FOOL KILLER: THE KLARENC WADE MAK VERSION FROM 1917-1918

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE

THE FOOL KILLER (1918) – The 1918 one-shot publication called The Fool Killer collected written works by Dr Klarenc Wade Mak, poet, author and socialist political candidate for mayoral office in Kansas City, MO around 1918. Mak had also written Ekkoes (sic) from the Hart (sic) and Mental Dinamite (sic).

Mak’s Fool Killer was yet another of the many incarnations of this fictional, quasi-supernatural vigilante featured in folk tales and political satires from the 19th Century through today. The Fool Killer possibly originated among the “Hill Portugee” (Hill Portuguese) of the American south.

Those oral traditions of this deadly character may date back to the 1830s as Melungeons melded the Portuguese folk hero Longstaff with Tennessee traditions about a supernatural figure who killed any non-Melungeon “fools” who tried stealing their legendary gold.

During the 1850s Fool Killer tales were fused with political satire and commentary as Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans launched his series of Fool Killer Letters. Those fictional epistles, penned by Evans himself, were presented as tongue-in-cheek confessions from the Fool Killer about the political and social menaces he murdered to make the world a better place.

Evans added another element to Fool Killer lore at the start of the U.S. Civil War, as the vigilante grew disgusted with both the North and the South and hibernated in a cave for years. By 1870 Evans revived the character and his “letters” by saying the Fool Killer had emerged from hibernation dressed in the latest men’s fashions and ready to start killing fools once more.

Other versions of the Fool Killer were depicted by authors like Joel Chandler Harris, George Ade, Stephen Vincent Benet, Helen Eustis and O. Henry.

Klarenc Mak’s 1918 work is sometimes confused with James Larkin Pearson’s 1910-1917 and 1919-1929 publication called The Fool-Killer. Both Mak and Pearson wrote poetry, both published works using the Fool Killer name and both were open about their sympathy with socialist politics of the time period.

Per the surviving correspondence of Eugene V Debs, Dr Mak once invited Debs to speak in Kansas City, MO at an event where Mak and other socialist candidates would be appearing.

Despite the “socialist” label, Klarenc Mak’s Fool Killer had that quality I have appreciated about nearly all the Fool Killer items I’ve come across: Attitudes which would outrage BOTH the political left AND right here in the 21st Century. Even the socialist label as Mak’s writings define it refers to workers, NOT “people who want something for nothing” as he calls them. (He also calls them parasites.) So even that brand of “socialism” would offend both right-wingers and left-wingers of today. For different reasons, of course. 

Mak’s Fool Killer expressed disapproval of capitalism AND disapproval of abortion, so again we see that both the Left and the Right of today would be hard pressed to force a quick and easy label on this Fool Killer. Pretty refreshing!

Before looking at the cultural and political targets of the folk figure this time around I wanted to show some examples of Mak’s incarnation of the Fool Killer expressing sentiments tweaking both ends of the political spectrum by today’s standards:   

“When a man has lived long enough to have tried all the bad things in this world he generally wants to hang on a little longer just to see if the Republicans and Democrats won’t invent some NEW evils.”

“The highest part of an education is finding out how much of it isn’t so.” (In the distant past this would have applied to right-wing domination of the educational system, but for decades now it has applied to left-wing domination of the educational system.)

“Wrong ideas are not an education, they are mental weeds, the base materials that prejudice is made out of.”

“If your religion can’t stand being criticized it is in the same class with the gold ring that’s afraid of acids. Such a ring is not gold at all – only a base pretender; and the same with the religion that can’t stand the acid test of criticism – it’s just as spurious and should be rejected.” (Left-wing zealots try to censor all criticism of Islam, right-wing zealots try to censor all criticism of Christianity and Judaism. At present, however, the left-wing book-burners have the help of the Silicon Valley Robber Barons/ Techno Fascists to help them in their censorship jihad.)

“The misdeeds of Democrats are about as plentiful as the drops of water in all the oceans, while the crimes of Republicans are as numerous as the seconds in Eternity.”

“According to the politicians and the Big Skinners of Labor, railroad men are only human beings about two weeks before election.”

“The D.C. that is written after the Potomac city of Washington means Deceitful City.”

“Some people would rather be in the swim than in the right.”

“What’s the difference between the Union Man and the Scab when they both vote the same capitalist ticket? And where would you draw the dividing line between the pious church member and the bartender who vote the same old Republican or Democrat ticket?”

“Only weak and worthless ideas require force to propagate them.”

“Every vote for the old parties will make the hole in the doughnut bigger and the milk bottle smaller.”

“Thinking is death to chains. Believing is a shackle factory.”

“There’d be no hell in this world if you boobs wouldn’t vote for it.”

“Contented ignorance has no wings and is the best slave in the world.”

“As long as the workers vote for what they don’t want they’ll have plenty of it.”

“A Democrat couldn’t be any worse than he is unless he had been born twins and the other half of himself had gone Republican.”

PART TWO: Mak’s Fool Killer attacks child labor, buffalo slayers, corrupt politicians and tycoons plus other targets.

This part looks at the uniquely stylized America that Mak depicted his Fool Killer traveling through, delivering poetry recitations and lectures plus sharing recipes (?) during down time between slaying fools. Mak’s America seems like a Frank Baum-influenced alternate reality filled with beautiful scenery but marred by politicized religion plus the tyranny of callous tycoons and the elected officials they have in their pockets.

The Fool Killer is followed on his meanderings around the country following the harsh winter of 1916 into 1917 and up through late 1917. Our title figure takes on quasi-chivalric airs and his escapades an urbanized Faerie Queen feel. He spouts original poetry at the drop of a hat but retains the jarring element of violent judgmentalism that afflicts every incarnation of the Fool Killer.    

The Klarenc Wade Mak version of the figure seems to regard his mission in a Darwinian way, like he’s a natural force cleansing the land of fools the way that harsh, unforgiving nature inevitably weeds out those too weak to survive. As ever, the delusions of a serial killer taint the high-minded objectives that the Fool Killer pays lip service to.

Not that our folk figure’s targets don’t deserve to be opposed. This Fool Killer battles the abomination of Child Labor, the profit-mongers who sponsor it AND the Judges who perpetuate it through their decisions striking down attempts to eliminate the ugly practice.

He also champions women’s suffrage and fights for the working class against both the bloated rich pigs who exploit them AND the sleazy Union Leaders who sell out the workers in exchange for privileges that only management can hand out.

Here’s a fuller examination of this Fool Killer’s adventures as he wanders Mak’s Surreal States of America:

*** Geographically, this book is set mostly in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. 

*** He encounters fish ice-skating on the under-side of the ice-choked rivers during the harsh winter of ’16 into ’17.

*** With the arrival of Spring the Fool Killer spouts volumes of verse glorifying nature taking back the land from the dead of winter. 

*** The folk figure mentions using side-winding “smart” bullets tipped with cyanide and rattlesnake venom.

*** Our title character takes on the atrocity of Child Labor in a big way.

*** The Fool Killer calls for “the hardest and swiftest punch” against Food Speculators, whom he blamed for pockets of starvation in America.

*** He encounters an extravagantly accommodating hotel in western Nebraska that doesn’t even charge its customers. No sinister catch, it’s just part of the surreal nature of Mak’s America, a homespun Twilight Zone.

*** The Fool Killer attacks people shooting buffalo just for the hell of it on the Great Plains.

*** In a quasi-Post Apocalyptic sequence our “hero” comes across the devastation wrought on the Nemeha River by industrialization.

*** A dinosaur tooth recently discovered was so huge the Fool Killer joked that it proved dinosaurs were ancestors of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt.

*** The Fool Killer gleefully recounted the dispatching to Hell of traveling salesmen who lied about being single just so they could seduce innocent young women on their sales route.

*** Like Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans’ Fool Killer in the 1800s this version of the character attacks men beating their wives and children. 

*** On a lighter note the folk figure attacked merchants who slipped gravel in with their salted peanuts to make the packages weigh more without really containing the advertised amount of peanuts.

*** When not walking, our title character rode the Frisco Railroad (the St Louis to San Francisco railroad) around the country.

*** Our wandering vigilante is at his busiest in Oklahoma, which for some reason he feels is the cesspool of the country. He calls it “the victim of the Profit System and the Democrat Party.” In the Sooner State the Fool Killer attacks:

… gougers and grifters 

… evangelistic religious fanatics that the Fool Killer describes as “600 percent Christians”

… land-grabbers and Highway Robbers 

… gamblers and casino owners and loan sharks 

… white-slavers, train robbers and bank robbers

… white-collar criminals ripping off the Indians on reservations

… pro-German sympathizers (America had entered World War One in April 1917)

*** Mak’s Fool Killer feels that Oklahoma is in danger of collapsing into “a Primeval Jungle.” Unable to exterminate an entire state, in the end our title character decides on a return to Kansas City, Missouri, the favorite haunt of this Fool Killer, just as North Carolina was for the 1850s-1880s incarnation.

           This throwing up of his hands at his inability to depopulate an entire state is reminiscent of a much earlier incarnation of the Fool Killer who abandoned his “God-appointed” role to kill all the fools in Kentucky. (In some versions it was Tennessee or other states.)   

I WILL EXAMINE MORE FOOL KILLER LORE SOON. KEEP CHECKING BACK FOR UPDATES.

FOR MY LOOK AT JOE MAGARAC, THE STEEL MILL VERSION OF JOHN HENRY AND PAUL BUNYAN, CLICK HERE 

Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.