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Initiative THE world bestows its big prizes, 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: ….-Elbert Hubbard For many, many years, students at both West Point and the Naval
Academy were taught a lesson about self-reliance and initiative through an
essay by the American author, philosopher and publisher Elbert Hubbard. It discussed the efforts of Andrew Rowan,
USMA '81, to deliver a message to the Cuban rebel General Calixco
y Inigues Garcia. This was an inspiration for
generations of Academy alumni. 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 and the United States, it was very necessary to
communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere
in the mountain fastnesses 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 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? 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 is necessary to. Can such a
one write a letter to Garcia? "You
see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory. Can such a
man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia? We have
already 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 senting 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 to 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." About a Message to Garcia 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 same 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 . I thought so little of
it that we ran it in the Magazine without 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. E.H. The
Man Who Carried The Message to Garcia COLONEL
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 |