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A MESSAGE TO
GARCIA
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By ELBERT HUBBARD |
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I N I T I A T I V E
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The world
bestows its big prize both in money and honors, for but one thing, and that
is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing
without being told. But next to doing the thing without being told is to do
it when you are told once. That is to say, carry the Message to Garcia: those
who can carry a message get high honors, but their pay is not always in
proportion. Next there are those who never do a thing until they are told
twice: such get no honors and small pay. Next, there are those who do the
right thing only when Necessity kicks them from behind, and these get
indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay. This kind spends most
of its time polishing a bench with a hard luck story. Then, still lower down
in the scale than this, we have the fellow who will not do the right thing
even when some one goes along to show him how and stays to see that he does
it: he is always out of a job, and receives the contempt that he deserves,
unless he happens to have a rich Pa, in which case Destiny patiently awaits
around the corner with a stuffed club. To which class do you belong? |
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—Elbert Hubbard |
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ELBERT HUBBARD 1856 - 1915 |
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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 pamphlet 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 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 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 the Message to Garcia. 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. |
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E. H. |
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East Aurora, December 1, 1913 |
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COL.
ANDREW S. ROWAN 1857-1943 |
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A
MESSAGE TO GARCIA |
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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 vastness of Cuba no one knew where. No mail or telegraph
message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation,
and quickly. What to do! Some one
said to the President, "There is 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 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 Bismarck? What's the
matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there
any hurry? Sha'n'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
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 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 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 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 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." |
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COL.
ANDREW ROWAN, who performed one of the celebrated feats in the history of the
American Army . . . carrying the message to Garcia . . . died Jan. 10, 1943
at San Francisco. He was 85 A Virginian who graduated from West Point in 1881, he executed
minor military assignments in Central America, with the Army Information
Bureau and as an attaché, and was still a lieutenant at the age of 41 when he
became famous. After his exploit . . . recognized some 20 years later by the
award of the Distinguished Service Cross . . . he served in the Philippine
campaigns, taught military science and tactics at Kansas State Agriculture
College, and also served at Fort Riley, Kan., West Point, in Kentucky, and at
American Lake, Washington. He was cited for gallantry in the Philippine
action. After his retirement from the army, he spent the remainder of his
life in San Francisco. |
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WHEN PUT TO THE TEST, AN OUNCE OF LOYALTY IS WORTH A POUND OF CLEVERNESS |
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ELBERT HUBBARD |
