Douglas Island news., 1904-02-17
UP TO BROWN His Official Acts to be Investi- gated by a Special from
 Washington.
A special dispatch from Washington


 DC, bearing date of Feb. 6, says:
 Special agents of the department of justice will be sent to Southeastern Al aska to examine into the affairs of the federal court for the first district, the examination having special reference to many reports that have come to the president and the attorney general re- fiecting upon the conduct of Judge Melville c. Brown.
 The four-year term of Judge Brown will expire next June, at the same time as the term of James Wickersham, fed eral judge for the Third (centraD dis trict. A bitter fight will be made against the reappointment of both judges. After the special agents have looked into the affairs of the court in Southeastern Alaska, they may pass on to the Valdez district, but this is some what unlikely, for no such charges have been filed against Judge Wickersham as against Judge Brown.
 Strong inducements from every i'm portant interest and from hundreds of individuals in the Copper River coan- try, the Yukon and the Koyukuk, urg- ing the reappointment of Judge Wick ersham, have been received here. The fight on the judge will be made by persons in the Nome district-implac able enemies whose hostility dates from the time when he temporarily held court in place of Judge Moves, and when there was notably vigorous ad- ministration of justice in the far North. Revenge and nothing else, the judges friends say, is at the bottom of the movement against him.
 A really serious prima facie case has been made out against Judge Brown. His friends defend him stoutly, and they may be able to disprove that there was any wrong motive in any of the questionable acts charged to the judge.
 One of the charges against Judge Brown relates to bis connection with one of the two rival water companies at Ketchikan. Written and verbal re- ports, with lots of ginger in them, have come to the president and attor, ney general that the judge owned a large interest in one of the companies, and that be held it during the earlier stages of the bitter fight in Ketchikan by which the town was actually de- prived of a public water supply for some time The charge is that Judge Brown disposed of his interest just be- fore the water company litigation was brought into his court; that the man to whom his interest was transferred was his friend, Watson J. Hills, clerk of the court, and that the application of the Hills interests for an injunction against the rival company was heard and granted by Judge Brown.
 It is also told against the judge that he has appointed the clerk of the court to important receiverships over prop critics involved at one time or another in litigation before the court. If this action was not illegal, the men who are trying to down the judge insist, never theless, that it was extremely improper.
 The transportation interests general ly are supposed to be opposed to the reappointment of Judge Brown, and their representatives are expected to use their influence against him.
 One late incident has made bad i'm pression here. That is the action of Judge Brown in permitting (if not pro- curing his own election as delegate to the Republican national convention It would be held less against the judge if he had been chosen as regular, , but he is delegate elected by the so- called ramp convention. It is looked upon as unusual for federal judge to be delegate to national political convention, but still more unusual for federal judge to be engaged in po- litical fight that resulted in contest ing delegation.
 Judge Browns side of the stories brought here against him has not been