Above average height, lean and with his neat thatch of graying hair combed back from his forehead, David Aiken Reed looked like he might have been born to the American aristocracy. During his time in the U.S. Senate, Reed was described as “a higher type of statesman” by admirers.
If not aristocrats, Reed’s parents were well-to-do; his father, James, was a successful lawyer and federal judge. David Reed attended excellent prep schools, attended Princeton University, got his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh Law School and began the practice of his profession in 1903.
When America entered the First World War, Reed served in the field artillery and rose to the rank of major. Once he returned to the United States, the future senator resumed his law practice.
David A. Reed had never held any elective office before being selected as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in 1922. Ironically, his predecessor, William E. Crow, had been appointed to serve in the Senate following Senator Philander Knox’s death in 1921. Crow died on August 8, 1922, and Reed was appointed to fill the vacancy, allowing him to run in the general election as the incumbent. Reed won the 1922 election for a full six-year term. At the time he was first sworn into office, Reed was only 42 years old, making him the second youngest member of the U.S. Senate. David A. Reed was also the second veteran of the First World War to be seated in the Senate. A large delegation of Pennsylvanians witnessed Reed taking the oath of office, including Governor William Sproul, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, and Senator George W. Pepper.
As Governor Sproul prepared to board a train bound for Harrisburg, he told a reporter, “A strong team,” speaking of Reed and Pepper. “I don’t know of any other pair of senators I’d trade them for.”
Throughout the decade of the 1920s, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States was financier and philanthropist Andrew Mellon. Mellon’s home state was Pennsylvania, and he was widely admired in GOP circles in the Keystone State. One of the most severe critics of Secretary Mellon in the United States Senate was Tennessee’s U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar. When Democrats assailed the secretary or his policies, it was oftentimes David A. Reed who rose to his feet to defend Mellon. One of Andrew Mellon’s many financial interests was the Aluminum Company of America. ALCOA was also a significant entity in Tennessee, with a plant in Blount County.
One such onslaught occurred when Democrats proposed to ask for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate ALCOA. Senator Reed offered a defense of Mellon yet again.
“The fact is, and I make this statement after recent investigation and I make it with full confidence of its accuracy, that Mr. Mellon owns less than 16 ½% of the stock of the Aluminum Co. of America. He owns less than 16 ½% of the preferred stock, which is nonvoting, so I am not quibbling about the distinction between voting and non-voting stock. His brother, Mr. Richard Mellon, owns a similar amount, and the two of them together own less than 33% of the stock in the company.”
Ultimately, the request for a special prosecutor failed on a vote of 36 to 33. As Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi poked Republican members of the Senate, he looked at David Reed and said, “Mellon’s man Friday.”
During a filibuster by several old guard GOP senators, Reed read off election returns from his state to pass the time and hold the floor. The issue was a committee headed by Reed’s distant cousin, Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, investigating massive expenditures in the 1926 elections that were allegedly in violation of the law.
The next morning, Reed commented upon a colleague’s admonition by crying, “These shrewish scoldings!” Minority leader Joseph T. Robinson interrupted, “Oh, I hope the senator is not petulant this morning.”
Before Reed could reply, Pat Harrison struck once again, sneering, “Let him [David A. Reed] go back and receive the cheers of the thugs and corruptionists of Pennsylvania and let them say to him that he is the Knight of the Closed and Corrupt Ballot Box…”
Vice President Charles Dawes, presiding over the Senate, began beating his gavel. “Oh, it’s a shame to spoil a good speech like this,” Harrison sighed.
“The chair,” Dawes barked, “regards the results of the present legislative session as primarily due to the defective rules of the Senate.” “This is the only great parliamentary body in the world where such a situation exists,” Dawes observed before adding, “The hour of 12 o’clock having arrived, the Senate stands in adjournment sine die.”
Senator David Reed threw flowers on the grave of the investigating committee headed by his colleague, James A. Reed of Missouri, when the Senate adjourned. “The Reed investigating committee is dead,” Reed of Pennsylvania lamented sarcastically. “There may be strong, healthy men on the committee, but of course, although a burglar may try to jimmy a strong box, there is such a thing in the law as forcible entry.”
Known for his acidulous tongue, Reed of Missouri snapped, “Tell Senator Reed of Pennsylvania that when I want a burglar, I will send to his state for a recommendation.”
If ever there was a state whose politics were machine-ridden, it was Pennsylvania. Political organizations thrived under a series of big-city bosses. In most states, big-city bosses were usually Democrats; in Pennsylvania, they were Republicans in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. With the Great Depression and the coming of Franklin Roosevelt, Pittsburgh fell to the Democrats in 1932. At the same time, the Vare machine in Philadelphia still turned a 150,000-vote majority for President Herbert Hoover in 1932, helping him to carry Pennsylvania.
William S. Vare had served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1913 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1926. Vare had won a heated three-way primary with Senator George Wharton Pepper and Governor Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot had refused to certify the results of the general election and testified before a Senate committee and brought with him several thousand illegal ballots. Senator Reed had not been especially friendly to Vare but finally fought to protect the boss’s seat in the Senate. It was to no avail as the Senate voted 58 – 22 to deny William S. Vare a seat in the United States Senate.
As the 1934 election approached, there were still some vocal critics of the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal, but perhaps none more so than Senator David A. Reed. The Pennsylvania senator was considered by many Washington observers to be the New Deal’s chief critic in the United States Senate.
Senator Reed faced determined opposition to his reelection in 1934, not only from the Democrats but also inside his own political party. Governor Gifford Pinchot had long ached to go to the United States Senate and had run twice before in 1914 and 1926. Finishing a second nonconsecutive term as Pennsylvania’s chief executive and barred from running again, Pinchot had his eyes on Reed’s seat in the Senate. The two came from different wings of the Republican Party, and Gifford Pinchot had been known for his devotion to the late Theodore Roosevelt and had followed the former president out of the GOP when TR bolted to run as a Progressive in the 1912 election. “I am a candidate against David A. Reed for the U.S. Senate,” Pinchot said in his declaration of candidacy. “Reed as Senator has run the errands and taken the orders of Mellon, the international bankers and the steel interests long enough. He should be replaced by a man who will take his orders only from the people.”
TIME, the most widely read news magazine in the world, described Pinchot as, “An old-time Progressive with New Deal sympathies…” Senator Reed sniffed that Pinchot was “An unscrupulous politician and a common scold.”
Following a brutal primary, Senator Reed won a majority of the votes cast in the Republican primary, defeating Governor Pinchot and two other candidates. In the fall election, Reed faced Joseph F. Guffey, an oil man who had long been prominent in Democratic politics in the Keystone State for decades. Reed ran as an opponent of the New Deal, while Guffey did precisely the opposite. Joe Guffey not only grabbed the coattails of Franklin Roosevelt, but swaddled himself in the whole cloth of the New Deal. FDR was “God’s inspired servant,” Guffey gushed during the senatorial race.
Despite the intense infighting engendered by Governor Pinchot’s challenge in the primary, Senator Reed was believed to be the favorite to be reelected as Pennsylvania was considered a Republican bastion. Joe Guffey won a decisive victory and helped to carry George Earle into the governorship in his wake. The Democratic sweep in Pennsylvania was thorough and the first time since the Civil War that Democrats had seen such victories in the Keystone State.
James A. Farley, simultaneously Postmaster General in the Roosevelt administration and Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, crowed over the 1934 election returns, noting the defeat of those GOP senators and congressmen who had run against the New Deal. Farley exulted that Reed had been placed “on the shelf” by Pennsylvania voters, and he believed it was permanent. Farley added, “What’s the use of kidding about it, we all know that Roosevelt carried Pennsylvania in 1932, and this election proves that.” The Democratic mahatma went on to assert, “The Republican Party is through.” Farley’s denial of Roosevelt having lost Pennsylvania two years earlier and his premature burial of the GOP notwithstanding, Jim Farley turned out to be right about one thing. David A. Reed would never again be a candidate for public office. Reed’s career in elective politics was over.
Immediately following the election, Reed sought a hunting license and planned a trip to Europe as his term in the Senate expired.
David A. Reed was somewhat restless in private life. While the former senator’s law practice was highly lucrative, Reed wanted to run for the United States Senate again. The GOP boss in Pennsylvania was Joseph Pew, a profoundly conservative and wealthy oil man. Reed had lost the 1934 election with his outspoken opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Since his defeat, the former senator had admitted he could see some worthwhile goals in some New Deal proposals. To Joe Pew, that was rank apostasy, if not outright heresy. When the party bosses were cool to his candidacy, the former senator announced he was not a candidate to return to the U.S. Senate. David A. Reed would remain retired from elective politics.
There were some notable dissenters of Boss Pew’s decision to back a candidate other than David A. Reed. The Punxsutawney Spirit published an editorial acknowledging its unhappiness about Reed not being the Republican candidate to contest once again his old seat in the Senate. Acknowledging it was true that Reed was certainly a conservative, the editorial stated the former senator had a good labor record, “and his former colleagues in the Senate, friend and political foe alike, had the utmost respect for his judgment.” The Spirit believed David A. Reed “stands head and shoulders above the crowd in ability.”
Reed was the chairman of Pennsylvania’s delegation to the 1940 Republican National Convention, which nominated a former Democrat, Wendell Willkie, for the presidency. The convention was held in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania delegation came to support their favorite son, Governor Arthur James, for the presidential nomination. Like every other experienced politician at the 1940 GOP convention, David Reed was astonished by the nomination of a genuine dark horse, Wendell Willkie.
David A. Reed remained active in GOP circles in Pennsylvania and continued to make money with his law practice and investments. For the last six months of his life, the former senator was ailing from a heart condition. Death found David A. Reed at his vacation home in Sarasota, Florida, where he was resting with his second wife in 1953.
© 2026 Ray Hill
