James Larkin Pearson Explains His Fool-Killer Newspaper, February, 1920

From an ad in The Fool-Killer, Boomer, N.C., February, 1920, published by James Larkin Pearson.

Let Us Talk It Over

Well, dear sinner friends, this is The Fool-Killer.

How does it set on our stomach?

If you like it, you can get more at headquarters.

The Fool-Killer is not even a forty-‘leventh cousin to any other paper on earth.

It stands in a class by itself, and its field is as broad as the English language.

This paper wears no bell, muzzle, collar nor halter.

You can put that down to start with.

I am the fellow that works at the pump-handle on this pungent periodical of thrilling thought.

I never travelled any to speak of, but I have read a great deal, and have thunk some.

And then I started The Fool-Killer, just to quiet my nerves and to keep the old press from getting rusty.

From the seclusion of these wooded hills there will go forth each month a bundle of literary dynamite that will shake the rotten foundations of society and cause the Church Mammon to at least turn over in its sleep.

The Fool-Killer is nearly 10 years old, and getting older every month.

It preaches the truth so straight that each issue brings hundreds of old moss-backs and blind leaders of the blind to the mourner’s bench in a trot.

It “gits ‘em goin’ an’ comin’.”

It retails at 40 cents a year, or 25 cents in clubs of four or more, and circulates all over the Benighted States.

If you don’t like it, there is no law to make you take it.

If you do like it, you are hereby invited to subscribe and get up a club.

I want 50,000 new subscribers to this paper inside of the next six months, and so I do.

The Fool-Killer don’t crawl behind a tree to talk.

It don’t bust its crupper holding back to see what somebody else is going to say.

It is written with a red-hot poker dipped in razor-soup.

It rides the devil a-straddle without a saddle, and spurs him at every lope.

It is death to fools, rascals, and hypocrites.

The Fool-Killer always tries to make a man laugh right big, and then cram a truth down him while his mouth is open.

It is salted with wit, peppered with humor and seasoned with sarcasm.

Every line cuts like a whip, and every word raises a blister.

Tote this paper around in your pocket—when you go to church, the postoffice, the store, the mill, or wherever you go—and show it to everybody you see.

Ask them if they would like to sop their mental flap-jacks in my editorial molasses for awhile.

Be a missionary for this good cause.

If you can use a few sample copies, just send a wireless postal card

.

Set a resolution to send in one club every month, at least.

I want 1,000 agents who will agree to do that much.

--The Fool-Killer, Boomer, N.C.