Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/97

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of the Public Service, believes honestly that anything that helps business is right. He was extending his trolley system, and, desiring to go through parks and residence streets, needed franchises. Of course, he must have them, and of course he , must have them for nothing, and forever. Frederick W. Kelsey, a park commissioner, opposed him till public sentiment was formed and then McCarter undertook, by the methods characteristic of privilege-seekers, to get what he wanted anyhow. There were scandal and mass-meetings. The New England Society took up Kelsey’s old fight against business graft. Could the fight have gone on locally, with McCarter’s franchises for issues, it might have developed good citizenship in the Oranges. But both sides appealed to the state.

Tom McCarter, finding that the local council, though corrupt enough and willing, lacked the nerve to vote for him what he wanted in the face of “mobs” of good citizens, decided to appeal to the legislature; and his plan was to create a Greater Newark, taking into the city which he could control the suburbs which were giving the trolley “ so much trouble.” And the men of Orange, finding that their representatives in the local council did not represent them (except when watched), determined not to reform them-