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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.”