Born near Glasgow, Scotland, Reid worked a number of jobs as a young adult—including wholesaler, army medic (during the Second Boer War), farmhand, lumberjack and dentist—and immigrated to Canada in 1903.

He involved himself in local politics and joined the recently formed UFA, which nominated him to run in the 1921 provincial election as its candidate in Vermilion.

The UFA won the election, and Reid served in several capacities in the cabinets of premiers Herbert Greenfield and John Edward Brownlee, where he established a reputation for competence and fiscal conservatism.

Reid took measures to ease Albertans' suffering, but believed that inducing a full economic recovery was beyond the capacity of the provincial government.

In this climate, Alberta voters were attracted to the economic theories of evangelical preacher William Aberhart, who advocated a version of social credit.

[1][2] He attended school in Glasgow and worked for several years in the wholesale provisions business before enlisting in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

To Reid's great surprise, he defeated his Liberal opponent and was elected to the legislature, along with 37 of his fellow UFA candidates—enough to form a majority government.

Early in his tenure, he presented a brief to cabinet recommending that ministers reduce their budgets and that the government create a purchasing department tasked with coordinating spending on supplies.

[5] Brownlee and Reid had a history of working closely not only on fiscal issues, but also on agricultural ones: in July 1923, they had travelled together to investigate the creation of a wheat pool in Alberta.

This trip included a meeting with cooperative pioneer Aaron Sapiro in San Francisco and a visit to Chicago's commodity market.

Reid asserted in response that Alberta's taxes had decreased since 1921, and criticised Howson for simultaneously attacking government spending and demanding new infrastructure projects.

[12] Reid also called for the creation of a federal wheat marketing board,[13] and proposed legislation—the Agricultural Industry Stabilisation Act—that protected from creditors any portion of a farmer's revenue that was used on operating costs for his farm or living expenses for his family.

[14] A more dangerous opponent than Howson was William Aberhart, the Calgary preacher who was proposing a form of social credit to cure the province's ills.

[15] T. C. Byrne suggests that this expressed support was dishonest, that Reid considered social credit in all of its forms to be "complete nonsense", and paid it lip service only because of its popularity among voters.

[16] Though he was gaining adherents, Aberhart insisted that his aim was not to enter politics, but to persuade existing parties to adopt social credit in their platforms.

[20] He closed by expressing pessimism that the delegates would choose to support social credit,[21] and this pessimism proved well-founded: though sources are inconsistent on the precise outcome—journalist John Barr reports that the exact vote was not recorded,[22] while historian Bradford Rennie states there were 30 affirmative votes out of 400 delegates present[23]—there is agreement that the resolution was handily defeated.

He argued that Aberhart's proposed means of raising revenue—"unearned increments" and "production levies"—were actually disguised taxes, which would be paid primarily by farmers, and that his claims that the necessary credit could be created "at the stroke of a fountain pen" on an accounting ledger were absurd.

[23] These themes were expounded on by Priestly and Brownlee, both of whom undertook speaking tours and radio addresses, and by legal and economic experts commissioned by the government.

[15][25][26] The second element of Reid's approach was to call into question Aberhart's understanding of social credit by exposing inconsistencies between his statements and the theories advanced by Douglas.

[28] Angered that the government had incurred this sizable expense without consulting the legislature, Conservative leader David Duggan introduced a motion calling on Aberhart to be hired in a similar capacity.

[15] Douglas, for his part, provided mixed results: on his way to Edmonton he publicly repudiated Aberhart's impugned pamphlet and also pronounced himself against the creation of a provincial social credit political vehicle.

[31] Moreover, his interim report to the government concerned itself primarily with political and legal, rather than economic, realities: he recommended setting up a provincially controlled media outlet to counter the anti-social credit propaganda he anticipated from the privately owned press, organizing a provincial government credit institution, and accumulating a stockpile of currency, stocks, and bonds.

The first element, attacking the validity of Aberhart's ideas directly, had failed because much of the Alberta public, in abject poverty, was not interested in hearing economic and legal arguments against social credit.

[34]The second part of the strategy, contrasting Aberhart's proposals with Douglas's, failed largely because both men were too evasive in their statements to make any kind of direct comparison of their views.

[26] Lakeland College historian Franklin Foster offers an additional explanation: when Albertans were exposed to the charismatic evangelist Aberhart and the dry technocrat Douglas, they preferred the former, irrespective of credentials or economic expertise.

[38] Time would prove Reid correct in most of his criticisms of Aberhart: he did lack a specific economic agenda, much of his legislation was struck down by the courts, and the depression did continue for several more years in Alberta.

Moreover, the province needed to borrow a large sum of money to meet even its short-term obligations, and the UFA, as a lame duck government, was unable to make promises to would-be creditors.

Reid responded in January 1936 that there had been no such mismanagement, that the province's financial problems were due to Social Credit's policies, both real and promised, and that had the UFA won re-election in 1935 it could have continued governing without serious difficulty.

[40] He also resisted insinuations that it had been too restrained in helping impoverished farmers: as late as 1969 he was offering the view that shrinking sources of provincial revenue made further assistance impossible.