FOOL KILLER PART SIXTY-NINE: MARCH 1914

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. 

PART 69 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the March 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure:

*** Mining companies that paid their employees in the infamous Company Scrip which wasn’t real money but could only be spent at the Company Store just to let the mine owners get back much of what they paid their miners as those employees had to buy groceries, clothing, etc. at Company Stores since no one else would accept the scrip as payment.

*** Democrat President Woodrow Wilson’s administration for supposedly making the economy so bad that more and more working-class people would be killing themselves with the new coffin-shaped mercury bichloride pills.

        NOTE: As I’ve mentioned in earlier Fool Killer installments, I find it fascinating how in the 19-teens and twenties socialists (and Pearson openly called himself one) hated Woodrow Wilson and denounced him as an ally of capitalist tycoons. Today, of course, socialists tend to like Wilson and it’s Republicans who hate him, blaming his policies for supposedly setting the U.S. on what they see as the disastrous route that we are still on today in their eyes. 

        As another reminder of how one cannot do one-to-one comparisons with political affiliations then and now, bear in mind that Wilson opposed voting rights for women, but Pearson and his Fool Killer supported them.   

*** Get-rich-quick authors who were selling books and courses about how to write photoplays (called screenplays today) so that the buyer could make money writing for the ever-growing movie industry. So basically, the Syd Fields of 1914.

*** The Charlotte Observer newspaper, where Pearson used to work, for supposedly having many employees who smoked tobacco and used drugs despite their editorial pages always condemning the “evils” of smoking and drug use. NOTE: Pearson counted alcohol and Coca-Cola as “drugs.”   

*** The Fool Killer took the usual joking pokes at the ever-changing fashions in women’s hats.

*** He again used his term “Redemocans” for what he also called “Republicrats” and what we today often call “the Uniparty.”

*** The Charlotte Observer editorial staff for what he considered to be the lies they used to defend Wilson’s economic policies.

*** In a veritable laundry list of items, the Fool Killer held Wilson responsible for (figures approximate) – 

        10,000 unemployed workers in Virginia

        300,000 in New York City

        3,000 just laid off by the Carnegie Works in Sharo, Pennsylvania

        20,000 unemployed in Portland, Oregon

        2,000 just laid off by the American Car & Foundry Company in Madison, Wisconsin

        25,000 in Newark, New Jersey

        60,000 unemployed workers in Detroit, Michigan

*** The Democrat Party in general for the way he felt they always caused high unemployment and vicious treatment of workers. He compared Wilson to the last Democrat President Grover Cleveland.

*** The United States Supreme Court for its recent decision in United States v Lexington Mill & (grain) Elevator Company. Pearson saw the decision as the court siding with Big Business over the people regarding potentially harmful additives in food. 

Some of the Fool Killer’s pithier remarks this time around:

“Grover’s gone but Grover’s times are coming back.”

“The greatest crime on the calendar now is to be a poor man out of a job.”

“The world moves. It probably finds it cheaper to move than to pay rent.”

“The officials are perfectly willing to fill the empty stomachs of the jobless workers – with lead.” (And Matewan hadn’t even happened yet!)

*** Like I always say, it’s interesting to read the viewpoints presented in this old publication, even the ones you disagree with.