The San Francisco call., 1896-03-08
MARTIN kELLY'S PISTOL,
It Stayed in His Hip Pocket
and Jim Browns Blood
Was Unspilled.
An Account of an Interesting Incl.
dent of One of Martin Kelly's
Political Days.

Martin Kelly and ex-Assembly lyman Jim
Brown OF the Twenty eighth District both
live and both, unseathed, tell their respect
i've tales of meeting yesterday forenoon
in saloon at First and Folsom streets at
which there was an exchange of hot and
highly uncomplimentary cuss words, a
few rather harmless blows and threats of
murder expressed by pantomimIc reach
ingS for hip pockets.
Martin Kelly had not yet started for the
Baldwin Hotel to hold his first political
conference of the day with Senator Ma
honey because politics of the Baldwin
Hotel grade don't begin until after the
sun crosses Kearny street. Kelly was inn
proving the forenoon hours by doing
Twen ty-eighth District politics, and in the
course of his political labors he met in the
saloon mentioned James B. Brown. who
went to the Legislature a few years ago
when Kelly ran his junkshop and the Re-
publican end of the Twenty-eighth Dis
trict and who is now a boss stevedore and
a man with quite strong following of po-
litical friends.
In years agone Brown was a valued
friend and effective lieutenant OF Martin
Kellyis in the Twenty eighth, and on his
political books Kelly's account is a pretty
good sized one. But Jim Brown has not
been a political friend of Martin Kelly's
for some time. He has long declared that
Kelly didp' t do the right and decent thing
By him and others of Kelly's old friends
in the Twenty-eighth when Kelly had pat
ronage to dispense.
So they were not two friends that met at
the bar. Both joined in the same round of
drinks which somebody set up, and then.
according to the stories OF the affair told
by eye-witnesSes, a conversation started
between the two that quickly passed from
tartness to the use of cuss words. Brown
in vigorous style twitted Kelly with
throwing down" his old friends who
helped make him a great statesman in
years gone by.
''And now you are tying
up with a white-headed old keyhole de,
tective and giving the go-by to all the
friends that helped make you,". Brown Is
reported 10 have declared. "Who did more
than jim Brown to take you out of your
waterfront iunkshop and give you grip2
Now you're trying to throw down the
people that made you"
"Well, who and what are you2" roared
Kelly with scorn. "Why, - you,
picked you up from stevedore's lob and
sent you to the halls OF legislation.
Like flash came a succession OF blffs,
bat friends jumped into the melee and
separated the com batants. Then both got
W TIE Sidewalk Will SidTSS duO IOdlo, anu
on the sidewalk each eyed the other, ready
for a backward right-hand reach, and then
each got his hand on his hip pocket. a
gun-fght seemed the programme for the
next minute, when again friends got in
and saved bloodshed. That was why
Martin Kelly neither let nor lost gore
while doing politics yesterday forenoon in
the Twenty-eighth District The affair
has intensified the political situation of
Martin Kelly in the waterfront district,
which has seen his progress from little
junkshop to a pretty good-sized junk
shop-from a humble house to better
house, and then to two-story one with a
front stoop, and from the conquest of a
district primary to the conquest OF muni-
cipal conventions of the past.
Martin Kelly called at THE CALL Office
last night and denied that he had had an
alteration with james B. Brown. He
said that there was absolutely no truth in
the story; that he and Brown were the
best of friends; that they had always been
on good terms, and he never carried a
gun under any circumstances.