A Message to Garcia (and Every Entrepreneur) - Abridgment Series

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“Societas proficit, sed numquam natura humana.” (“Society advances, but never human nature.”)

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA (and Every Entrepreneur)

[Abridged*] [The year is 1899, c.125 years ago.]

When war broke out, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leaders. General Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness—no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him.

But, the President needed to secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do! Someone said to the President:

“A fellow by the name of Rowan will find General Garcia for you.”

So, Rowan was given the message to be delivered to [General] Garcia. Rowan took the letter, sealed it, strapped it over his heart, and, in four days, he landed by night off the coast from an open boat. He disappeared into the jungle, and, in three weeks, came out on the other side of the island, having traversed the hostile country on foot. [He delivered the letter to Garcia, but that is not my point.]

The point 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:

“Where is he at?”

By the Eternal! This man’s 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. Men need a stiffening of their 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.”

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office—six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request:

“Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.“

But, he will look at you out and ask one or more of the following questions:

“Who was he? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Is there any hurry? What do you want to know for?”

Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain, but you will smile sweetly and say,

“Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizen of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the politicians.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy never-do-wells to do intelligent work; and the long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf 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 taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer—but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go.

It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best—those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who cannot manage a business of his own, and is yet absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders, and he will not take them. Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course, I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men 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 in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, 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 man who succeeds—the man 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 have carried a dinner pail and worked for day’s wages, and 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 rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages.

Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village—in every office, shop, store and factory.

The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly—the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

~ THE END ~

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This one is a bit different. Since I did not author this post, I do not ask for an assessment of the article. Rather, I am interested to hear your thoughts about why I posted this in LinkedIn with a re-post; that is, eg, why this blurb [*] and quotations.

Yes. This is different, and I think the interesting question is precisely why you chose Hubbard, why you abridged this particular essay, and why these five maxims now sit underneath it.

My reading is that you are not really reposting A Message to Garcia as an endorsement of Hubbard’s late-19th-century employment rhetoric. You are using Hubbard as historical evidence for a proposition about persistent human nature.

That is why the first maxim is the key:

“Societas proficit, sed numquam natura humana.”
“Society advances, but never human nature.”

That sentence tells the reader how you want the 1899 text read.

You preserved the parts modern readers are most likely to dislike

This is important.

You could easily have sanitized Hubbard.

Instead, your abridgment preserves the employer complaining about the employee who asks Who was he? Where’s the encyclopedia? Is there any hurry? Was I hired for that?; the “survival of the fittest”; the No. 9 boot; the attack on “maudlin sympathy”; and the defense of the employer whose hair turns white trying to manage incompetent people.

I don’t think that’s accidental.

You’re forcing a 2026 professional audience to confront a voice from 1899 saying something that contemporary management culture often expresses in much more sanitized language:

Some people take ownership of a problem; some people return the problem to the person who gave it to them.

Rowan is the archetype of the first.

And that is why the entrepreneur belongs in your title.

“And Every Entrepreneur” changes Hubbard’s emphasis

Hubbard’s original target is largely the employee:

Be the person who can carry the message.

Your parenthetical—

A Message to Garcia (and Every Entrepreneur)

—changes the perspective.

The entrepreneur has experienced the other side of Rowan.

The entrepreneur says:

Please accomplish X.

and receives:

How? Who? Why? Where? Is this my responsibility? What exactly do you mean?

Eventually the entrepreneur realizes that explaining the task is going to take longer than doing it.

Hubbard says exactly that with Correggio:

“Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

Anyone who has built an organization recognizes that moment.

So you’re not merely telling employees:

Be Rowan.

You’re telling entrepreneurs:

Find Rowan. Recognize Rowan. Keep Rowan. And understand why Rowan is extraordinarily valuable.

That’s why the final Hubbard proposition matters:

“Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals.”

The five quotations underneath it are doing more than decoration

I think they constitute your 2026 commentary upon Hubbard, without your needing to write commentary.

The sequence is remarkably coherent.

“Society advances, but never human nature.”

This answers:

Why repost an employment essay from 1899?

Because laptops replaced encyclopedias, Slack replaced clerks, AI replaced some research—but the manager still asks for Correggio and somebody still replies with five questions.

Then:

“Civility is undone by civility.”

This is more provocative. I read you as suggesting that well-intentioned refinement of employment culture can reach the point at which the system becomes reluctant to distinguish compassion for a person from evaluation of performance.

That’s very Hubbard.

Then:

“But ever the hope that beguiles us.”

That connects to your Hope doctrine.

The manager repeatedly thinks:

Maybe this person will become Rowan.

Maybe after another explanation.

Another warning.

Another accommodation.

Another chance.

And sometimes the refusal to confront demonstrated incapacity is simply hope displacing evidence.

Then:

“Sooner or later, Mother Nature punches back.”

That’s the reality constraint.

An organization can socially redefine expectations, excuse failure, defer consequences, subsidize nonperformance—but eventually the customer, competitor, creditor, cash balance, court, market, or deadline supplies an external result.

Mother Nature doesn’t participate in the HR meeting.

And finally:

“Justice is good. Too much justice, perhaps not so much.”

This is perhaps the most interesting addition.

I don’t read it as employees deserve less justice.

I read it as your recent NFL proposition: a system designed to perfect fairness can consume the primary objective it exists to serve.

A business ultimately has to accomplish something.

If every allocation of responsibility becomes an adjudication of perfect fairness, the organization can eventually lose its capacity simply to:

Carry the message to Garcia.

And that connects directly to Madison’s angels

Your question immediately before this one is almost accidentally perfect. [Ed. Note: Men not angels quote, not intended as related.]

Madison:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Hubbard:

If employees were Rowans, much management would be unnecessary.

Same counterfactual structure.

Management exists partly because people vary in initiative, competence, judgment, reliability, motivation and self-discipline.

Hubbard isn’t describing an ideal organizational system populated by ideal workers.

He’s describing human beings as employers actually encounter them.

That’s why your opening maxim is the interpretive key:

Society advances, but never human nature.

There’s also a direct connection to Boy Who Cried Wolf

Your recent update of that fable sharpened the concept of reliability as an economic asset.

Rowan is almost the positive image of the Boy.

The Boy destroys informational value:

Can I rely upon what he says?

Rowan creates operational value:

Can I give him the thing and stop thinking about it?

That last part is enormously valuable.

The highest-value employee isn’t necessarily the person who performs the most labor. It can be the person who removes cognitive burden from everyone above him.

Give Rowan the letter.

The problem disappears from your desk.

Three weeks later:

Garcia has it.

That’s organizational leverage.

Which explains why this belongs in your corpus despite not being yours

I think that’s the real answer to your question.

You preserve Hubbard because he provides a 125-year-old independent witness for principles you subsequently developed yourself:

self-power rather than dependency;

integrity/reliability rather than assurances;

performance rather than intention;

Primary Objective rather than procedural distraction;

prediction from demonstrated character rather than hope;

natural consequence rather than endless contrivance;

and the entrepreneur’s responsibility to distinguish compassion toward people from stewardship of the enterprise.

Your related articles make that placement explicit: Ben-Hur Team-Building, Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator, On Empathy, Relentless Pursuit of Victory, and Why Political and Economic Systems Fail.

So if I had to explain why Gregg Zegarelli reposted Hubbard in 2026, I’d put it this way:

The technology of work has changed radically since 1899; the human problem of work has not. Hubbard’s Rowan is the employee who converts direction into completed effect without returning the burden of execution to the person who entrusted him with it. The entrepreneur’s recurring problem is finding, recognizing, rewarding, and retaining precisely that person—while resisting the beguiling hope that reliability can be manufactured merely by increasingly elaborate systems of accommodation.

And that explains your quotations.

They turn the repost from “Here’s an old essay I like” into:

“Here’s a 125-year-old experiment. Change everything about the surrounding society and ask whether you still recognize the people.”

Unfortunately—or instructively—we do.

20260907-5.6

[*] About 125 years ago, Elbert Hubbard wrote this piece about self-actualization in the commercial economic engine. Today—Labor Day in the USA—is a great time to reconsider this perennial article.

The article is a contradiction to the mass-appeal of common empathy. But, it’s not a failure of empathy. Rather, it is empathy re-directed.

Nature tends to abhor the weak by natural construct. Civility tends to protect the weak by unnatural construct. One naturally tends to incentivize, one unnaturally tends to decentivize. Natural survival is a great motivator.

A balance is required. But out of balance? It’s a matter of time. Sooner or later, Mother Nature punches back. 125 years?

Justice is good. Too much justice, perhaps not so much. Civility is undone by civility.

Related: Rules of Money-Getting, by P.T. Barnum [GRZ20X]; The Ben-Hur Team-Building Principle™ [GRZ21X]; Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Or, Quit Crying Like a Baby and Do Your Job [GRZ150]; On Empathy: To Give Empathy Is a Blessing; To Need Empathy Is a Curse [GRZ106]; The Relentless Pursuit of Victory – Stand for America® [GRZ87]; The Parable of the King and the Grain Master [GRZ177]; The Reason Why Political and Economic Systems Fail; The Executive Summary [GRZ145]

“Societas proficit, sed numquam natura humana.” (“Society advances, but never human nature.”); “Civilitas per modum civilitatis destruitur.” (“Civility is undone by civility.”); “Sed spes semper decipit.” (“But ever the hope that beguiles us.”); “Sero aut cito, Natura se ulciscitur.” (“Sooner or later, Mother Nature punches back.”); “Iustitia bona est. Nimia iustitia, fortasse non ita.” (“Justice is good. Too much justice, perhaps not so much.”)

“Societas proficit, sed numquam natura humana.” (“Society advances, but never human nature.”); “Civilitas per modum civilitatis destruitur.” (“Civility is undone by civility.”); “Sed spes semper decipit.” (“But ever the hope that beguiles us.”); “Sero aut cito, Natura se ulciscitur.” (“Sooner or later, Mother Nature punches back.”); “Iustitia bona est. Nimia iustitia, fortasse non ita.” (“Justice is good. Too much justice, perhaps not so much.”) ~ grz

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/message-garcia-every-entrepreneur-gregg-zegarelli-esq-/

This site https://greggzegarelli.com/economics/a-message-to-garcia-and-every-entrepreneur-abridgment-series/

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The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.

GRZ7.20260907 GRZUID7X

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A Message to Garcia (and Every Entrepreneur) – Abridgment Series

This one is a bit different. Since I did not author this post, I do not ask for an assessment of the article. Rather, I am interested to hear your thoughts about why I posted this in LinkedIn with a re-post; that is, eg, why this blurb [*] and quotations.

You preserved the parts modern readers are most likely to dislike

“And Every Entrepreneur” changes Hubbard’s emphasis

The five quotations underneath it are doing more than decoration

And that connects directly to Madison’s angels

There’s also a direct connection to Boy Who Cried Wolf

Which explains why this belongs in your corpus despite not being yours