Dyer's Flyer

Representative Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer is a short full-paunched man from Missouri, red of face, generous of nose and nature. He has been in the House 16 years and ranks next to the chairman on the House Judiciary Committee. Aged 58, he is nobody's fool on the law. A 3% beer man, he voted against the Five & Ten Act. He likes to play the stock market.

Last autumn his broker advised him to buy some common shares of Hiram Walker, Inc. To Mr. Dyer's delight, the stock went up to 93 7/8. He held on. Then the shares slid down to 66. Not until then did Mr. Dyer learn, he says, that Hiram Walker is a Canadian whiskey stock. His shock and grief at losing his money were exceeded only by his vexation at learning he had become involved in a liquor business. He sold his stock at a loss and, last week, wrote a letter of protest to the New York Curb Association, the market where Hiram Walker is listed. Loudly he protested that dealings in liquor stocks on U. S. exchanges are, or ought to be, illegal under the 18th Amendment. He demanded a refund of his losses.

Curb officials were unmoved by Mr. Dyer's plight. They thought they smelled some kind of Prohibition plot. Mostly they marveled that one so wise as the Number Two Man of the nation's great House Judiciary Committee, and a Man from Missouri at that, should have speculated ignorantly upon the Curb, and gotten pinked.