It will be very interesting to many residents of Freehold to know that Freehold was the first town in the United States to adopt the Wellsbach incandescent mantel for street lightning, and although electric lights, Kitson lights and lights of other sorts have been tried, the Wellsbach still holds first place for all around satisfaction. In this connection it is of interest to note that the city of London corporation has decided to discard electric arc lights for most thoroughfares and substitute incandescent gas lamps. The introduction of the electric columns and arcs represented a heavy outlay, but even so a majority of the city corporations have recorded their opinion that it will be an economical proceeding and an excellent investment for the rate payers to change back again. The saving is calculated at about 15 percent, per season. It is also a fact that these lights have been placed in some of the finest streets of New York and in the finer residential portions of other cities in this country. So it will be seen that Freehold was in the very forefront in adopting the best street light, and her good judgment is being confirmed by the governing bodies of the larger cities of the world.
Long Branch expects to have another chosen freeholder in the near future, although it already has six representatives on the county board. Under the election law, wherever an election district has more than 500 registered voters, the district must, it appears, be divided and a new one created. Such a condition is said to exist in one of the wards there and the City Council is about to carve out a new one, which under the present ridiculous law, permits the election of an additional representative on the Board of Freeholders with no duties to perform, but who may draw a salary out of the county treasury of $40 to $50 per month. Apparently the only thing to stop this absurd increase is to abolish the board entirely by adopting an act creating one of five members elected from the county at large. There is no doubt that if some public spirited citizen should circulate the necessary petition to secure the submission of this law to the voters for adoption next fall, he would speedily find willing signers.
75 years ago
Franklin W. Fort, dry candidate for the Republican nomination for United States senator, was a drinker until the adoption of the 18th Amendment. He began drinking in his college days at Princeton, he told an audience in the court house in Freehold late last Friday afternoon. In 1917, had he been in the U.S. Congress, he would have voted against the adoption of the 18th Amend-ment, but since seeing the results of Prohibition in this country, especially when this country, in 1923-24, passed through a period of business depression without resorting to soup kitchens, he has been an unalterable prohibitionist. When he entered the contest for the nomination for U.S. senator, he had no idea that he had a chance of being nominated. Now he not only thoroughly believes that he will not only be nominated, but that he will be elected. “The American people can be led much farther than they can be drive,” he said. “I hope to see the people back to the observance of law and then enforcement of the prohibition laws. We have had political leadership in both parties who talked enforcement of the laws before election and then forget the subject until the next year. Our trouble has been mainly in leadership.” Discounting the stories of increased drinking in the colleges, and of graft and corruption engendered by the prohibition laws, Mr. Fort said there was never a time when graft and corruption was separable from the liquor traffic. Breweries formerly contributed large sums of money to both parties; Sunday closing laws were declared unenforceable; there were speakeasies in towns where saloons were supposed to close at 1 a.m., and they very largely kept open the balance of the night. Of 257 college professors recently canvassed, but three said there was more drinking in the colleges, while a large part of the balance said there was considerably less drinking in the colleges under prohibition.
50 years ago
The Marlboro Township Commit-tee last Thursday night was flooded with requests from about one half of the 40 residents present that requirements of the sanitary code should be made more stringent and that the township should proceed as soon as possible in setting up zoning restrictions. Miss Edna Netter, Dutch Lane Road, told the committee that it should have an ordinance limiting the number of persons living in “so-called shacks,” and limiting the number of persons per room. She also stated, “It was very foolish for the people in the township to allow the recently adopted subdivision ordinance to go through,” allowing half-acre tracts. “If we don’t zone for 1 acre, we’ll get all the undesirable dumpings,” she said. “Something should be done. As each summer goes by, the situation gets worse.” Mayor Dennis Buckley told her the Planning Board was working on a zoning ordinance and a building code and had them pretty well
completed.
25 years ago
With all matters settled, the Marl-boro and Manalapan commissioners of the Western Monmouth Utilities Authority are glad to go back to the business of running the authority. “I’m anxious to get back to work,” Marlboro Com-missioner Richard Previte said, following a decision by the Marlboro commissioners and the Township Committee not to pursue their case for the appointment of a fifth commissioner to break a tie over the appointment of professionals. “We are all friends and working very well on the issues.” Although Marlboro Commis-sioner Richard Kaplan said he has tried not to let the issue of the professionals interfere with the running of the authority, he indicated that the “cloud” between the Manalapan commissioners and the Marlboro commissioners had been lifted.
— Compiled by Dick Metzgar