James D. Phelan
James Duval Phelan (April 20, 1861 – August 7, 1930) was an American politician, civic leader, and banker. He served as nonpartisan Mayor of San Francisco from 1897 to 1902. As mayor he advocated municipally run utilities and tried to protect his constituents from the monopolistic practices of the trusts. He represented California in the United States Senate from 1915 to 1921 as a Democrat. Phelan was a progressive supporter of the policies of Woodrow Wilson and was a leader in the movement to restrict Japanese and Chinese immigration to the United States.
James D. Phelan
Early years[edit]
Phelan was born in San Francisco, the son of Irish immigrant and banker, James Phelan and Alice Kelly.
In 1881 Phelan graduated from the Catholic Jesuit college in San Francisco, St. Ignatius College. He had two sisters, Alice Phelan Sullivan and Mary Louis Phelan.[1]
Career[edit]
Phelan studied law at the University of California, Berkeley and then became a banker. He was elected Mayor of San Francisco and served from 1897 until 1902, in three 2-year terms. He pushed for the reform City Charter of 1898 in San Francisco. He served as the first president of the League of California Cities, which was created in 1898.[2] Phelan was elected as a Senator of the United States and served from 1915 to 1921.[3] During this time, Phelan established himself as a leader in what fellow anti-Japanese agitator V. S. McClatchy described as the "holy cause" of Japanese exclusion.[4] He remained active in the anti-Japanese movement after leaving office, securing then-presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson's support for restricting Japanese immigration in 1912 and helping to push through California's discriminatory alien land law in 1913.[5] Phelan was also an advocate for excluding Chinese from the United States. He promoted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and wrote an article "Why the Chinese Should Be Excluded"(1901)[6] in the North American Review, to increase support for the extension of these laws. In a debate with Imperial Chinese Consul Ho Yow, Phelan mentioned that the Chinese were an undesirable population because they had strong ties to their native country and were incapable of assimilating to the American society. This debate occurred just nineteen months after the outbreak of plague in San Francisco's Chinatown.[7] Phelan mentioned that the Chinese had different mindsets and that after twenty years, they remained unchanged in their values. He concluded that American progress would be stunted if the United States continued to allow Chinese immigrants to remain in the country, and that the Chinese workers were taking work away from white workers because they worked for so much lower wages and an accustomed lower standard of living, allowing their labor to be exploited unfairly, driving down conditions of labor and standards of living generally.[8]
Water and land rights[edit]
In the 1900s, Phelan bought land and water acreage in various places around the San Francisco Bay Area, and he obtained the rights to the water flow of the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Ethan A. Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt, tried to stop Phelan, but Roosevelt decided that the wild area could be used for "the permanent material development of the region."[9] Phelan's plans for the region included publicly funded water and electricity for a geographical entity he called "Greater San Francisco."[9] With his Bohemian Club fellows, Phelan sought to annex land at the perimeter of San Francisco Bay.[9]
Earthquake recovery efforts[edit]
During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake Phelan was a member of the Committee of Fifty, called into existence by Mayor Schmitz to manage the crisis. Afterward, when Dr. Edward Thomas Devine, representing the American Red Cross by appointment of President Roosevelt, was responsible for Relief and Red Cross Funds, ex-Mayor Phelan was allowed to assist Devine, thus keeping the money out of the hands of Schmitz and Abe Ruef. Phelan became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds when Devine was relieved of his post in July 1906.
Later life[edit]
After his time in the Senate, Phelan returned to banking and collected art. He remained active in the anti-Japanese movement, collaborating with McClatchy and the Japanese Exclusion League of California to successfully ban Japanese immigrants from entering the country with the Immigration Act of 1924.[5] First National Bank of San Francisco merged with Crocker National Bank in 1925.[18] Phelan died at his country estate Villa Montalvo in Saratoga in 1930. He is buried in the family mausoleum in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.
Works cited