An article in the Aug. 20, 1901, Geneva Daily Times was headlined, “THE MESSAGE TO GARCIA — More Than 7,000,000 Have Been Printed — General Passenger Agent Daniels Responsible for the Demand for It.”

The popular essay was originally published in 1899. So why did the Times’ Editor decide to publish a reprint?

Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” in 2005 to describe the epidemic of politicians, pundits, and influencers “talking about something that seems like truth — the truth we want to exist.” However, truthiness was skillfully deployed well before the advent of social media.

By 1901, the phrase “Message to Garcia” was in modern parlance as a reference to someone who carried out a difficult task unhesitatingly, without asking questions, through personal initiative, persistence, and resourcefulness. The phrase was used commonly from 1899 to 1945; it persisted with increasingly lower usage until 1990.

The essay first appeared in “The Philistine,” a periodical written and published by Elbert Hubbard. The story is set just before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. President McKinley ordered 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan to carry a message to Gen. Calixto Garcia, the leader of the Cuban insurgency, whose stronghold was somewhere in the rugged mountains — “no one knew where.” Rowan traveled alone to Cuba via Jamaica, single-handedly located Garcia, delivered the message, and returned unscathed to the United States, having done immeasurable service to the American cause. Hubbard drew the moral in no uncertain terms: Rowan’s determination and persistence stand in stark contrast to “the imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.”

As you might well imagine, Hubbard’s moral was music to the ears of many corporate executives in business, finance, and manufacturing. George H. Daniels was the most important of these for elevating Rowan to an American legend.

Daniels was the General Passenger Agent of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, familiar to Genevans in 1901. Daniels is lauded — for good or ill — as an early genius of the advertising campaign, particularly for publishing both pamphlets and a magazine promoting tourist sites accessible by train. He made good on his promise to anyone who sent him a stamp with an inquiry about travel interests. In return, he sent a pamphlet describing how to travel by train to fulfill dreams or pursue interests in upstate New York.

So taken was Daniels with the essay that he ordered hundreds of thousands of reprints and distributed them to railway passengers. The proceeds bankrolled Hubbard’s Roycroft, the arts and crafts community in East Aurora. Buoyed by the spreading fame of the essay, Hubbard sold it in both cheap and expensive bindings to department stores, the Boy Scouts of America, the U.S. Navy, and the general public.

Very little of Hubbard’s account bore any resemblance to the truth.

Rowan was sent by Maj. Arthur L. Wagner, head of military intelligence, to join Garcia. Rowan traveled as a civilian to Kingston, Jamaica, where the U.S. consul connected him with the Cuban Revolutionary Junta. They transported Rowan by boat to Cuba. Rowan rode with rebels for eight days on horseback, at last meeting Garcia in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

Evidently, Rowan was not eager to carry out his orders, which were to “accompany the insurgent forces and send back dispatches.” Instead, Rowan said his orders were to identify Garcia’s needs and return to the U.S. as soon as possible. Not one to miss an opportunity to confer with American officials, Garcia sent a delegation of his men with Rowan back to the U.S. that same day.

Rowan was also disinclined to keep his mission a secret. While he was in Kingston, he told an Associated Press reporter all about it, and the story was splashed across the nation’s newspapers by the time Rowan landed in Cuba. Rowan would have been court-martialed, except the news coverage made him a popular hero. He was temporarily promoted to lieutenant colonel.

In short, Rowan did not carry a message from President McKinley, did not travel alone to an unknown location in the Cuban mountain wilderness, did not carry out his orders, revealed his mission to a reporter, and used the publicity for self-aggrandizement.

The Geneva Daily Times editor ran “The Message to Garcia” on Aug. 20, 1901, on the Editorial page. Why? A front-page article in the same issue provides a clue: “TIN CAN PLANT IS CLOSED TODAY. Mr. Palmer Says It is Due to Strike. Trust Said to Need Tin Plate at Other Factories — Date of Resumption is Indefinite.”

Mr. Palmer represented the American Can Co., which was formed in 1901 by merging 123 companies. The mergers were followed by a widespread shutdown of many can companies, which the American Can Co. blamed on August strikes by the Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers in five states.

Hubbard’s diatribe against workers evidently resonated with the Editor of the Times: “We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the ‘down-trodden denizen of the sweat-shop’ and ‘the homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,’ and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work. … It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best — those who can carry a message to Garcia.”

Words of cold comfort to the 75 employees of the Empire State Co., whose sudden loss of a paycheck was due to the indolent slackers at the steel mills just taken over by monopoly capitalism. The real victims, evidently, were the owners, including, for example, Andrew Carnegie.

Truthiness, indeed.

Linda Robertson is a retired faculty member from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she started the Media and Society Program. She has made several documentaries about the history of abolition in upstate New York, including Geneva. Her new historical novel, “The Lusitania Code: A Lady Butterschloss Mystery” (Level Best Books, 2026), is now available at all major online booksellers.