A MESSAGE TO GARCIA
APOLOGIA
This
literary trifle, A Message to Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in
a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and 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 had 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 sold 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 the 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 such 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
Other
countries then took it up, and from
The Japanese,
finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded that 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 the author, in all history--thanks to a series of lucky
accidents.
Elbert Hubbard
December 1, 1913
A MESSAGE TO GARCIA
In all
this Cuban business there is one man who stands out on the horizon of my memory
like Mars at perihelion.
When war
broke out between
What to
do!
Someone
said to the President, “There is a fellow by the name of Rowan who 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 Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin 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 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 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
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 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 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 efforts 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 uptown 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 denizens
of the sweatshop” 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 interest 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 anyone 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 wilt
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 tow 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 work 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 not rapacious and high
handed, anymore 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”.