"I think I’m on the
bill for tonight’s show with a talk on the 12 Traditions of
A.A. But you know drunks, like women, have the prerogative, or
at least seize the prerogative of changing their minds - I’m
not going to make any such damn talk! For something very festive
I think the Traditions 1-12 would be a little too grim, might
bore you a little. As a matter of fact, speaking of Traditions,
when they were first written back there in 1945 or 1946 as
tentative guides to help us hang together and function, nobody
paid any attention except a few "againers" who wrote
me and asked what the hell are they about?
Nobody paid the slightest
attention. But, little by little as these Traditions got around
we had our clubhouse squabbles, our little rifts, this
difficulty and that, it was found that the Traditions indeed did
reflect experience and were guiding principles. So, they took
hold a little more and a little more and a little more so that
today the average A.A. coming in the door learns at once what
they’re about, about what kind of an outfit he really has
landed in and by what principles his group and A.A. as a whole
are governed. But, as I say, the dickens with all that. I would
like to just spin some yarn and they will be a series of yarns
which cluster around the preparation of the good old A.A. bible
and when I hear that it always makes me shudder because the guys
who put it together weren’t a damn bit biblical. I think
sometimes some of the drunks have an idea that these old timers
went around with almost visible halos and long gowns and they
were full of sweetness and light. Oh boy, how inspired they
were, oh yes. But wait till I tell you. I suppose the book yarn
really started in the living room of Doc and Annie Smith.
As you know, I landed there in
the summer of ‘35, a little group caught hold. I helped Smithy
briefly with it and he went on to found the first A.A. group in
the world. And, as with all new groups, it was nearly all
failure, but now and then, somebody saw the light and there was
progress. Pampered, I got back to New York, a little more
experienced group started there, and by the time we got around
to 1937, this thing had leaped over into Cleveland, and began to
move south from New York. But, it was still, we thought in those
years, flying blind, a flickering candle indeed, that might at
any moment be snuffed out. So, on this late fall afternoon in
1937, Smithy and I were talking together in his living room,
Anne sitting there, when we began to count noses. How many
people had stayed dry; in Akron, in New York, maybe a few in
Cleveland? How many had stayed dry and for how long? And when we
added up the total, it sure was a handful of, I don’t know, 35
to 40 maybe. But enough time had elapsed on enough really fatal
cases of alcoholism, so that we grasped the importance of these
small statistics. Bob and I saw for the first time that this
thing was going to succeed. That God in his providence and mercy
had thrown a new light into the dark caves where we and our kind
had been and were still by the millions dwelling. I can never
forget the elation and ecstasy that seized us both. And when we
sat happily taking and reflecting, we reflected, that well, a
couple of score of drunks were sober but this had taken three
long years. There had been an immense amount of failure and a
long time had been taken just to sober up the handful. How could
this handful carry its’ message to all those who still
didn’t know? Not all the drunks in the world could come to
Akron or New York. But how could we transmit our message to
them, and by what means? Maybe we could go to the old timers in
each group, but that meant nearly everybody, to find the sum of
money - somebody else’s money, of course - and say to them
"Well now, take a sabbatical year off your job if you have
one, and you go to Kentucky, Omaha, Chicago, San Francisco and
Los Angeles and where ever it may be and you give this thing a
year and get a group started."
It had already become evident by
then that we were just about to be moved out of the City
Hospital in Akron to make room for people with broken legs and
ailing livers; that the hospitals were not too happy with us. We
tried to run their business perhaps too much, and besides,
drunks were apt to be noisy in the night and there were other
inconveniences which were all tremendous. So, it was obvious
that because of drunks being such unlovely creatures, we would
have to have a great chain of hospitals. and as that dream burst
upon me, it sounded good, because you see, I’d been down in
Wall Street in the promotion business and I remember the great
sums of money that were made as soon as people got this chain
idea. You know, chain drug stores, chain grocery stores, chain
dry good stores. That evening Bob and I told them that we were
within sight of success and that we thought this thing might go
on and on and on, that a new light indeed was shining in our
dark world. But how could this light be a reflection and
transmitted without being distorted and garbled? At this point,
they turned the meeting over to me, and being a salesman, I set
right to work on the drunk tanks and subsidies for the
missionaries, I was pretty poor then.
We touched on the book. The group
conscience consisted of 18 men good and true ... and the good
and true men, you could see right away, were dammed skeptical
about it all. Almost with one voice, they chorused "let’s
keep it simple, this is going to bring money into this thing,
this is going to create a professional class. We’ll all be
ruined." "Well," I countered, "That’s a
pretty good argument. Lots to what you say ... but even within
gunshot of this very house, alcoholics are dying like flies. And
if this thing doesn’t move any faster than it has in the last
three years, it may be another 10 before it gets to the
outskirts of Akron. How in God’s name are we going to carry
this message to others? We’ve got to take some kind of chance.
We can’t keep it so simple it becomes an anarchy and gets
complicated. We can’t keep it so simple that it won’t
propagate itself, and we’ve got to have a lot of money to do
these things." So, exerting myself to the utmost, which was
considerable in those days, we finally got a vote in that little
meeting and it was a mighty close vote by just a majority of
maybe 2 or 3. The meeting said with some reluctance, "Well
Bill, if we need a lot of dough, you better go back to New York
where there’s plenty of it and you raise it." Well, boy,
that was the word that I’d been waiting for. So I scrammed
back to the great city and I began to approach some people of
means describing this tremendous thing that had happened. And it
didn’t seem so tremendous to the people of means at all. What?
35 or 40 drunks sober up? They have sobered them up before now,
you know. And besides, Mr. Wilson, don’t you think it’s kind
of sweeping up the shavings? I mean, wouldn’t this be
something for the Red Cross be better?
In other words, with all of my
ardent solicitations, I got one hell of a freeze from the
gentlemen of wealth. Well, I began to get blue and when I begin
to get blue my stomach kicks up as well as other things.
I was laying in the bed one night
with an imaginary ulcer attack (this used to happen all the time
- I had one the time the 12 steps were written) and I said,
"My God, we’re starving to death here on Clinton
Street." By this time the house was full of drunks. They
were eating us out of house and home. In those days we never
believed in charging anybody anything - so Lois was earning the
money, I was being the missionary and the drunks were eating the
meals. "This can’t go on. We’ve got to have those drunk
tanks, we’ve got to have those missionaries, and we’ve got
to have a book. That’s for sure."
The next morning I crawled into
my clothes and I called on my brother-in-law. He’s a doctor
and he is about the last person who followed my trip way down.
The only one, save of course, the Lord. "Well," I
said, "I’ll go up and see Leonard." So I went up to
see my brother-in-law Leonard and he pried out a little time
between patients coming in there. I started my awful bellyache
about these rich guys who wouldn’t give us any dough for this
great and glorious enterprise.
It seemed to me he knew a girl
and I think she had an uncle that somehow tied up with the
Rockefeller offices. I asked him to call and see if there was
such a man and if there was, would he see us. On what slender
threads our destiny sometimes hangs. So, the call was made.
Instantly there came onto the other end of the wire the voice of
dear Willard Richardson - one of the loveliest Christian
gentlemen I have ever known. And the moment he recognized my
brother-in—law he said, "Why Leonard, where have you been
all these years? "Well, my brother-in-law, unlike me, is a
man of very few words, so he quickly said to dear old Uncle
Willard, he had a brother-in-law who had apparently some success
sobering up drunks and could the two of us come over there and
see him. "Why certainly," said dear Willard.
"Come right over." So we go over to Rockefeller Plaza.
We go up that elevator - 54 flights or 56 I guess it was, and we
walk promptly into Mr. Rockefeller’s personal offices, and ask
to see Mr. Richardson. Here sits this lovely, benign old
gentleman, who nevertheless had a kind of shrewd twinkle
in his eye. So I sat down and told him about our exciting
discovery, this terrific cure for alcoholics that had just hit
the world, how it worked and what we have done for them. And,
boy, this was the first receptive man with money or access to
money — remember we were in Mr. Rockefeller’s personal
offices at this point — and by now, we had learned that this
was Mr. Rockefeller’s closest personal friend. So he said,
"I’m very interested. Would you like to have lunch with
me, Mr. Wilson?" Well, now you know, for a rising promoter,
that sounded pretty good - going to have lunch with the best
friends of John D. Things were looking up. My ulcer attack
disappeared. So I had lunch with the old gentleman and we went
over this thing again and again and, boy, he’s so warm and
kindly and friendly. Right at the close of the lunch he said,
"Well now Mr. Wilson or Bill, if I can call you that,
wouldn’t you like to have a luncheon meeting with some of my
friends? There’s Frank Amos, he’s in the advertising
business but he was on a committee that recommended that Mr.
Rockefeller drop the prohibition business. And there’s LeRoy
Chipman, he looks after Mr. Rockefeller real estate. And
there’s Mr. Scotty, Chairman of the Board of the Riverside
Church and a number of other people like that. I believe
they’d like to hear this story." So a meeting was
arranged and it fell upon a winter’s night in 1937. And the
meeting was held at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. We called in,
posthaste, a couple of drunks from Akron - Smithy included, of
course - heading the procession. I came in with the New York
contingent of four or five. And to our astonishment we were
ushered into Mr., Rockefeller’s personal boardroom right next
to his office. I thought to myself "Well, now this is
really getting hot." And indeed I felt very much warmed
when I was told by Mr. Richardson that I was sitting in a chair
just vacated by Mr. Rockefeller. I said "Well, now, we
really are getting close to the bankroll." Old Doc
Silkworth was there that night too, and he testified what he had
seen happen to these new friends of ours, and each drunk,
thinking of nothing better to say, told their stories of
drinking and recovering and these folk listened. They seemed
very definitely impressed. I could see that the moment for the
big touch was coming. So, I gingerly brought up the subject of
the drunk tanks, the subsidized missionaries, and the big
question of a book or literature.
Well, God moves in mysterious
ways, his wonders to perform. It didn’t look like a wonder to
me when Mr. Scott, head of a large engineering firm and Chairman
of the Riverside Church, looked at us and said "Gentlemen,
up to this point, this has been the work of goodwill only. No
plan, no property, no paid people, just one carrying the good
news to the next. Isn’t that true? And may it not be that that
is where the great power of this society lies? Now, if we
subsidize it, might it not alter its’ whole character? We want
to do all we can, we’re gathered for that, but would it be
wise?" Well then, the salesmen all gave Mr. Scott the rush
and we said, "Why, Mr. Scott, there’re only 40 of us.
It’s taken 3 years. Why millions, Mr. Scott, will rot before
this thing ever gets to ‘em unless we have money and lots of
it." And we made our case at last with these gentlemen for
the missionaries, the drunk tanks and the book. So one of them
volunteered to investigate us very carefully, and since poor old
Dr. Bob was harder up than I was, and since the first group and
the reciprocal community was in Akron, we directed their
attention out there. Frank Amos, still a trustee in the
Foundation, at his own expense, got on a train, went out to
Akron and made all sorts of preliminary inquiries around town
about Dr. Bob. All the reports were good except that he was a
drunk that recently got sober. He visited the little meeting out
there. He went to the Smith house and he came back with what he
thought was a very modest proposal. He recommended to these
friends of ours that we should have at least a token amount of
money at first, say $50,000, something like that. That would
clear up the mortgage on Smith’s place. It would get us a
little rehabilitation place. We could put Dr. Smith in charge.
We could subsidize a few of these people briefly, until we got
some more money. We could start the chain of hospitals. We’d
have a few missionaries. We could get busy on the book, all for
a mere $50,000 bucks. Well, considering the kind of money we
were backed up against, that did sound a little small, but, you
know, one thing leads to another and it sounded real good. We
were real glad. Mr. Willard Richardson, our original contact,
then took that report into John D. Jr. as everybody recalls. And
I’ve since heard what went on in there. Mr. Rockefeller read
the report, called Willard Richardson and thanked him and said:
"Somehow I am strangely stirred by all this. This interests
me immensely." And then looking at his friend Willard, he
said, "But isn’t money going to spoil this thing? I’m
terribly afraid that it would. And yet I am so strangely stirred
by it."
Then came another turning point
in our destiny. When that man whose business is giving away
money said to Willard Richardson, "No," he said, I
won’t be the one to spoil this thing with money. You say these
two men who are heading it are a little ‘stressed’, I’ll
put $5,000 dollars in the Riverside Church treasury. Those folks
can form themselves into a committee and draw on it as they
like. I want to hear what goes on. But, please don’t ask .me
for any more money." Well, with 50 thousand that then was
shrunk to five, we raised the mortgage on Smithy’s house for
about three grand. That left two and Smith and I commenced
chewing on that too. Well, that was a long way from a string of
drunk tanks and books. What in thunder would we do? Well, we had
more meetings with our new found friends, Amos, Richardson,
Scott, Chipman and those fellows who stuck with us to this day,
some of them now gone. And, in spite of Mr. Rockefeller’s
advice, we again convinced these folks that this thing needed a
lot of money. What could we do without it? So, one of them
proposed, "Well, why don’t we form a foundation,
something like the Rockefeller Foundation?" I said, "I
hope it will be like that with respect to money." And then
one of them got a free lawyer from a firm who was interested in
the thing. And we all asked him to draw up an agreement of
trust, a charter for something to be called the Alcoholic
Foundation. Why we picked that one, I don’t know. I don’t
know whether the Foundation was alcoholic, it was the Alcoholic
Foundation, not the Alcoholics Foundation. And the lawyer was
very much confused because in the meeting which formed the
Foundation, we made it very plain that we did not wish to be in
the majority. We felt that there should be non-alcoholics on the
board and they ought to be in a majority of one. "Well,
indeed," said the lawyer, "What is the difference
between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic?" And one of our
smart drunks said, "That’s a cinch, a non-alcoholic is a
guy who can drink and an alcoholic is a guy who can’t
drink." "well," said the lawyer, "how do we
state that legally?" We didn’t know. So at length, we
have a foundation and a board which I think then was about
seven, consisting of four of these new friends, including my
brother-in-law, Mr. Richardson, Chipman, Amos and some of us
drunks. I think Smithy went on the board but I kind of coyly
stayed off it thinking it would be more convenient later on.
So we had this wonderful new
foundation. These friends, unlike Mr. Rockefeller, were sold on
the idea that we needed a lot of dough, and so our salesmen
around New York started to solicit some money, again, from the
very rich. We had a list of them and we had credentials from
friends of Mr. John D. Rockefeller. "How could you miss, I
ask you, salesmen?" The Foundation had been formed in the
spring of 1938 and all summer we solicited the rich. Well, they
were either in Florida or they preferred the Red Cross, or some
of them thought that drunks were disgusting and we didn’t get
one damm cent in the whole summer of 1938, praise God! Well,
meantime, we began to hold trustee meetings and they were
commiseration sessions on getting no dough. What with the
mortgage and with me and Smithy eating away at it, the five
grand had gone up with the flu, and we were all stone broke
again. Smithy couldn’t get his practice back either because he
was a surgeon and nobody likes to be carved up by an alcoholic
surgeon - even if he was three years sober. So things were tough
all around, no fooling. Well, what would we do?
One day, probably in August 1938,
I produced at a Foundation meeting, a couple of chapters of a
proposed book along with some recommendations of a couple of
doctors down at John Hopkins to try to put the bite on the rich.
And we still had these two book chapters kicking around. Frank
Amos said, "Well now, I know the religious editor down
there at Harpers, an old friend of mine, Gene Exman." He
said, "Why don’t you take these two book chapters, your
story and the introduction to the book, down there and show them
to Gene and see what he thinks about them." So I took the
chapters down. To my great suprise, Gene who was to become a
great friend of ours, looked at the chapters and said, "Why
Mr. Wilson, could you write a whole book like this?"
"Well, I said, "Sure, sure." There was more talk
about it. I guess he went in and showed it to Mr. Canfield, the
big boss, and another meeting was had. The upshot was that
Harpers intimated that they would pay me as the budding author,
15 hundred in advance royalties, bringing enough money in to
enable me to finish the book. I felt awful good about that. It
made me feel like I was an author or something. I felt real good
about it but after awhile, not so good. Because I began to
reason, and so did the other boys, if this guy Wilson eats up
the 15 hundred bucks while he’s doing this book, after the
book gets out, it will take a long time to catch up. And if this
thing gets him publicity, what are we going to do with the
inquiries? And, after all, what’s a lousy 10% royalty anyway?
The 15 hundred still looked pretty big to me. Then we thought
too, now here’s a fine publisher like Harpers, but if this
book if and when done, should prove to be the main textbook for
A.A., why would we want our main means of propagation in the
hands of somebody else? Shouldn’t we control this thing? At
this point, the book project really began.
I had a guy helping me on this
thing who had red hair and ten times my energy and he was some
promoter. He said, "Bill, this is something, come on with
me." We walk into a stationary store, we buy a pad of blank
stock certificates and we write across the top of them ‘Works
Publishing Company’- Par Value 25 Dollars. So we take the pad
of these stock certificates, (of course we didn’t bother to
incorporate it, that didn’t happen for several more years) we
took this pad of stock certificates to the first A.A. meeting
where you shouldn’t mix money with spirituality. We said to
the drunks "look, this thing is gonna be a cinch. Parker
will take a third of this thing for services rendered. I, the
author will take a third for services rendered, and you can have
a third of these stock certificates par 25 if you’ll just
start paying up on your stock. If you only want one share,
it’s only five dollars a month, 5 months, see?" And the
drunks all gave us this stony look that said, "What the
hell, you mean to say you’re only asking us to buy stock in a
book that you ain’t written yet?" "Why sure "
, we said "If Harpers will put money in this thing why
shouldn’t you? Harpers said it’s gonna be a good book."
But the drunks still gave us this stony stare. We had to think
up some more arguments. "We’ve been looking at pricing
costs of the books, boys. We get a book here, ya know, 400 or
450 pages, it ought to sell for about $3.50." Now back in
those days we found on inquiry from the printers that that $3.50
book could be printed for 35 cents making a 1,000% profit, of
course, we didn’t mention the other expenses, just the
printing costs. "So boys, just think on it, when these
books move out by the carload we will be printing them for 35
cents and we’ll be selling them direct mail for $3.50. How can
you lose?" The drunks still gave us this stony stare. No
salt. Well, we figured we had to have a better argument than
that. Harpers said it was a good book, you can print them for
35~ and sell them for $3.50, but how are we going to convince
the drunks that we could move carload lots of them? Millions of
dollars.
So we get the idea we’ll go up
to the Readers Digest, and we got an appointment with Mr.
Kenneth Paine, thee managing editor there. Gee, I never forget
the day we got off the train up at Pleasantville and were
ushered into his office. We excitedly told him the story of this
wonderful budding society. We dwelled upon the friendship of Mr.
Rockefeller and Harry Emerson Fosdick. You know we were
traveling in good company with Paine. The society, by the way,
was about to publish a textbook, then in the process of being
written and we were wondering, Mr. Paine, if this wouldn’t be
a matter of tremendous interest to the Reader’s Digest? Having
in mind of course that the Reader’s Digest has a circulation
of 12 million readers and if we could only get a free ad of this
coming book in the Digest we really would move something, ya
see?
"Well," Mr. Paine said,
"this sounds extremely interesting, I like this idea, why I
think it’ll be an absolutely ideal piece for the Digest. How
soon do you think this new book will be out Mr. Wilson?" I
said, "We’ve got a couple of chapters written, ahem, if
we can get right at it, Mr. Paine, uh, you know, uh, probably
uh, this being October, we ought to get this thing out by April
or next May. "Why," Mr. Paine said, "I’m sure
the Digest would like a thing like this. Mr. Wilson, I’ll take
it up with the editorial board, and when the time is right and
you get already to shoot, come up and we’ll put a special
feature writer on this thing and we’ll tell all about your
society." And then my promoter friend said, "But Mr.
Paine, will you mention the new book in the piece?"
"Yes," said Mr. Paine, "we will mention the
book." Well, that was all we needed, we went back to the
drunks and said, "now look, boys, there are positively
millions in this – how can you miss? Harpers says its going to
be a good book. We buy them for 35~ from the printer, we sell
them for $3.50 and the Reader’s Digest is going to give us a
free add in its’ piece and boys, those books will move out by
the carload. How can you miss? And after all, we only need 4 or
5 thousand bucks."
So we began to sell the shares of
Works Publishing, not yet incorporated, par value $25 and at $5
per month to the poor people. Some people bought as little as
one and one guy bought 10 shares. We sold a few shares to
non—alcoholics and my promoter friend who was to get one-third
interest was a very important man in this transaction because he
went out and kept collecting the money from the drunks so that
little Ruthie Hock and I could keep working on the book and Lois
could have some groceries (even though she was still working in
that department store).
So, the preparation started and
some more chapters were done and we went to A.A. meetings in New
York with these chapters in the rough. It wasn’t like
chicken-in-the-rough; the boys didn’t eat those chapters up at
all. I suddenly discovered that I was in this terrific whirlpool
of arguments. I was just the umpire - I finally had to
stipulate. "Well boys, over here you got the Holly Rollers
who say we need all the good old-fashioned stuff in the book,
and over here you tell me we’ve got to have a psychological
book, and that never cured anybody, and they didn’t do very
much with us in the missions, so I guess you will have to leave
me just to be the umpire. I’ll scribble out some roughs here
and show them to you and let’s get the comments in." So
we fought, bled and died our way through one chapter after
another. We sent them out to Akron and they were peddled around
and there were terrific hassles about what should go in this
book and what should not. Meanwhile, we set drunks up to write
their stories or we had newspaper people to write the stories
for them to go in the back of the book. We had an idea that
we’d have a text and all and then we’d have stories all
about the drunks who were staying sober.
Then came that night when we were
up around Chapter 5. As you know I’d gone on about myself
which was natural after all. And then the little introductory
chapter and we dealt with the agnostic and we described
alcoholism, but, boy, we finally got to the point where we
really had to say what the book was all about and how this deal
works. As I told you this was a six step program then. On this
particular evening, I was lying in bed on Clinton Street
wondering what the deuce this next chapter would be about. The
idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement of concrete
principles that these drunks can’t wiggle out of. Can’t be
any wiggling out of this deal at all. And this six step program
had two big gaps in-between they’ll wiggle out of. Moreover if
this book goes out to distant readers, they have to have got to
have an absolutely explicit program by which to go. This was
while I was thinking these thoughts, while my imaginary ulcer
was paining me and while I was mad as hell at these drunks
because the money was coming in too slow. Some had the stock and
weren’t paying up. A couple of guys came in and they gave me a
big argument and we yelled and shouted and I finally went down
and laid on the bed with my ulcer and I said, "poor
me."
There was a pad of paper by the
bed and I reached for that and said "you’ve got to break
this program up into small pieces so they can’t wiggle out. So
I started writing, trying to bust it up into little pieces. And
when I got the pieces set down on that piece of yellow paper, I
put numbers on them and was rather agreeably surprised when it
came out to twelve. I said, "That’s a good significant
figure in Christianity and mystic lore. "Then I noticed
that instead of leaving the God idea to the last, I’d got it
up front but I didn’t pay much attention to that, it looked
pretty good. Well, the next meeting comes along; I’d gone on
beyond the steps trying to amplify them in the rest of that
chapter to the meeting and boy, pandemonium broke loose.
"What do you mean by changing the program.. .what about
this, what about that, this thing is overloaded with God. We
don’t like this, you’ve got these guys on their knees..
.stand them up!" A lot of
these drunks are scared to death
of being Godly.. .let’s take God out of it entirely."
Such were the arguments that we had. Out of that terrific hassle
came the Twelve Steps. That argument caused the introduction of
the phrase which has been a lifesaver to thousands....it was
certainly none of my doing. I was on the pious side then, you
see, still suffering from this big hot flash of mine. The idea
of "God as you understand Him" came out of that
perfectly ferocious argument and we put that in.
Well, little by little things
ground on, little by little the drunks put in money and we kept
an office open in Newark which was the office of a defunct
business where I tried to establish my friend. The money ran low
at times and Ruthie Hock worked for no pay. We gave her plenty
of stock in the Works Publishing of course. All you had to do is
tear it off the pay, par 25 have a week’s salary, dear. So, we
got around to about January, 1939. Somebody said "hadn’t
we better test this thing out; hadn’t we better make a
pre-publication copy, a multilith or mimeographed copy of this
text and a few of the personal stories that had come in - try it
out on the preacher, on the doctor, the Catholic Committee on
Publications, psychiatrists, policemen, fishwives, housewives,
drunks, everybody. Just to see if we’ve got anything that goes
against the grain anyplace and also to find out if we can’t
get some better ideas here?" So at considerable expense, we
got this pre-publication copy made; we peddled it around and
comments came back, some of them very helpful. It went, among
other places, to the Catholic Committee on Publications in New
York and at that time we had only one Catholic member to take it
there and he had just gotten out of the asylum and hadn’t had
anything to do with preparing the book.
The book passed inspection and
the stories came in. Somehow we got them edited, somehow we got
the galleys together. We got up to the printing time. Meanwhile,
the drunks had been kind of slow on those subscription payments
and a little further on I was able to go up to Charlie Towns
where old Doc Silkworth held forth. Charlie believed in us so we
put the slug on to Charlie for $2,500 bucks. Charlie didn’t
want any stocks, he wanted a promissory note on the book not yet
written. So, we got the $2,500 from Charlie routed around
through the Alcoholic Foundation so that it could be tax exempt.
Also, we had blown $6,000 in these 9 months in supporting the 3
of us in an office and the till was getting low. We still had to
get this book printed. So, we go up to Cornwall Press, which is
the largest printer in the world, where we’d made previous
inquiries and we asked about printing and they said they’d be
glad to do it and how many books would we like? We said that was
hard to estimate. Of course our membership is very small at the
present time and we wouldn’t sell many to the membership but
after all, the Readers Digest is going to print a plug about it
to its’ 2 million readers. This book should go out in carloads
when it’s printed.
The printer was none other than
dear old Mr. Blackwell, one of our Christian friends and Mr.
Blackwell said "How much of a down payment are you going to
make? How many books would you like printed?"
"Well," we said "we’ll be conservative, let’s
print 5,000 just to start with." Mr. Blackwell asked us
what we were going to use for money. We said that we wouldn’t
need much, just a few hundred dollars on account would be all
right. I told you, after all, we’re traveling in very good
company, friends of Mr. Rockefeller and all that.
So, Blackwell started printing
the 5,000 books; the plates were made and the galleys were read.
Gee, all of a sudden we thought of the Reader’s Digest, so we
go up to there, walk in on Mr. Kenneth Paine and say
"We’re all ready to shoot." And Mr. Paine replies
"Shoot what - Oh yes, I remember you two, Mr. Marcus and
Mr. Wilson. You gentlemen were here last fall, I told you the
Reader’s Digest would be interested in this new work and in
your book. Well, right after you were here, I consulted our
editorial board and to my great surprise they didn’t like the
idea at all and I forgot to tell you!" Oh boy, we had the
drunks with $5,000 bucks in it, Charlie Towns hooked for $2,500
bucks and $2,500 on the cuff with the printer. There was $500
left in the bank.. .what in the duce would we do?
Morgan Ryan, the good looking
Irishman who had taken the book over to the Catholic Committee
on Publication, had been in an earlier time a good ad man. He
said that he knew Gabriel Heatter. "Gabriel is putting on
these 3 minute heart to heart programs on the radio. I’ll get
an interview with him and maybe he’ll interview me on the
radio about all this," said Ryan. So, our spirits rose once
again. Then all of a sudden we had a big chill, suppose this
Irishman got drunk before Heatter interviewed him? So, we went
to see Heatter and lo and behold, Heatter said he would
interview him and then we got still more scared. So, we rented a
room in the downtown Athletic Club and we put Ryan in there with
a day and night guard for ten days. Meanwhile, our spirits rose
again. We could see those books just going out in carloads. Then
my promoter friend said "Look, there should be a follow-up
on a big thing like this here interview. It’ll be heard all
over the country... .national network. I think folks that are
the market for this book are the doctors.. .the physicians. I
suggest that we pitch the last $500 that we have in the treasury
on a postal card shower which will go to every physician east of
the Rocky Mountains. On this postal card we’ll say "Hear
all about Alcoholics Anonymous on Gabriel Heatter’s Program -
spend $3.50 for the book Alcoholics Anonymous, sure-cure for
alcoholism." So, we spent the last $500 on the postal card
shower and mailed them out.
They managed to keep Ryan sober
although he since hasn’t made it. All the drunks had their
ears glued to the radio. The group market in Alcoholics
Anonymous was already saturated because you see, we had 49
stockholders and they’d all gotten a book free, then we had 28
guys with stories and they all got a free book. So we had run
out of the A.A. books. But we could see the book moving out in
carloads to these doctors and their patients. Sure enough, Ryan
is interviewed. Heatter pulled out the old tremelo stop and we
could see the book orders coming back in carloads.
Well, we just couldn’t wait to
go down to old Post Office Box 658, Church Street Annex, the
address printed in the back of the old books. We hung at it for
about three days and then my friends Hank and Ruthie Hock and I
went over and we looked in Box 658. It wasn’t a locked box,
you just looked through the glass. We could see that there were
a few of these postal cards. I had a terrible sinking sensation.
But my friend the promoter said "Bill, they can’t put all
those cards in the box, they’ve got bags full of it out
there." We go to the clerk and he brings out 12 lousy
postal cards, 10 of them were completely illegible, written by
doctors, druggists, monkeys? We had exactly two orders for the
book Alcoholics Anonymous and we were absolutely and utterly
stone broke.
The Sheriff then moved in on the
office, poor Mr. Blackwell wondered what to do for money and
felt like taking the book over at that very opportune moment,
the house which Lois and I lived in was foreclosed and we and
our furniture were set out on the street. Such was the state of
the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the state of grace the
Wilson’s were in the summer of 1939. Moreover, a great cry
went up from the drunks, "What about our $4,500?" Even
Charlie (Towns) who was pretty well off was a little uneasy
about the note for $2,500. What would we do? What could we do?
We put our goods in storage on the cuff, we couldn’t even pay
the dray man. An A. A. lent us his summer camp, another A.A.
lent us his car, the folks around New York began to pass the hat
for groceries for the Wilson’s and supplied us with $50 per
month. So, we had a lot of discontented stockholders, $50 bucks
a month, a summer camp and an automobile with which to revive
the failing fortunes of the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
We began to shop around from one
magazine to another asking if they would give us some publicity,
nobody bit and it looked like the whole dump was going to be
foreclosed; book, office, Wilson’s, everything. One of the
boys in New York happened to be a little bit prosperous at the
time and he had a fashionable clothing business on Fifth Avenue
which we learned was mostly on mortgage, having drunk nearly all
of it up. His name was Bert Taylor. I went up to Bert one day
and I said "Bert, there is a
promise of an article in Liberty
Magazine, I just got it today but it won’t come out until next
September. It’s going to be called ‘Alcoholics and God’
and will be printed by Fulton Oursler the editor of Liberty
Magazine. Bert, when that piece is printed, these books will go
out in carload lots. We need $1,000 bucks to get us through the
summer." Bert asked, "Well, are you sure that the
article is going to be printed?" "Oh yes," I
said, "that’s final." He said, "O.K.,I
haven’t got the dough but there’s this man down in
Baltimore, Mr. Cochran, he’s a customer of mine.. .he buys his
pants in here. Let me call him up." Bert gets on
long-distance with Mr. Cochran in Baltimore, a very wealthy man,
and says to him "Mr. Cochran, from time to time I mentioned
this alcoholic fellowship to which I belong. Our fellowship has
just come out with a magnificent new textbook.. .a sure cure for
alcoholism... .Mr. Cochran, this is something we think every
public library in America should have, and Mr. Cochran, the
retail price of the book is $2.50. Mr. Cochran, if you’ll just
buy a couple of thousand of those books and put them in the
large libraries, of course we would sell them for that purpose
at a considerable discount." Mr. Cochran, some publicity
will come out next fall about this new book Alcoholics
Anonymous, but in the meantime, these books are moving slowly
and we need, say, $1,000 to tide us over. Would you loan the
Works Publishing Company this?" Mr. Cochran asked what the
balance sheet of the Works Publishing Company looked like and
after he learned what it looked like he said "no
thanks." So Bert then said, "Now Mr. Cochran, you know
me. Would you loan the money to me on the credit of my
business?" "Why certainly," Mr. Cochran said,
"send me down your note." So Bert hocked the business
that a year or two later was to go broke anyway and saved the
book Alcoholics Anonymous. The thousand dollars lasted until the
Liberty article came out. 800 inquiries came in as a result of
that, we moved a few books and we barely squeaked through the
year 1939. In all this period we heard nothing from John D.
Rockefeller when all of a sudden, in about February, 1940, Mr.
Richardson came to a trustees meeting of the Foundation and
announced that he had great news. We were told that Mr.
Rockefeller, whom we had not heard from since 1937, had been
watching us all this time with immense interest. Moreover, Mr.
Rockefeller wanted to give this fellowship a dinner to which he
would invite his friends to see the beginnings of this new and
promising start.
Mr. Richardson produced the
invitation list. Listed were the President of Chase Bank,
Wendell Wilkie, and all kinds of very prominent people, many of
them extremely rich. I mean, after a quick look at the list I
figured it would add up to a couple of billion dollars. So, we
felt maybe at least, you know, there would be some money in
sight. So, the dinner came, and we got Harry Emerson Fosdick who
had reviewed the A.A. book and he gave us a wonderful plug. Dr.
Kennedy came and spoke on the medical attitudes. He’d seen a
patient of his, a very hopeless gal, Marty Mann, recover. I got
up, talked about life among the "anonymie," and the
bankers assembled 75 strong and in great wealth, sat at the
tables with the alcoholics. The bankers had come probably for
some sort of command performance and they were a little
suspicious that perhaps this was another prohibition deal, but
they warmed up under the influence of the alcoholics.
Mr. Ryan, the hero of the Heatter
episode and still sober, was asked at his table by a
distinguished banker, "Why, Mr. Ryan, we presumed you were
in the banking business." Ryan says, "not at all sir,
I just got out of Great Stone Asylum." Well, that intrigued
the bankers and they were all warming up. Unfortunately, Mr.
Rockefeller couldn’t get to the dinner. He was quite sick that
night so he sent his son, a wonderful gent, Nelson Rockefeller,
in his place instead. After the show was over and everyone was
in fine form, we were all ready again for the big touch. Nelson
Rockefeller got up and speaking for his father said, "My
father sends word that he is so sorry that he cannot be here
tonight, but is so glad that so many of his friends can see the
beginnings of this great and wonderful thing. Something that
affected his life more than almost anything that had crossed his
path." A stupendous plug that was! Then Nelson said,
"Gentlemen,
this is a work that proceeds on
good will. It requires no money." Whereupon, the 2 billion
dollars got up and walked out. That was a terrific letdown, but
we weren’t let down for too long.
Again, the hand of Providence had
intervened. Right after dinner, Mr. Rockefeller asked that the
talks and pamphlets be published. He approached the rather
defunct Works Publishing Company and said he would like to buy
400 books to send to all of the bankers who had come to the
dinner and to those who had not. Seeing that this was for a good
purpose, we let him have the books cheap. He bought them cheaper
than anybody has since. We sold 400 books to John D. Rockefeller
Jr. for one buck apiece to send to his banker friends. He sent
out the books and pamphlets and with it, he wrote a personal
letter and signed every dog gone one of them. In this letter he
stated how glad he was that his friends had been able to see the
great beginning of what he thought would be a wonderful thing,
how deeply it had affected him and then he added (unfortunately)
"gentlemen, this is a work of goodwill. It needs little, if
any, money. I am giving these good people $1,000." So, the
bankers all received Mr. Rockefeller’s letter and counted it
up on the cuff. Well, if John D. is giving $1,000, me with only
a few million should send these boys about $10! One who had an
alcoholic relative in tow sent us $300. So, with Mr.
Rockefeller’s $1,000 plus the solicitation of all the rest of
these bankers, we got together the princely sum of $3,000 which
was the first outside contribution of the Alcoholic Foundation.
The $3,000 was divided equally
between Smithy and me so that we could keep going somehow. We
solicited that dinner list for 5 years and got about $3,000 a
year for 5 years. At the end of that time, we were able to say
to Mr. Rockefeller, "We don’t need any more money. The
book income is helping to support our office, the groups are
contributing to fill in and the royalties are taking care of Dr.
Bob and Bill Wilson."
Now you see Mr. Rockefeller’s
decision not to give us money was a blessing. He gave of
himself. He gave of himself when he was under public ridicule
for his views about alcohol. He said to the whole world
"this is good." The story went out on the wires all
over the world. People ran into the bookstores to get the new
book and boy, we really began to get some book orders. An awful
lot of inquiries came into the little office at Vessy Street.
The book money began to pay Ruth. We hired one more to help.
There was Ruthie, another gal and me. And then came Jack
Alexander with his terrific article in the Saturday Evening
Post. Then an immense lot of inquiries... .6,000 or 7,000 of
them. Alcoholics Anonymous had become a national institution.
Such is the story of the
preparation of the book Alcoholics Anonymous and of its
subsequent effect, you all have some notion. The proceeds of
that book have repeatedly saved the office in New York. But, it
isn’t the money that has come out of it that matters, it is
the message that it carried. That transcended the mountains and
the sea and is even at this moment, lighting candles in dark
caverns and on distant beaches."
|