An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of intelligence, Elbert Hubbard

This is a prime example of attitude to a challenge that I know. History or story widely reported since the nineteenth century, inspires us to take action, from truth to the action. I hope you enjoy!

Time reading this post: 10 min.

Below, the text of Elbert Hubbard, 1899:

In all this Cuban, a man stands on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, what mattered to them was to communicate quickly with the leader of the insurgents, Garcia, known to be in a fortress within the interior of Cuba, but no one could specify exactly where. It was impossible to communicate with him by mail or telegraph. However, the President had to try to ensure its cooperation, and that as soon as possible. What to do?

Someone reminded the President: "There is a man named Rowan, and if someone is able to find Garcia, Rowan has to be."

Rowan was brought before the President, who entrusted him with a letter with the task of delivering it to Garcia. Of how this man, Rowan took the letter, put it in a waterproof casing, tied it on his chest, and after four days, jumped in a boat without a deck, late at night, on the shores of Cuba; how to plunged into the wilderness, so after three weeks, emerging on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot and delivering the letter to Garcia - are things that do not come to narrate the event in detail here. 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?".

Hosannah! Here was a man whose form should be cast in imperishable bronze and the statue placed in every school in the country. It is not bookish wisdom that young people need, nor instruction about this or that. Accurate, yes, a hardening of the vertebrae in order to show themselves proud in the exercise of an office, to act with diligence, to do the trick, for, in short, carry a message to Garcia.

General Garcia is no longer of this world, but there are other Garcias. No man who has committed to carry on a business in which the help of many hands were needed, have been spared moments of real despair at the idiocy of many men, compared to the inability or unwillingness to concentrate the mind a certain thing, and do it.

Assistance irregular, foolish inattention, indifference annoying and sloppy work seem the rule. No man can be truly successful unless they resort to all means at their disposal either of force or bribery, to compel other men to help him, unless God Almighty, in His great mercy, do a miracle by sending him a helper as an angel of light.

Dear reader, you can even take the test. Are you sitting in your office, surrounded by half a dozen employees. Well, one of them calls and asks him: "Please be so kind to check out the encyclopedia and make me a brief description of the life of Correggio."

Will give the case the employee said quietly: "Yes, Lord" and perform what is asked?

Not so! You will look puzzled and sideways to make one or more of the following questions:

Who is he?

What encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that chance?

Do not you mean Bismarck?

And if Carlos did?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Is it not better that I bring the book to yourself to find what you want?

What do you want to know?

And I bet ten to one that, after thou hast answered the questions, and explained how to find the requested data and why you need them, your employee will ask a mate who will help him find Garcia and then come back to tell you that this man does not exist. Of course, I may lose the bet, but according to the law of averages, right in the game. Now, if you're wise, do not you give the time to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is written in "C" and not "K", but limit Thou shalt say softly, drawing the best smile. "It's okay, do not bother," and said that, thou shalt rise and procurarás yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral ineptitude, the invalidity of the will, the disposition of this atrophy is diligently to field and act - are things going back to a future so remote the advent of pure socialism. If men do not take the initiative to act on his own behalf, they will do when the result of your efforts redound to the benefit of all? For now it seems that men still need to be feitorados. What keeps frequently used in their place and makes it work is the fear of not doing so, be dismissed at the close of the month. Announces need a stenographer, and nine out of ten candidates for the vacancy will not know spelling or no score - and, what is more, they think they do not need to know.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

- You see that bookkeeper?, Told me the head of a large factory.

- Yes, do you have?

- It is an excellent bookkeeper. However, if I send them, make a note, perhaps we release him to the satisfaction of the commission, but it could well be that the path entered in two or three houses of drinks, and when arrived at its destination, no longer remembered the assignment given him.

Is it possible to trust such a man a letter to deliver it to Garcia?

Lately we have heard a lot of sentimental expressions expressing sympathy for the poor beings who toil from sun to sun, with the unfortunate unemployed in search of honest work, and all this almost always laced with a lot of hard word to men who are in Power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time, in a vain effort to induce eternal disgust and discontent to work conscientiously, nothing is said of his long and patient demand for staff, which, however, often does nothing more than "killing time "as soon as he turns away. There is no company that is not despendindo staff proves unable to look after their interests in order to replace it with something more apt. And this process of selection by elimination is constantly operating in adverse times, the only difference being that when times are bad and work is scarce, the selection is done finer, putting off forever, the incompetent and useless. It is the law of survival of the fittest. Each employer, in their own interest, just about saving the best - those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know a man of really brilliant skills, but without the fiber need to manage their own business and that in addition becomes completely useless to anyone else because of the insane suspicion that constantly holds that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. Unable to send, not tolerate anyone to send. If you were entrusted with a message to Garcia, his answer is likely: "Take it yourself."

Today this man roams the streets wandering in search of work in nearly petition misery. However, anyone who knows you venture to give you job because he is the personification of the spirit of discontent and reply. Refractory to any advice or admonition, the only thing capable of producing some effect on him would be given a good kick with the toe of a boot of number 42, thick soles and spout.

I know, no doubt, that an individual like this morally deformed is no less worthy of compassion than a physical cripple. However, this demonstration of compassion, vertamos also a tear of men who strive to carry out a large enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the sound of the whistle, and whose hair prematurely whitened are in constant struggle in which they are committed against indifference contemptuous against the crass stupidity and ingratitude atrocious, just those who, without his entrepreneurial spirit, would walk hungry and homeless.

Dar will be the case that I have painted the situation in colors too loaded? Maybe yes, but when everyone is pleased to launch ramblings want a word of sympathy for the man who prints to a successful venture, the man who, despite a lot of impediments, can direct and coordinate the efforts of others and that after the triumph, maybe check that nothing gained, nothing, except their mere subsistence.

Also I carried lunch pails and worked as a journeyman, as I have also been boss. Sci therefore, that any thing can be said of both sides.

There is excellence in poverty per se; rags do not serve as recommendation. Not all bosses are greedy and tyrants, just as not all poor men are virtuous.

All my sympathies belong to the man who works conscientiously, whether the employer is or not. And the man who, to be entrusted with a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking questions stupid, and without the hidden intention of throwing it in the gutter to find the first, or take any other done other than give it the recipient, this man ever gets "laid off" nor has to declare themselves on strike to, forcing an increase in salary.

Civilization anxious search, insistently, man these conditions. All that such a man to ask, you will be granting. He is wanted in every city, every village, every hamlet, in every office, every shop, every shop, factory or sale. The cry of the world pretty much sums it up: It takes and needs with the urgency of a man who could carry a message to Garcia.

Enjoy and read the letter from the author, written in December 1, 1913, on the impact of his writing, which at the time of creation had little pretense:

This literary trifle, A MESSAGE TO GARCIA, I wrote it one night after dinner in an hour. It was February 22, 1899, Washington's birthday, and the number of our magazine's March "Philistine" was about to enter the press. I found myself in the mood to write, and the article arose spontaneously from my heart, written, as, after a day of painstaking, during which some residents had sought to convince a reluctant either place, they should leave the comatose state in which compraziam, striving to instill in them radioactivity.

The original idea, however, came to me from a little argument Bert ventilated by my son when we go for coffee, when he tried to support Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan began to walk alone and done the thing - carried the message to Garcia. What bright spark, the idea took possession of my mind. Yes, I said to myself, the boy is right, the hero is one who does the job that takes the message to Garcia.

I got up from the table and wrote "A Message to Garcia" in one sitting. However I called so little importance to this article, which was even published in the journal without a heading. Shortly after the issue has left the press, began to flock requests for additional copies of the March issue of the "Philistine": a dozen, fifty, one hundred, and when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my employees which the article had raised the cosmic dust.

- This Garcia - he replied to me.

The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, the Central Railroad of New York, saying: "Give price for one hundred thousand copies of the article about Rowan, pamphlet form, with ads on the back of the railroad. Also tell how long can deliver. "

I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like us an awful undertaking.

The result was I have authorized Mr. Daniels to reproduce the article as he pleased. He did so then in the form of leaflets and distributed them in such profusion that, two or three editions of half a million sold out quickly. Furthermore, the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated, so to speak, in all languages ​​spoken.

It happened that just when Mr. Daniels was making the distribution of the Message to Garcia, Prince Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He was the guest of the Central Railroad of New York, traveling around the country, following Mr. Daniels. The prince saw the brochure, which interested him more for being himself Mr. Daniels who was handing out in such abundance, that properly for any other reason.

In any event, when the prince returned to his homeland had to translate the booklet into Russian and deliver a copy to each employee of the railroad in Russia. The was soon imitated by other countries, the article went from Russia to Germany, France, Turkey, Hindustan and China. During the war between Russia and Japan, was given a copy of "Message to Garcia" every Russian soldier who went to the front.

The Japanese, finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded that he should be a good thing, and not slow to pour it into Japanese. By order of the Mikado a copy was given to each employee, civilian or military, the Japanese government.

For over forty million copies of "A Message to Garcia" have been printed, which is undoubtedly the largest circulation ever attained by any literary work during the life of the author, thanks to a series of lucky accidents.