1899

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 war broke out between Spain & 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, & 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 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. Slip-shod
assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, &
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, &
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 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 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 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 denizen of the sweat-shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,"
& 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, 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 fire-brand 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 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, slip-shod imbecility, and the
heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be
both hungry & 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 & 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; &
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 take 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; 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, & needed badly- the man who
can carry a message to Garcia.

THE END-.