A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

In Honor to my Father who was extremely diligent, constant and persevering in his things and in Honor to my mother who is very diligent and when she says he is going to do something she succeeds.

Of them two I learned that, do things, do things well, and do things well done and with excellence.

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

In this whole Cuba affair there is a man who stands on the horizon of my memory as the planet Mars in its perihelion. When the war between Spain and the United States was declared, it was very necessary to communicate promptly with the chief of the insurgents. Garcia was there, in the bush of Cuba, without anyone knowing his whereabouts. It was impossible to communicate with him by telegraph or by mail. The President had to count on his cooperation, without loss of time. What to do?

Someone told the President: “There is a man named ‘Rowan’ who can find Garcia, if he can be found.”

Rowan was brought and a letter was delivered to him to turn over to Garcia. How it was that this man, Rowan, took the letter, sealed it in a rubber purse, tied it to his chest, made a four-day trip, and disembarked at night on the coasts of Cuba in a boat without a cover; how he went into the mountains, and in three weeks he went to the other side of the island, having crossed a hostile country on foot and delivered the letter to Garcia, are things that I have no particular desire to narrate in detail. But I do want it to be clear that Mac-Kinley, president of the United States, put a letter in the hands of Rowan so that he would hand it over to Garcia. Rowan took the letter and did not ask: “Where is Garcia?”

Praised be God! Here is a man whose figure should be emptied into imperishable bronze and put his statue in every school in the country. It is not the teaching of books that the young people need or the instruction in this or that, but the hardening of the vertebrae, so that they are faithful to their positions, so that they act with diligence, so that they do the thing: “take the message to Garcia. ”

General Garcia no longer exists; but there are other Garcías.

There is no man who has tried to manage a company that requires a lot of personnel that sometimes has not been stunned to notice the imbecility of the average of men, the inability or unwillingness to concentrate their intelligence in a given thing and do it.

Irregular attendance, ridiculous neglect, vulgar indifference and bad work seem to be the general rule. There is no man who comes out of his company, unless, want you do not want or forcibly, force or bribe others to help him, or unless perhaps God Almighty, in his goodness, do a miracle and Send him to the Angel of Light to help him.

You, reader, can do this test. You are currently sitting in your office. Around you have six employees. Call one of them and ask him the following: “Please kindly look in the Encyclopedia and give me a short memorandum of Correggio’s life”.

Do you think that the employee answers: “Yes sir”, and goes to do what you said?

Nothing of that. He will look at you sideways and ask you one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

In which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I employed to do that?

Do not you want to say Bismarck?

Why does not Carlos?

Died?

Is there a rush for that?

Would not it be better if I brought you the book and you searched for it yourself?

What do you want to know about?

And I would dare to bet ten to one that after you have answered the interrogation and explained the way to find the information you need and why you need it, your employee retires and forces another partner to help him find Garcia, returning shortly afterwards, telling you that there is no such man. Of course there may be a case in which I lose the bet; but according to the law of averages I should not lose.

However; If you know what you have in hand, you should not bother explaining to your assistant that “Correggio” is indicated with “C” and not “K”, but, smilingly and in a good mood, you will say: “It’s okay ; leave it “; and with that said you will rise up and look for it yourself.

And that inability to act independently, that moral stupidity, that deformity of the will, that lack of disposition to take notice of a thing and realize it, those are the things that have postponed for far into the future pure socialism. If men do not act on their own initiative for themselves, what will they do when the product of their efforts is for all? Brute force seems necessary and the fear of being “lowered” on Saturday at the time of collection causes many workers or employees to keep the job or placement.

He announces seeking a stenographer, and of ten requests, nine are from individuals who do not have spelling, and what is more: from individuals who do not believe it necessary to have it. Could these people write a letter to Garcia?

“Look,” the manager of a large factory told me, “look at that bookkeeper.

-All right; What happens?

-It’s a great accountant; but if he is ordered to do an errand, he may do it; But it may be the case that you enter four drinking rooms before arriving and when you get to Main Street you no longer remember what you were told.

Can that man be trusted to take a message to Garcia?

Recently we have been hearing conversations and expressions of many sympathies towards “naturalized foreigners who are exploited in the workshops”, as well as “the homeless man who wanders in search of honest work”, and together with these expressions, frequently Use harsh words towards men who are in Power.

Nothing is said of the patron who grows old before his time, trying in vain to induce the eternally disgruntled and lazy to do a job conscientiously; nothing is said of the long time nor of the patience that employer has had looking for personnel who do nothing but “kill time” as soon as the employer turns his back. The procedure of selection by elimination is constantly in practice in every establishment and in every factory. The employer is constantly forced to reduce personnel who have demonstrated their incompetence in the promotion of their interests and to take other employees. It does not matter that times are good; This selection procedure continues at all times, and the only difference is that when things are bad and work is scarce the selection is made with more scrupulosity; but outside and forever outside, the incompetent and the unusable must go. For their own interest, the employer has to stay with the best, with whom they can take a message to Garcia.

I know an individual of truly brilliant aptitudes, but without the necessary skill to manage his own business, and that, however, is completely useless for anyone else, due to the insane suspicion that he constantly fears that his employer oppresses him or treats him. oppress him. Without being able to command, he does not tolerate being sent. If you were given a message to take to Garcia, your answer would probably be: “Take it yourself”.

Today this man wanders the streets in search of work, having to suffer the inclemency of time. No one who knows him dares to give him work, since it is the very essence of discontent. It does not enter for reasons, and the only thing that could produce any effect would be a good kick out of the tip of a boot of number 9, with a thick sole. I know in truth that an individual as deformed as that morally is no less worthy of compassion than the physically disabled; but in our compassion we also shed a tear for those men who are at the head of great enterprises, whose hours of work are not limited by the sound of the whistle and whose hair prematurely gray in the struggle they sustain against savage indifference, against imbecility crasa and against the bloody ingratitude of the others, who, if not for the enterprising spirit of these, would walk hungry and homeless.

It would seem that I have expressed myself very harshly. May be; but when the whole world has given itself to rest I want to express a few words of sympathy towards the man who emerges ahead of his company, towards the man who, despite great inconveniences, has managed to direct the efforts of other men, and after the triumph it turns out that nothing has won, nothing more than its subsistence.

I have also loaded my food can into the workshop and I have worked daily, and I have also been an employer and I know that something can be said from both sides.

There is no excellence in poverty “per se”; Rags do not serve as a recommendation. Not all employers are rapacious and tyrant; Not all the poor are virtuous.

My sympathies are all with the man who does his work, when the employer is present how when he is absent. And the man who delivers a letter to Garcia quietly takes the letter, without asking idiotic questions and without any intention of throwing it into the first sewer that finds its way or doing anything that is not delivered to the recipient, that man never remains without work or have to declare a strike to increase the salary. Civilization looks anxiously, insistently, to that class of men. Whatever that man asks for he gets it. He is needed in every city, in every town, in every village, in every office, shop, and factory, and in every workshop. The whole world is crying out for it; The man who can bring “message to Garcia” is urgently needed and needed.

Elbert Hubbard