Biography
James B. Carey was the first national president of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, elected when the union was founded in 1936. He was arrested during the RCA-Victor strike in Camden, New Jersey that summer. Police took him into custody as he walked away from the picket lines and charged him with inciting a riot. Carey later served as the CIO’s secretary-treasurer and became the founding president of the International Union of Electrical Workers. He was born in Philadelphia on August 12, 1911 and died at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland on September 11, 1973.
The July 7, 1936 Daily Worker recounts his Camden RCA-strike arrest while merely walking near the picket line, saying police treated his shoes as grounds for suspicion. It describes an initial inciting-riot accusation followed by a sixty-day disorderly-conduct sentence, differing from the previously recorded $100 fine. Neither account supplies a complete actual custody total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n162-NY-jul-07-1936-DW-Q.pdf#page=2
Fine reported in the Camden RCA strike court session
The July 4, 1936 Daily Worker, page 2, describes the Thursday court session in a July 3 Camden dispatch: July 2. It reports that James B. Carey, national president of the union, was fined $100 after trying to reach the union office through the strikebreakers. The article alleges police and prosecution misconduct, but does not state Carey’s physical release day or prove he served an alternative jail term. The fine amount is recorded without inferring any new custody endpoint.
The English youth section identifies the 24-year-old United Electrical and Radio Workers president arrested while walking away from Camden RCA-Victor picket lines, accused of inciting riot. It explicitly reports release after four hours on $500 bail. The issue does not give an arrest day. This is a documented initial detention in the existing RCA case, not proof that the separately reported sixty-day sentence was actually served; the earlier $100 fine/sixty-day punishment discrepancy remains unresolved.
The Labor in Action column identifies the 24-year-old union president arrested and jailed on an inciting-to-riot accusation during the Camden RCA strike. This independently corroborates the existing RCA prosecution; it supplies no new arrest day or complete period of custody.
The October 3, 1973 Congressional Record tribute and reprinted New York Times obituary describe Carey beginning union organizing at the Philco Radio Corporation in Philadelphia in 1929, helping organize the Phil-Rod Fishing Club as a union nucleus, and negotiating the 1933 Philco strike settlement. They identify his wife as Margaret McCormick, whom he married in 1938, and his children James and Patricia. His later public work included service on President Truman's Commission on Civil Rights and labor representation at the United Nations Association. These biographical details concern the existing electrical-workers leader; they do not establish a new detention or alter the unresolved duration of his 1936 Camden custody.
Congressional Record, October 3, 1973, printed page 32697 (PDF page 45).
