Biography
Alex Reid was secretary of the Progressive Miners Committee. He and Pat Toohey were arrested in Scranton September 26, 1925, taken before Magistrate P. J. McNamara September 28 while federal action was considered, and sentenced September 30 to six months in the workhouse for vagrancy. Attorney Isaac Shoor challenged the confinement. Judge Newcomb granted habeas relief, and both were released on recognizance October 27, with an order to leave town. This source does not establish an identity link to the separately recorded Harlan miner Alex Reed. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n247-NYE-oct-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
Page 6's Young Workers League convention report says Jack Stachel read a letter from Pat Toohey of the league and Alex Reid of the party, written from jail at Scranton while imprisoned for participation in the anthracite miners' strike. The full native text and established Scranton cohort confirm Alex Reid, despite degraded OCR Al Reid and the unrelated Harlan Alex Reed record. The letter documents continuing confinement during the existing September-October 1925 case, not a separate arrest or a completed six-month sentence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n228-NYE-oct-07-1925-DW-LOC.pdf
Sources
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
Reid’s article “Lewis Performs for the Anthracite Miners” identifies him as secretary of the Progressive Miners International Committee and discusses the Scranton tri-district convention held June 29–July 3. Its closing appeal gives his role as international secretary of the Progressive Miners’ Committee of the UMWA. The article carries an explicitly captioned individual photograph, preserved here as a crop of the original scan with no retouching or generated detail. It documents his labor work before the separately recorded September 1925 arrest.
Daily Worker, October 7, 1925; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
