James Graham Phelps Stokes, known as Graham Stokes (March 18, 1872 – April 8, 1960) was an American socialist, railroad president, political activist, and philanthropist. He was president of the Nevada Central Railroad for forty years.
He is best remembered as a founding member and key figure in the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and as the husband of Rose Pastor Stokes, a radical union organizer, birth control advocate and activist in the Communist Party of America.
Early years Stokes was born in New York City to one of the city's most prosperous families. His parents were Helen Louisa Phelps and Anson Phelps Stokes, a banker, railroad owner, and real estate developer."J.G. Phelps Stokes on Lower East Side, New York Times, November 28, 1902.Arthur Zipser and Pearl Zipser, Fire and Grace: The Life of Rose Pastor Stokes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989; pg. 28. He grew up in a large house on 229 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. His family spent the summers in their 100-room house in the Berkshires— the largest private home in the United States at the time. The family fortune came from Manhattan real estate, the Phelps Dodge mining empire, a and railroad in Nevada.
He attended the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, receiving his Ph.B. degree there in 1892. There, he was a member of the Fraternity of Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall). He celebrated his graduation with a trip around the world in 1892.
He also attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, receiving an M.D. in 1896. While at Columbia University, Stokes became concerned with the plight of the American underclass and poverty. In 1895, Stokes became a member of the Council of the University Settlement and worked for the YMCA.Renshaw, Patrick. "Rose of the World: The Pastor-Stokes Marriage and the American Left, 1905–1925." New York History 62, no. 4 (1981): 415–438. . Although his goal was to become a medical missionary, he never practiced medicine because he had to take over the family businesses from his ailing father.Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, pg. 29. Following receipt of his medical degree, Stokes continued with a year of graduate study of political science at Columbia.
Stokes served in Squadron A of New York National Guard from 1896 to 1901. During the Spanish–American War, he was a private in the U.S. Army cavalry, but he did not deploy overseas. At this same time, Graham's father was active in the Anti-Imperialist League, described by one historian as "a group of substantial citizens" opposed to American intervention in the Philippines.
Career Stokes was president of the Nevada Central Railroad from 1898 to 1938. He was also president of the Nevada Company with offices at 47 Cedar Street and president of the Woodbridge Company at 100 Williams Street. While Stokes did participate in commercial affairs throughout his life, serving variously as an officer of businesses such as the Phelps Stokes Corporation, the Austin Mining Company, and the State Bank of Nevada, Stokes's primary interests and concerns lay in the realm of public affairs.Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, p. 30.
In 1902, Stocks moved to the Lower East Side to take up settlement work. One of his friends explained, "Mr. Stokes is very much interested in social problems and he takes deep interest in questions concerning capital and labor. He is a thorough democrat in his spirit and feeling, and is opposed to social distinctions which separate the classes... He believes in plain people and feels that every effort which helps them to develop themselves is something to their advantage. He therefore feels that he can serve society best by living in a house which denies the existence of classes and which claims equal opportunities for everybody."
Volunteer workers at the University Settlement received no pay, but did receive modest quarters on the top floor. Historians Arthur Zipser and Pearl Zipser describe the scene: "There was a lively intellectual atmosphere on the top floor of the University Settlement house, where the highly educated, mostly rich, young social workers had their residence, dining, and club rooms. It was a world apart from the lower floors of the building, where the regular settlement house functions were carried out among the denizens of the surrounding ghettoized slum. This separation between leaders and led was not the goal they were aiming for, which was the outreach of the privileged to the downtrodden. But the separation was real."Zipser and Zipser, Fire and Grace, pp. 30–31.
In addition to being a member of the Council of the University Settlement, Stokes founded and became chair of the board of Hartley House in New York City. He also served on committees of the Church Federation, the People's Institute, the Prison Association of New York, and the Trade School Committee. He was also associated with American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, Constitutional Democracy Association, The Legal Aid Society, National Security League, and the Outdoor Recreation League. In 1905, Stokes was the United States delegate at the International Prison Congress in Budapest, Hungary.
In 1905, Stokes became a candidate for public office, running for president of the New York Board of Aldermen, representing the Municipal Ownership League.Max Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 1905–1921: Origins of the Modern American Student Movement. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979; p. 6. Stokes was the second name on a ticket that featured William Randolph Hearst for Mayor of New York, causing contemporaries to refer to the Municipal Ownership League as "Hearst's League."Stokes, I Belong to the Working Class, p. 108. The decision to run down the ticket with the multimillionaire publisher was not a popular one with Stokes' radical new wife, who wanted defeat for Hearst and his associates. She later recalled:
"One evening, passing my living-room window, I heard Graham's name flung upward from the street below. I leaned out to see. A very fiery young man was making a speech from a soapbox on the corner. A little knot of men, women, and children had collected about him. He was pointing up at my window—at me. He was saying things about us. I strained to hear... 'Municipal Ownership is no solution,' he cried, 'so long as the propertied classes own the municipalities. J.G. Phelps Stokes is a rich man—a man of property; he belongs to the capitalist class. The Municipal Ownership League is a rich man's creation. W.R. Hearst belongs to the millionaire class. This is his government. He doesn't want to change the government. The Socialist Party, the workers' party, and what we want is a government of, for, and by the people who work.' 'Hear, hear!' I called down, leaning far out of the window and clapping my hands.Stokes, I Belong to the Working Class, pg. 109.The campaign did well, but Stokes was disillusioned with the reform movement at the end of the campaign. He joined the Socialist Party of America in 1906. Even before that, Stokes was enlisted in the Socialist cause by the author Upton Sinclair, who sought to establish a new group fostering the dispassionate study of socialist ideas on college campuses around America, an organization to be called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS). Stokes was one of ten signatories of the published call for the new organization which appeared in the spring of 1905, joining Sinclair, author Jack London, attorney Clarence Darrow, sociologist and author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others.Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, p. 5. The first formal meeting of the organization, held at a restaurant in New York City late in the summer of 1905, elected Stokes as second vice president of the ISS, serving with London as president and Sinclair as first vice president.Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, pp. 9–10. In May 1907, London resigned from the ISS presidency and Stokes assumed the position.Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, p. 25. Stokes had a leading role in the organization for the next decade, serving as president until 1917 and speaking far and wide on topics of contemporary concern under ISS auspices. In the spring of 1909, Stokes and his wife went on the road for a full month, speaking at colleges throughout New England, where they distributed ISS literature for free or at a nominal charge to interested undergraduates.Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, p. 36.
Stokes ran for New York State Assembly in 1908 as a Socialist candidate. However, he was not an effective speaker and could not engage well with audiences. He also ran for mayor of Stamford, Connecticut. However, Stokes was living a split life—a socialist who was running the family railroad and silver mine.
Stokes resigned from the Socialist Party of America in April 1917 over the question of American participation in World War I, objecting to the party's staunchly antimilitarist stance and its vote against the Selective Service System. He left radical politics after this period and joined several military and patriotic organizations.
Stokes was a frequent author of articles on current social problems and letters of opinion to various journals and newspapers. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Tuskegee Institute.Rose Pastor Stokes, I Belong to the Working Class: The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes. Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling, eds. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992; p. 112.
Publications
Books and pamphlets Hartley House: And Its Relations to the Social Reform Movement. New York: Hartley House, 1897. Dear Comrade: The Intercollegiate Socialist Society Has Now Entered Upon its Second Year. with Jack London and Upton Sinclair. New York City: The Society, 1906. Down with Democracy! Down with Authority!: Lenine. New York : National Security League, circa 1919. Industrial Paralysis under the Bolsheviki: An Examination of Falling Off of Productivity of Manufacturing Centers under 'Dictatorship of Proletariat'. New York: American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, 1919. A Brief Sketch of the History of the 244th Coast Artillery (9th Regiment, N.Y.) 16731924. New York: 1924. The Gap in the "Lineage of the Ninth Regiment of the State of New York," with Leonhard A. Keyes. New York: 1953. The One Lord of East and West. (Introduction by Swami Sivananda) India: Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy, 1956. The Ever-Returning Christ: And Other Writings. Rishikesh, India: Yoga Vedanta Forest University, 1958.
Articles "On the Relation of Settlement Work to the Evils of Poverty," International Journal of Ethics, vol. 11, no. 3, (April 1901) pp. 340–345.J. G. Phelps Stokes. "On the Relation of Settlement Work to the Evils of Poverty." International Journal of Ethics 11, no. 3 (1901): 340–345. . "Public Schools as Social Centres," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 23 (May 1904), pp. 49–55.J. G. Phelps Stokes. "Public Schools as Social Centres." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 23 (1904): 49–55. .
As editor The Socialism of To-day: A Source-Book of the Present Position and Recent Development of the Socialist and Labor Parties in All Countries, Consisting Mainly of Original Documents. Editor, with William English Walling, Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Harry W. Laidler. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1916
Honors He received the Military Cross of the State of New York in 1920. Stokes' papers are housed at Columbia University in New York City. The collection includes more than 1600 cataloged letters. A collection of letters received by Stokes and his wife are housed at Yale University.James Graham Phelps Stokes Papers (MS 1587). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. accessed May 29, 2022.