the agitation for 
limited franchises, which has since become such a 
live State issue, would fill much space: How the 
persistent determination of the traction companies’ 
managers to defeat the parkway plans, and, re¬ 
gardless of consequences, secure the long-sought 
franchises, led to an investigation as to the reasons 
why the men responsible, who were accredited 
with having some public spirit in other matters, 
were on this subject deaf and blind to all appeals; 
how, when the indisputable facts were ascertained 
and recognized by the public as to “the millions” 
