$7,500 Brick

On trial in Manhattan last week for using the mails to defraud were Lynn E. W'olfe, onetime auditor of Joseph Pulitzer's estate, and Murray Olf, stock promoter. They were charged with mulcting investors in Southern Cities Supply Corp. of $1,700,000. An unexpected witness against them in Federal Court was Illinois' white-maned Representative Henry Thomas Rainey, Democratic floor leader of the House. Democrat Rainey's story:

In 1928 he was induced to buy 200 shares of Southern Cities Supply stock for $15 each on the assurance that they would soon be worth $33. He was told the company was building a great brick kiln at Birmingham. After a 20-c- dividend had been declared he bought 300 more shares. Said he: ''The proposition was so appealing to me I fell for it promptly." Soon thereafter dividends ceased, Representative Rainey was out $7,500.

Witness Rainey went off for luncheon with the judge while Republican editors chuckled over how a longtime member of the House Ways & Means Committee, a candidate for Speaker and a ranking financial expert of the Democratic party could be so easily gulled.

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