A Message to Garcia

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A Message To

Garcia

 

 

by Elbert Hubbard

 

In

all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of

my memory like Mars at perihelion (when closest to the sun and is

the brightest).

 

When

war broke out between Spain and the United States it was very

necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.

Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba - no one knew

where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President

must secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do?

Some

one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of

Rowan will

find

Garcia for you, if anybody can."

 

Rowan

was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the

fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an

oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by

night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the

jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island,

having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter

to Garcia - are things I have no special desire now to tell in

detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a

letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not

ask, "Where is he at?"

 

By

the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless

bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not

book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that,

but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal

to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing

- "Carry a message to Garcia!"

 

General

Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcia's. No man who has

endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed,

but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the

average man - the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a

thing and do it.

 

Slipshod

assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted

work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or

threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in

His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for

an assistant.

 

You,

reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office

- six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request:

"Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for

me concerning the life of Correggio." Will the clerk quietly

say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?

 

On

your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and

ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he?

Which encyclopedia? Where is the

encyclopedia? Was I hired for that?

Don't you mean Bismarck? What's the matter with Charlie doing

it? Is he dead? Is

there any hurry? Shan't I bring you the book

and let you look it up yourself? What do you

want to know for?

 

And

I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions,

and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the

clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to

find Correggio - and then come back and tell you there is no such

man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of

Average, I will not.

 

Now,

if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your "assistant"

that Correggio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will

smile very sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up

yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral

stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to

cheerfully catch hold and lift these are the things that put pure

Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves,

what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?

 

A

first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of

getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to

his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who

apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it necessary

to.

 

Can

such a one write a letter to Garcia?

 

"You

see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory.

"Yes, what about him?" "Well he's a fine

accountant, but if I'd send him up town on an errand, he might

accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at

four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget

what he had been sent for." Can such a man be entrusted to

carry a message to Garcia?

 

We

have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the

"downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop" and the "homeless

wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often

go many hard words for the men in power.

 

Nothing

is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain

attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his

long, patient striving after "help" that does nothing but

loaf when his back is turned.

 

In

every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going

on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that

have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business,

and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this

sorting continues: only, if times are hard and work is scarce, the

sorting is done finer - but out and forever out the incompetent and

unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts

every employer to keep the best - those who can carry a message to

Garcia.

 

I

know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to

manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to

any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane

suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress,

him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a

message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be,

"Take it yourself!"

 

Tonight

this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling

through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him,

for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to

reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a

thick-soled Number Nine boot.

 

Of

course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied

than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too,

for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose

working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast

turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy

indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude

which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

 

Have

I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the

world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the

man who succeeds - the man who, against great odds, has directed the

efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it:

nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and

worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor,

and I know there is something to be said on both sides.

 

There

is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and

all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all

poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work

when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And

the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the

missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking

intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught

else but deliver it, never gets "laid off" nor has to go on

a strike for higher wages.

 

Civilization

is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a

man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and

village - in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries

out for such: he is needed and needed badly - the man who can "Carry

a Message to Garcia."

 

 

Elbert

Hubbard

 

1899

 

 

Foreword to the Book

 

This

literary trifle, A Message To Garcia, was written one evening after

supper, in a single hour. It was on the 22nd of February, 1899,

Washington's Birthday: we were just going to press with the

March Philistine.

The

thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I

had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to

abjure the comatose state and get radioactive.

The

immediate suggestion though, came from a little argument over the

teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of

the Cuban War. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing - carried the

message to Garcia.

It

came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the

man who does his work - who carries the message to Garcia. I

got up from the table, and wrote A Message To Garcia. I thought

so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading.

The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies

of the March Philistine, a dozen, fifty, a hundred, and when the

American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers

which article it was that stirred up the cosmic dust. "It's

the stuff about Garcia," he said.

The

next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York

Central Railroad thus, "Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan

article in pamphlet form - Empire State Express advertisement on back

- also how soon can ship."

I

replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two

years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand

booklets looked like an awful undertaking.

The

result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article

in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of

half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were

sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in

over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been

translated into all written languages.

At

the time Mr. Daniels was distributing A Message To Garcia, Prince

Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He

was the guest of the New York Central, and made a tour of the country

under the personal direction of Mr. Daniels. The Prince saw

the little book and was interested in it, more because Mr. Daniels

was putting it out in big numbers, probably, than otherwise. In

any event, when he got home he had the matter translated into

Russian, and a copy of the booklet given to every railroad employee

in Russia.

Other

countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany,

France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan and China. During the war

between Russia and Japan, every Russian soldier who went to the front

was given a copy of A Message To Garcia. The Japanese, finding

the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded it

must be a good thing, and accordingly translated it into Japanese.

And on an

order of the Mikado, a copy was given to every man in the employ of

the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian. Over forty

million copies of A Message To Garcia have been printed. This

is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture

has ever attained during the lifetime of an author, in all history -

thanks to a series of lucky accidents.

 

 

Elbert

Hubbard

December

1, 1913