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. Early years Phelan was born in San Francisco, the son of James Phelan and Alice Kelly. James Phelan (1819–1892) was an Irish immigrant who became wealthy during the California Gold Rush as a trader, merchant, banker and real estate investor. He founded the First National Gold Bank, later “known as the First National Bank of San Francisco.” This was not only the “first national bank in California,” but also “the second gold bank in the nation.” This business venture was followed by his assistance in the “organization of the American Construction and Dredging Company.” This company’s purpose was to dredge the Panama Canal. In 1889, he established the Mutual Savings Bank of San Francisco. Not only was this what James Phelan was born into, but Phelan’s father also “established a copartnership with him comprising all of his business interests.” The obituary of James Phelan’s mother, Alice, was published in February of 1900 in The San Francisco Call. It is here where her birthright is recounted, stating that she came from “one of the most historic families of the ancient Irish nobility...the O’Mores of Leix.” Their family line was struck by great tragedy in the “fearful massacre of Mullagast” that almost took out their entire family. Alice eventually moved to Brooklyn, New York where she met her future husband, also originally from Ireland, James Phelan. It was after they met that he was to head west to “lay the foundation of the vast fortune which he afterward accumulated.” 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. Career 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