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Jody
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"A Message To Garcia"
originally published in 1899
Note: This is one of the classics of company literature and one of top ten selling books of the all time. (I believe it ranks second.) We suggest it. Since it is in the communal domain you may copy the text.
Foreword
This literary trifle, A Message To Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a singular 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 minute seminar over the teacups, when my boy Bert recommend 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 minute 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 record 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 compel thus, "Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan record in pamphlet form - Empire State Express advertisement on back - also how soon can ship."
I replied giving price, and stated we could contribute the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like an awful undertaking.
The consequent was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the record 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 expanding the record 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 minute 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 compel employee in Russia.
Other countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan and China. while the war in the middle of 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 ownership of the Russian prisoners, finished 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 hire 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 while the lifetime of an author, in all history - thanks to a series of lucky accidents.
Elbert Hubbard - December 1, 1913
A Message To Garcia by Elbert Hubbard
In all this Cuban company there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.
When war broke out in the middle of Spain and the United States it was very needful to recapitulate swiftly 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 procure 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 settled in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor schooling 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 company where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the mean 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 soldiery 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 about 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 agreeing to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to account for 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 feebleness 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 advantage of their attempt is for all?
A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a employee to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it needful 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 achieve 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 condolement 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 owner who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intriguing work; and his long, inpatient striving after "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned.
In every store and installation there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The owner is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to added 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 owner to keep the best - those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of nothing else but great parts who has not the ability to conduct a company of his own, and yet who is nothing else but worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his owner 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 sass would probably be, "Take it yourself!"
Tonight this man walks the streets finding for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare hire him, for he is a quarterly firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled amount 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 minute 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 condolement 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 evening meal pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an owner 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 request 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 charge for higher wages.
Civilization is one long anxious hunt for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and hamlet - 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."
Copyright © 2001 www.JodyHudson.com
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