Newspapers / The Fool-Killer (Pores Knob, … / April 1, 1921, edition 1 / Page 1
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Volume XI. FULL AS A TICK. Lord, Harding, I long tobeperfectly fat; 4 want to come in there and hang up my hat; Invite me to dinner, and do it right quick Now feed me, and I shall be full as s. tick. 9ere let no infernal old Democrat dwell, And don't give the Socialists nary a smell; To get this good eating thy feet I would lick Mow feed me, and I shall be full as a tick. Lord Harding, look here how imploring I come, And help me to lengthen my belly band some; I've fasted long and I am nervous and Sick Now feed me and I shall be full as a tick. DYING WHILE WE WAIT. Looky here, you old pot-gutted aon-of-a-gun, I want to ask your &ead a few questions. And if your head can't answer, then I want to ask your belly. Suppose you were starving to death and your only chance of living another week was the kind of "help" that America has been giving to the starving of Europe and Asia, don't you reckon your chance would be purty tolerable sum? Sam-take my hide if I ain't honestly ashamed of the caper we have cut m pretending to help the famine-stricken lands. There they are, starving to death by the millions. I am not now dis cussing the CAUSE of the hun ger it may be due to different causes. War in some places. Drouths and crop-failures in oth ers. But one thing is certain the people who have to do the suffering are not to blame for it. They are only the helpless vic tims, and it is nothing more than the plain duty of the more f ortu- aate sections of the world to help them. "Well, ain't we helping them .all we can?" says somebody. Like thunder we are. Here it iias been over six months since Hoover sent out his urgent cal for twenty-three million dollars, and what have we done? We have "organized" ourselves to Boomer, North Carolina, April, 192L beatthe very Old Scratch, and the way we have "begged for money I just want you to hush; as Tom Watts says. i Yes, we have appointed com mittees to run around over the country and beg dimes from the hatchet-faced old maids. And the committee has to wait while the old maid trots off into the next room and pulls down her stock ing and fishes out a dime that has become so slick by rubbing against her shin-bone that the store-keeper wouldn't give her a box of snuff for it. And then she must count the rest of her money and tie her string garter back again, after which she trots back to our begging committee and hands over the slick dime with great ceremony, telling all about how she sold old Dommy's eggs for that dime on the umteenth day of last Juvember. She has carried it in her stocking ever smce, and it fills her whitleather heart with great joy to know that her precious dime is going to feed the starving nations. And as she talks about it the tears run down her cheeks and wash off the powder till her face looks like an old striped pumpkin. Just repeat that performance about steen million times and yon get a very good picture of what we have been doing for the starving people all these six or eight months. And what have the starving people been doing in the mean time? Dying for the food that they needed six months ago. That's what. What good is it going to do them for us. to beg dimes and send food to them after they have been dead a year or two ? ' We don't drag and. dally along that way when we want money for a dozen more battleships. Uncle Sam always seems to have plenty of it right in his jeans for that purpose. Why, hangtake it all, just since we have beetf begging these dimes for the f am ine sufferers the United States has "appropriated" right out of the treasury for army and navy purposes enough to feed the whole confounded world. If there is so ding-busted much money in the treasury for bullets, why isn't there a little for bread? Why couldn't Con gress have ."appropriated" the twenty-five or thirty millions that Hoover needed and let him get the food to the hungry people in time to do them some good ? What does your belly think about that? THE SATURDAY EVENING BOAST. L L I J If Ben Franklin could come back to life right now and see what his pet publication has de generated into, he would be sor ry that it didn't die with him. The thing that calls itself the Saturday Evening Post, but which I prefer to call the Satur day Evening Boast, has had a va ried experience since the days when Ben Franklin used to squat his burning words into it with a Washington hand press. In those days its circulation was low and its standard high ; but now it is just the reverse of that its cir culation is high and its standard very low. Now I shall fully expect Ed Howe and a few thousand others to rise up on their hind legs and dispute that. But their disputing it won't put any change on me. I know what I am talking about. Considered from a literary stand point, the Saturday Evening Boast is about the cheapest and sorriest drivel that ever was palmed off. on the world in the name of literature. When you boil it down and skim off the big words there is nothing left but a nightmare's halter and the smell of Irv Cobb's feet. To start in reading one of its endless tiresome tales is like rid ing a club-footed snail to the South Pole and back. And if you ever do reach the end you feel like somebody poured dishwater down your neck. About once every two years I buy a copy of the Saturday Even ing Boast and try my best to read it. But I never yet have got beyond the first full-page adver tisement of Guaranteed Leather Biscuits or Genuine Rubber Breakfast Food. No sir, I can't read the stuff, and I say that no man who is as busy as I am ought to waste his time over it. If you have nothing better to do than read the Satur day Evening Boast, you had bet ter take your dog and go out in to the woods and tree a fish. Number 2. ONE DAY AT MOUNT VER NON. Do you remember when the Al lies sent over a delegation dur ing the war, and the big Ikes at Washington carried them down to Mount Vernon, and there in' front of Washington's tomb they had a great love-tfeastj, pukeyj with patriotism and sloppy with tears? Two or three of England's Big Ikes were along, and it was all fixed up right there in the pres ence of George Washington's bones that England and Ameri ca would never again allow any, hard feelings or misunderstand ings to come between them They would be like two loving I sisters, and they would go down the future years locked arm m arm, and if you heard anything pop it would be nothing worse than a kiss. That all sounded mighty, nice. But recently, while Congress was debating the naval appro priations bill, one speaker de nounced the "disarmament" movement as nothing more or less than "insidious propaganda from Great Britain. The New; York American and various oth er big papers think they see a trap for the United States in the disarmament proposal, because it would enable England and Ja pan to unite their navies against us and outnumber our ships and guns three to one. All afraid of England and Ja pan. So it seems that the "sis ters" are hot quite so loving and trustful as they were that day there at Mount Vernon. Don't you see how all the human plans are going to smash? And don't you know the new plans they are making now will do the same? Just wait and see. There are some mighty big surprises yet in store for the statesmen of the world. Our rulers claim that they, hate war and they want to' discover some way to put a stop to it. And yet they put men in jail for opposing war. Can't you see through their shallow hypoc risy ? They just want us common Rubes to THINK they are trying to help us, but in reality they have no notion of doing it. Wake up, you sleepy-headed fools, and use your heads to think with.
The Fool-Killer (Pores Knob, N.C.)
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April 1, 1921, edition 1
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