- A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard
- Originally published in March 1899. Elbert Hubbard was a writer and printer at the turn of the century. A Message to Garcia is said to be the most widely published piece of motivational litature ever published.
- In all this Cuban business there is one man stands
out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.
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 fastnesses of Cuba - no one knew where. No mail
or telegraph could reach him. The President must secure
his co-operation, and quickly.
- What to do!
- Someone 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 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 having delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I
have no special desire now to tell in detail.
- The point 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 in the land. It is
not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about
this or 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
Garcias.
- 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 your call. Summon any one and make this
request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a
brief memorandum for me concerning the life of
Corregio."
- 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 find Garcia -
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 Corregio is indexed under the C's,
not in the K's, but you will smile 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, 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 in his
place.
- Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times 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 to
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 "down-trodden denizen 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 with "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, this 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 anyone else, because he
carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his
employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He
can not 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 No. 9
- boot.
- Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no
less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in your
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 the line
in 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 a 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 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 strike for higher wages.Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. 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 - he man who can carry a message to Garcia.
Copyright © 1999, Frank Granger
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