I am at a job trying to get people to do what they should have done without anybody telling them.
It is all rather frustrating as the consequence of the inaction is a project delay and added cost.

In my frustration I would like to share with you a text written in 1899. I believe this is as valid today as it was then.


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.

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, & halfhearted
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’erdo-
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