Who will take the message?

Message to Garcia. . . . The Path to Great Riches

To my Friends and Others,
Years ago I was asked to deliver the graduation message at a small private school. I pondered for weeks what words I could say to the graduates that would offer them a brighter hope for their future. I wanted words that might be life changing for them. And I remembered a story that I had heard from a friend about a man and I remembered the secret that had been unlocked for me in my own heart when I heard the story. I took that story of a man who lived many years before me, and embellished it somewhat to fit the culture of today. Today, I found this story saved on my computer and was rereading it. It still inspires me today, the same way it did the first time I heard of this man called Rowan. I have spent many years and much effort in trying to him. There are few priceless things that any person can pass on to another. But this is one. Perhaps you’ll read the story and it will unlock for you, or your children, or someone you know, the secret to a great buried treasure. Perhaps you’ve already discovered in your life the secret in the story. And if so, then feel free to pass the story on to others you know, who might need a road map to a brighter future. If on the other hand you read it and disagree with its philosophy, then feel free also, to send it to the recycle bin. If this attachment happens someday to fall into the hands of a man named Rowan, then I’d love to hear back from him that this message reached him.

Your friend,
Bud

For graduation this year I wanted to come and give each of you a gift of fabulous riches. A long time ago, a friend told me how to obtain more riches than most people have ever imagined. Within the words I am about to tell you is a hidden map. You must listen very carefully to the story I am about to tell you to discover the instructions to find where this treasure is. However, you do not need to take any special care with safeguarding these instructions because most people will not be able to understand how to find the treasure. If after hearing my words, you still have to ask me what the secret is, then you .
have failed to read the map.

I have a question for each of you today? It’s a question being asked over and over every day in every part of the world by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Who can find a faithful man or woman? In all of United States history, one person stands out on in my mind as much as any other. I have heard of a faithful man.

Many decades ago, when war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents in a small island country south of the United States. A man named Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastnesses of Cuba - no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President of the United States needed to secure his cooperation, and quickly. What could he do? Someone said to the President, “There is a fellow by the name of Rowan who 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 - these are things I have no time now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: The President gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “How can I find him?” This was a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every school in this country. It is not book-learning young people need most, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the backbone which will cause them to be loyal, to be trustworthy, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, and in short - to be faithful - to be able to “Carry a message to Garcia.” With these qualities, any person will obtain all the wisdom and knowledge to be found in every book.

General Garcia is dead now, and so is Rowan. But there are other Garcias to be reached. But the world is still searching for Rowan every day to reward him for his faithfulness. Personally, every day I strive to be a Rowan, and every day I look to find another person like him. Every man or woman who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, has been appalled, at times, by the stupidity of the mediocre woman or man - the inability or unwillingness of most people to concentrate on a thing and to do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule: and no man seems to succeed unless by hook or crook or threat or bribes. Perhaps they expect God in His great goodness will perform a miracle, and send them an Angel of Light for an assistant. Perhaps if they wait long enough, someone else will take up the task. You, my friend, put this matter to a test: You are sitting someday in an office and six assistants are within your call. Summon one of them and make a request: “please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio.” Will the assistant quietly say, “Yes sir,” or “Yes Ma’am” and go do the task ? Probably they will not. More than likely, they 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? I didn’t see that this was part of my job description! Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? Why do you want to know? 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 assistant will go off and get one of the other clerks to help them try to find the answer - and then come back and tell you there is no such man as Corregio.

Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Averages I will not. Now if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Corregio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will still 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 assure me that pure Socialism will never come to pass. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? The dread of getting “the pink slip” on Friday afternoon keeps too many a worker in their place. Advertise for a typist, and five out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it is necessary to. In my own business enterprise, I have an employment application which about two thirds of the way down the page clearly and emphatically says, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WRITE BELOW THIS SENTENCE. And yet, 50% of the applicants who apply to work for me, continue on writing and answering the questions below that line. Can such a person be counted on to take a letter to Garcia?

“You see that bookkeeper,” said the supervisor in a large factory to me. “Yes; what about him?” Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him to town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, he might stop at four shops on the way, and when he got to where he was going, he probably would have forgotten what he had been sent for.” Can such a person be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much sad sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden workers of the sweatshop” and the “homeless wanderer who will work for food,” and with it all, often go many hard words for the people in power. Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get an employee to do intelligent work, and his long, patient striving after “help” that often does nothing but take a break 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 hired. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues. If times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer - but out, and forever out, the unneeded and mediocre will go. It is the survival of the not fittest, but the most hardworking and FAITHFUL. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best - those who can carry a message to Garcia. Now this is not to say that the most faithful themselves might not be dismissed on occasion by an employer who would fail to see their earnestness. But if this happens to you, rest assured. There are 1000 other employers out there that will rehire you and who are waiting and hoping for you to show up at their door. A faithful person may get cast out sometime, but they will not be cast down.

I know one man of really brilliant mentality, 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 any 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!” Today this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him would dare employ him, because 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 Twelve boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is to be pitied; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men and women 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 the line, in spite of indifference, slipshod stupidity, and the heartless ingratitude of many of their employees 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 person who succeeds - the person 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 myself, have fried hamburgers at Dairy Queen, emptied a grease trap, mopped a floor, repaired a roof, and worked for day’s wages. 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 MEAN and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the employee who does their work when the “boss” is away, as well as when they are in the office or on the factory floor. And the man who, when he is given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the note, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest trash can, or of doing anything else but delivering it. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. ANYTHING such as a man or woman, like Rowan asks, shall be granted. They are wanted in every city, town, and village - in every office, hotel, shop, store, and factory. I myself would hire as many as I could find. I would help them to become rich. In time, I would pay them a fortune. And in the meantime, I would make a fortune myself by profiting from their faithfulness. I would teach them any skills they might be lacking in exchange for their possession of dedication to a task and their faithfulness to serving me. The world cries out for such; they are needed and needed badly - the man, or woman, who can “Carry a Message to Garcia.” If you ever meet a Rowan, who is looking for a job. Send him, or her to me. I look for her every day. Good luck to each of you. May God give you a speedy, safe and prosperous journey if you, yourself, decide to carry a message to Garcia. Godspeed.