I thought so little of it that we ran it in without a heading. The
edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra March
"Philistines," a dozen, fifty, a hundred; and when the American News
Company ordered a thousand I asked one of my helpers which article it was
that had stirred things up.
"It's that stuff about Garcia," he said.
The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York
Central Railroad, thus: "Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article
in pamphlet form--Empire State Express advertisement on back--also state
how soon can ship."
I replied giving price and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two
years. Our facilities were small, and a hundred thousand pamphlets looked
like an awful undertaking.
The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article
in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of one hundred
thousand each. Five editions were sent out, and then he got out an
edition of half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were
sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in
over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into
eleven languages, and been given a total circulation of over twenty-two
million copies. It has attained, I believe, a larger circulation in the
same length of time than any written article has ever before reached.
Of course, we can not tell just how much good "A Message to Garcia" has
done the Shop, but it probably doubled the circulation of "The
Philistine." I do not consider it by any means my best piece of writing;
but it was opportune--the time was ripe. Truth demands a certain
expression, and too much had been said on the other side about the
downtrodden, honest man, looking for work and not being able to find it.
The article in question states the other side. Men are needed--loyal,
honest men who will do their work. "The world cries out for him--the man
who can carry a message to Garcia."
The man who sent the message and the man who received it are dead. The
man who carried it is still carrying other messages. The combination of
theme, condition of the country, and method of circulation was so
favorable that their conjunction will probably never occur again. Other
men will write better articles, but they may go a-begging for lack of a
Daniels to bring them to judgment.
* * * * *
Concerning my own personal history, I'll not tarry long to
tell. It has been too much like the career of many another born in the
semi-pioneer times of the Middle West, to attract much attention, unless
one should go into the psychology of the thing with intent to show the
evolution of a soul. But that will require a book--and some day I'll
write it, after the manner of Saint Augustine or Jean Jacques.
But just now I 'll only say that I was born in Illinois, June Nineteenth,
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six. My father was a country doctor, whose income
never exceeded five hundred dollars a year. I left school at fifteen,
with a fair hold on the three R's, and beyond this my education in
"manual training" had been good. I knew all the forest-trees, all wild
animals thereabout, every kind of fish, frog, fowl or bird that swam, ran
or flew. I knew every kind of grain or vegetable, and its comparative
value. I knew the different breeds of cattle, horses, sheep and swine.
I could teach wild cows to stand while being milked; break horses to
saddle or harness; could sow, plow and reap; knew the mysteries of
apple-butter, pumpkin pie pickled beef, smoked side-meat, and could make
lye at a leach and formulate soft soap.
That is to say, I was a bright, strong, active country boy who had been
brought up to help his father and mother get a living for a large
family.
I was not so densely ignorant--don't feel sorry for country boys: God is
often on their side.
At fifteen I worked on a farm and did a man's work for a boy's pay. I did
not like it and told the man so. He replied, "You know what you can do."
And I replied, "Yes." I went westward like the course of empire and
became a cowboy; tired of this and went to Chicago; worked in a
printing-office; peddled soap from house to house; shoved lumber on the
docks; read all the books I could find; wrote letters back to country
newspapers and became a reporter; next got a job as traveling salesman;
taught in a district school; read Emerson, Carlyle and Macaulay; worked
in a soap factory; read Shakespeare and committed most of "Hamlet" to
memory with an eye on the stage; became manager of the soap-factory, then
partner; evolved an Idea for the concern and put it on the track of
making millions--knew it was going to make millions--did not want them;
sold out my interest for seventy-five thousand dollars and went to
Harvard College; tramped through Europe; wrote for sundry newspapers;
penned two books (couldn't find a publisher); taught night school in
Buffalo; tramped through Europe some more and met William Morris (caught
it); came back to East Aurora and started "Chautauqua Circles"; studied
Greek and Latin with a local clergyman; raised trotting-horses; wrote
"Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great."
So that is how I got my education, such as it is. I am a graduate of the
University of Hard Knocks, and I've taken several postgraduate courses. I
have worked at five different trades enough to be familiar with the
tools. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Tufts College bestowed on me the
degree of Master of Arts; but since I did not earn the degree, it really
does not count.
I have never been sick a day, never lost a meal through disinclination to
eat, never consulted a doctor, never used tobacco or intoxicants. My work
has never been regulated by the eight-hour clause.
Horses have been my only extravagance, and I ride horseback daily now: a
horse that I broke myself, that has never been saddled by another, and
that has never been harnessed.
My best friends have been workingmen, homely women and children. My
father and mother are members of my household, and they work in the Shop
when they are so inclined. My mother's business now is mostly to care for
the flowers, and my father we call "Physician to The Roycrofters," as he
gives free advice and attendance to all who desire his services. Needless
to say, his medicine is mostly a matter of the mind. Unfortunately for
him, we do not enjoy poor health, so there is very seldom any one sick to
be cured. Fresh air is free, and outdoor exercise is not discouraged.
* * * * *
The Roycroft Shop and belongings represent an investment
of about three hundred thousand dollars. We have no liabilities, making
it a strict business policy to sign no notes or other instruments of debt
that may in the future prove inopportune and tend to disturb digestion.
Fortune has favored us.
First, the country has grown tired of soft platitude, silly truism and
undisputed things said in such a solemn way. So when "The Philistine"
stepped into the ring and voiced in no uncertain tones what its editor
thought, thinking men and women stopped and listened. Editors of
magazines refused my manuscript because they said it was too plain, too
blunt, sometimes indelicate--it would give offense, subscribers would
cancel, et cetera. To get my thoughts published I had to publish them
myself; and people bought for the very reason for which the editors said
they would cancel. The readers wanted brevity and plain statement--the
editors said they didn't.
The editors were wrong. They failed to properly diagnose a demand. I saw
the demand and supplied it--for a consideration.
Next I believed the American public. A portion of it, at least, wanted a
few good and beautiful books instead of a great many cheap books. The
truth came to me in the early Nineties, when John B. Alden and half a
dozen other publishers of cheap books went to the wall. I read the R.G.
Dun & Company bulletin and I said, "The publishers have mistaken their
public--we want better books, not cheaper." In Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-two, I met William Morris, and after that I was sure I was right.
Again I had gauged the public correctly--the publishers were wrong, as
wrong as the editors. There was a market for the best, and the problem
was to supply it. At first I bound my books in paper covers and simple
boards. Men wrote to me wanting fine bindings. I said, "There is a market
in America for the best--cheap boards, covered with cloth, stamped by
machinery in gaudy tinsel and gilt, are not enough." I discovered that
nearly all the bookbinders were dead. I found five hundred people in a
book-factory in Chicago binding books, but not a bookbinder among them.
They simply fed the books into hoppers and shot them out of chutes, and
said they were bound.
Next the public wanted to know about this thing--"What are you folks
doing out there in that buckwheat town?" Since my twentieth year I have
had one eye on the histrionic stage. I could talk in public a bit, had
made political speeches, given entertainments in crossroads schoolhouses,
made temperance harangues, was always called upon to introduce the
speaker of the evening, and several times had given readings from my own
amusing works for the modest stipend of ten dollars and keep. I would
have taken the lecture platform had it not been nailed down.
In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight, my friend Major Pond wanted to book me
on a partnership deal at the Waldorf-Astoria. I didn't want to speak
there--I had been saying unkind things in "The Philistine" about the
Waldorf-Astoria folks. But the Major went ahead and made arrangements. I
expected to be mobbed.
But Mr. Boldt, the manager of the hotel, had placed a suite of rooms at
my disposal without money and without price. He treated me most
cordially; never referred to the outrageous things I had said about his
tavern; assured me that he enjoyed my writings, and told me of the
pleasure he had in welcoming me.
Thus did he heap hot cinders upon my occiput. The Astor gallery seats
eight hundred people. Major Pond had packed in nine hundred at one dollar
each--three hundred were turned away. After the lecture the Major awaited
me in the anteroom, fell on my neck and rained Pond's Extract down my
back, crying: "Oh! Oh! Oh! Why didn't we charge them two dollars apiece!"
The next move was to make a tour of the principal cities under Major
Pond's management. Neither of us lost money--the Major surely did not.
Last season I gave eighty-one lectures, with a net profit to myself of a
little over ten thousand dollars. I spoke at Tremont Temple in Boston, to
twenty-two hundred people; at Carnegie Hall, New York; at Central Music
Hall, Chicago. I spoke to all the house would hold; at Chautauqua, my
audience was five thousand people. It will be noted by the Discerning
that my lectures have been of double importance, in that they have given
an income and at the same time advertised the Roycroft Wares.
The success of the Roycroft Shop has not been brought about by any one
scheme or plan. The business is really a combination of several ideas,
any one of which would make a paying enterprise in itself. So it stands
about thus:
First, the printing and publication of three magazines.
Second, the printing of books (it being well known that some of the
largest publishers in America--Scribner and Appleton, for instance--have
no printing-plants, but have the work done for them).
Third, the publication of books.
Fourth, the artistic binding of books.
Fifth, authorship. Since I began printing my own manuscript, there is
quite an eager demand for my writing, so I do a little of Class B for
various publishers and editors.
Sixth, the Lecture Lyceum.
Seventh, blacksmithing, carpenter-work and basket-weaving. These
industries have sprung up under the Roycroft care as a necessity. Men and
women in the village came to us and wanted work, and we simply gave them
opportunity to do the things they could do best. We have found a market
for all our wares, so no line of work has ever been a bill of expense.
I want no better clothing, no better food, no more comforts and
conveniences than my helpers and fellow-workers have. I would be ashamed
to monopolize a luxury--to take a beautiful work of art, say a painting
or a marble statue, and keep it for my own pleasure and for the select
few I might invite to see my beautiful things. Art is for all--beauty is
for all. Harmony in all of its manifold forms should be like a
sunset--free to all who can drink it in. The Roycroft Shop is for The
Roycrofters, and each is limited only by his capacity to absorb.
* * * * *
Art is the expression of man's joy in his work, and all
the joy and love that you can weave into a fabric comes out again and
belongs to the individual who has the soul to appreciate it. Art is
beauty; and beauty is a gratification, a peace and a solace to every
normal man and woman. Beautiful sounds, beautiful colors, beautiful
proportions, beautiful thoughts--how our souls hunger for them! Matter is
only mind in an opaque condition; and all beauty is but a symbol of
spirit. You can not get joy from feeding things all day into a machine.
You must let the man work with hand and brain, and then out of the joy of
this marriage of hand and brain, beauty will be born. It tells of a
desire for harmony, peace, beauty, wholeness--holiness.
Art is the expression of man's joy in his work.
When you read a beautiful poem that makes your heart throb with gladness
and gratitude, you are simply partaking of the emotion that the author
felt when he wrote it. To possess a piece of work that the workman made
in joyous animation is a source of joy to the possessor.
And this love of the work done by the marriage of hand and brain can
never quite go out of fashion--for we are men and women, and our hopes
and aims and final destiny are at last one. Where one enjoys, all enjoy;
where one suffers, all suffer.
Say what you will of the coldness and selfishness of men, at the last we
long for companionship and the fellowship of our kind. We are lost
children, and when alone and the darkness gathers, we long for the close
relationship of the brothers and sisters we knew in our childhood, and
cry for the gentle arms that once rocked us to sleep. Men are homesick
amid this sad, mad rush for wealth and place and power. The calm of the
country invites, and we would fain do with less things, and go back to
simplicity, and rest our tired heads in the lap of Mother Nature.
Life is expression. Life is a movement outward, an unfolding, a
development. To be tied down, pinned to a task that is repugnant, and to
have the shrill voice of Necessity whistling eternally in your ears, "Do
this or starve," is to starve; for it starves the heart, the soul, and
all the higher aspirations of your being pine away and die.
At the Roycroft Shop the workers are getting an education by doing
things. Work should be the spontaneous expression of a man's best
impulses. We grow only through exercise, and every faculty that is
exercised becomes strong, and those not used atrophy and die. Thus how
necessary it is that we should exercise our highest and best! To develop
the brain we have to exercise the body. Every muscle, every organ, has
its corresponding convolution in the brain. To develop the mind, we must
use the body. Manual training is essentially moral training; and physical
work is, at its best, mental, moral and spiritual--and these are truths
so great and yet so simple that until yesterday many wise men did not
recognize them.
At the Roycroft Shop we are reaching out for an all-round development
through work and right living.
And we have found it a good expedient--a wise business policy. Sweat-shop
methods can never succeed in producing beautiful things. And so the
management of the Roycroft Shop surrounds the workers with beauty, allows
many liberties, encourages cheerfulness and tries to promote kind
thoughts, simply because it has been found that these things are
transmuted into good, and come out again at the finger-tips of the
workers in beautiful results. So we have pictures, statuary, flowers,
ferns, palms, birds, and a piano in every room. We have the best sanitary
appliances that money can buy; we have bathrooms, shower-baths, library,
rest-rooms. Every week we have concerts, dances, lectures.
Besides being a workshop, the Roycroft is a School. We are following out
a dozen distinct lines of study, and every worker in the place is
enrolled as a member of one or more classes. There are no fees to pupils,
but each pupil purchases his own books--the care of his books and
belongings being considered a part of one's education. All the teachers
are workers in the Shop, and are volunteers, teaching without pay, beyond
what each receives for his regular labor.
The idea of teaching we have found is a great benefit--to the teacher.
The teacher gets most out of the lessons. Once a week there is a faculty
meeting, when each teacher gives in a verbal report of his stewardship.
It is responsibility that develops one, and to know that your pupils
expect you to know is a great incentive to study. Then teaching demands
that you shall give--give yourself--and he who gives most receives most.
We deepen our impressions by recounting them, and he who teaches others
teaches himself. I am never quite so proud as when some one addresses me
as "teacher." We try to find out what each person can do best, what he
wants to do, and then we encourage him to put his best into it--also to
do something else besides his specialty, finding rest in change.
The thing that pays should be the expedient thing, and the expedient
thing should be the proper and right thing. That which began with us as a
matter of expediency is often referred to as a "philanthropy." I do not
like the word, and wish to state here that the Roycroft is in no sense a
charity--I do not believe in giving any man something for nothing. You
give a man a dollar and the man will think less of you because he thinks
less of himself; but if you give him a chance to earn a dollar, he will
think more of himself and more of you. The only way to help people is to
give them a chance to help themselves. So the Roycroft Idea is one of
reciprocity--you help me and I'll help you. We will not be here forever,
anyway; soon Death, the kind old Nurse, will come and rock us all to
sleep, and we had better help one another while we may: we are going the
same way--let's go hand in hand!