first bill should not materially increase the total
tax of the railroads. This was made “the Governor’s bill,” but Colby opposed it and introduced
another to tax the main stem like any other real
estate. Of course, Colby’s bill was beaten, but
its defeat left equal taxation an issue in Jersey politics.
Another fight that showed things as they are, was over a bill to promote Tom McCarter’s scheme to bring into a Greater Newark all the suburbs which did not respond to trolley corruption. Bloomfield was one of these. The people there had held the trolleys at bay; annexation had been proposed to them, and they had voted it down. In this session of 1905 some “leading citizens” of Bloomfield applied to the legislature for another referendum on annexation, and the trolley pretended to have nothing to do with it. But it had. Those leading citizens were stockholders and friends of stockholders in McCarter s company; Major Lentz “steered” them; and for more direct evidence, there was the story of a friend of Colby. This man had been in the employ of the Public Service. He was against the bill, and “they sent for him.” This was their bill, they told him. They wrote it, and they needed it as a step in their plan to absorb into Newark all the troublesome suburbs about the city; their employee
