Leonidas C. Dyer - St. Louis Attorney and Reformer

St. Louis Attorney and Reformer

Further information: Usury

After the war, the young Dyer served as assistant circuit attorney in St. Louis, where he championed an anti-usury reform campaign that eventually gained national attention. Dyer successfully represented a railroad clerk who was being charged 34% monthly (408% annual) interest on a $100 loan after having paid $480 interest in 14 months. None of the interest payment to the money lender was used to pay off the principal. The money lender, in front of Att. Dyer, tore up the railroad workers loan. Dyer organized a group of wealthy merchants in St. Louis who through investigations were able to keep interest rates low in Missouri.

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