A Message to Garcia; Being a Preachment by Hubbard, Elbert - 1916

East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1916. Reprint Edition. Wraps. Good. Pocket size, 15, [1] pages plus covers. Wraps. Some soiling to covers. Text somewhat darkened. This has stamped on the front cover "Compliments of John E. Zimmermann President The United Gas Improvement Co. Philadelphia, PA." John Edward Zimmermann (Born: 1/31/1874, Died: 5/30/1943) was an 1899 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. John E. Zimmermann became partner in one of the most prosperous engineering and management companies in Philadelphia, Day & Zimmermann. Zimmermann served as president of Day & Zimmermann from 1926 to 1929. He also worked as president and later chair of the United Gas Improvement Co. in Philadelphia. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received part of his education in the National College and University of Buenos Aires before coming to the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently apprenticed as a surveyor on the the Pacific Railroad in Argentina, in the Great Southern Railway shops, also in Argentina, and then in the shops of George V. Cresson in Philadelphia. He then established Day & Zimmermann with Charles Day. In its early years the company came into prominence with the design of the construction of the Gatun Lock System, one of the Panama Canal locks in 1907. The construction of the Gatun Lock began with the first concrete laid at Gatun, on August 24, 1909, by Day & Zimmermann. In those early days the company was also contracted by the Hershey chocolate company to produce the foil wrapper for Hershey's Kisses. The Day & Zimmermann continues to exist and remains a privately held. This inspirational essay was originally published as a filler without a title in the March 1899 issue of the Philistine Magazine which Hubbard edited. During the Spanish-American War, President McKinley entrusted an obscure lieutenant named Rowan to deliver an important message to Cuban insurgent General Calixto Garcia. This essay stresses the importance of initiative and hard work. A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work. As its primary example, the essay uses a dramatized version of a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan, just prior to the Spanish-American War. The essay describes Rowan carrying a message from President William McKinley to "Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba—no one knew where". It was Maj. Arthur L. Wagner, head of the Military Information Division, who successfully petitioned Adj. Gen. Henry Clark Corbin for permission to send spies to Cuba and Puerto Rico to gather military information. Wagner selected forty-year-old 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan to join Gen. Calixto García, commander of the rebel forces in eastern Cuba. The essay contrasts Rowan's self-driven effort against "the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it". Hubbard wrote "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 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!" His complaints about lazy and incompetent workers struck a chord with many corporate executives. One of these was George H. Daniels, a promotion-minded executive with the New York Central Railroad. Daniels reprinted the essay as part of the railroad's Four-Track Series of pamphlets. Hubbard's Roycroft Press, the publishing arm of an arts and crafts community he founded in East Aurora, New York, reprinted and sold the essay in a variety of bindings—suede, embossed, paperback, and so on—and as paid promotional literature for organizations as disparate as Wanamaker's department store, the Boy Scouts of America, and the United States Navy. It was also reprinted in many anthologies of inspirational literature.