A Message to Garcia: Being a Preachment

Hubbard's 1899 screed against human flabbiness remains unsettling because it tells an uncomfortable truth: most of us make excuses when we should just act. The essay centers on Andrew Rowan, a young lieutenant given what seems like an impossible mission - deliver a sealed letter to General Garcia, a Cuban insurgent leader hiding somewhere in the island's mountains during the Spanish-American War. No one knows exactly where Garcia is. The journey is treacherous. Rowan doesn't ask for directions, accommodations, or guarantees. He takes the letter and goes. Hubbard uses this true story as a bludgeon against what he saw as the 'imbecility of the average man' - the endless reluctance to simply do the thing that's asked. The prose crackles with Victorian moral urgency, and its message about self-reliance became the bedrock of American business culture. Whether you find it inspiring or authoritarian depends on whether you see yourself in Hubbard's target or his hero.