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Source: DICOBE-00609 – Bill W – ADOLPHUS HOTEL – 1951-02-01.mp3 File: dicobe-00609-bill-w-adolphus-hotel-1951-02-01.mp3 Duration: 01:28:07
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My dear friends of Dallas, of Texas, and of this great Southwest land, it is with an emotion quite indescribable that I bring you greetings and congratulations from your brother and sister A.A. everywhere. And everywhere for A.A. is now a lot of territory. For we can be found from Scandinavia to South Africa. Meetings are going on from Alaska to Australia. Tonight, A.A.'s look up at the Southern Cross, and they look up at the North Star.
I wish every one of them could share the love and the hospitality which is radiated out to me and to all of us outlanders from you of Dallas and this marvelous state of the Lone Star. On behalf of us all, who are your visitors, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. For fifteen years now, you and I have been watching a great building under construction. To us it is much more than a building. It is a temple. It is a cathedral of the Spirit, into which well over a hundred thousand of us have already entered, and therein have found a peace and a freedom that in other days we never could have dreamed.
Tonight, we shall see that we are approaching the completion in a structural sense of our cathedral, although let us hope that its great floor expands to accommodate the million yet to come, and that its traditional side walls contain us all in unity for so long as God shall want it. So now I think I would like to take each of you by the hand and lead you back to the days of our beginnings, and with you enter that first dim trail, which during our infancy widened out into a path trod by a few, and finally into this broad highway which men call Alcoholics Anonymous.
And as we pass along that course, I would like to indicate to you those great hours of realization that we have taken together, and those great hours of decision that have so deeply affected the destiny of this society. And that will bring us to where we now stand together tonight, and then you and I will try to lift the veil of the future a little, to see what that might hold for this beloved fellowship.
When you start to think about it, AA has been a series of realizations and discoveries and decisions which we have all shared. My mind goes back to the first one that I had, which had an important bearing on this society to come. It was the day I lay in a drying-out place in the summer of 1934, and for the first time I knew that I was utterly hopeless, that I was possessed of a devilish obsession which condemned me to drink against my will, and an increasing bodily sensitivity that assured that I would go mad or die.
Indeed, I was in the grip of a greater power, and he was John Barleycorn. Well, you see, that realization of hopelessness later turned out to be the very cornerstone of our AA program.
[00:05:00]
You read it in that first step. Our lives became unmanageable, and such was my case in the summer of 1934. But I did not share this realization alone, happily. I had a partner in it. I speak of Lois, my wife. I just spoke with her on the phone. She sends you all her great love. Well, in that very hour of my own darkness, she had her own, because she was sitting downstairs with a certain Dr. Silkworth, later himself, to play an important part in the destiny of this society.
And that saintly old gentleman was telling her of my condition, and like many another wives before, and since, she was asking the eternal question, why can't he get well? He has wanted to for years. Why doesn't his willpower work anymore? Oh, tell me, doctor, why is all this? And, of course, the good man, as gently as he could, said, well, this whole malady, this whole disease, is something still wrapped in a great deal of mystery.
But we do know that the habit of drinking, in some people, becomes a compulsion, an obsession, and finally, a veritable insanity, which condemns its victims to drink in spite of their will and against their best interest. And Lois, like many another wife, sharing this realization, said to the doctor, and doctor, what does this mean? How serious is this? And the gentle old man had to tell her, well, when he first came here, I thought he might be one of those rare few who could be re-educated out of his malady, who, with a better understanding, might get a fresh grip on life.
But Mrs. W., I fear that he is like all, nearly all the others who have come this way over the years, and like all of those others who have gone this same way over the centuries past. I fear now that his obsession is too deep, that it cannot be broken. And again Lois pleaded, but doctor, what does that mean? And you know what he had to say. He had to let her know that I would have to be locked up somewhere unless soon I would go mad or die.
So that was the realization that she shared with me, as many a wife has shared with her mate. Time out of mind, and even in the days to say yes. Now that realization of publicness, paradoxically enough, lies at the very root of our success, as you all know. What is the next realization of great moments? Well, it was the realization on the part of a friend who thought he had an answer, that I might need his help.
So a friend came to me, even as friends have since come to you, hoping that they could be helpful. This was an old school mate, I hadn't seen him for years. Since I had learned a good deal about this malady by then, I had long since tabbed him as a helpless one, like me. Here he was in New York sober, he was on the telephone. I said, come over, we'll drink, and we'll talk about the good old days. Ah, what great force there was in that unconscious observation.
We'll talk about the good old days. Why would we talk about the good old days? Because for us the future was unbearable. The present was unbearable, there was no future. That's why we would live in the past, he and I, over that crock of gin on my kitchen table. So soon, like many a friend who's come since, he's looking across the table at me. Somehow I sensed that he was not just on the water wagon.
Something had happened.
[00:10:00]
He told me he didn't want a drink. I said, are you on the water wagon? He said, oh no, I'm just not drinking. Oh, come to die, what's got into you? Then he looked at me and he said, I've got religion. Well, for a lusty agnostic like me, that was a terrible disappointment. I felt horribly let down. I said, my God, my poor friend has got religious insanity. It takes the place of alcoholic insanity. So bad.
So I said, well, come now, tell me what brand of religion is this? He said, well, I wouldn't call it religion exactly. Just common sense, nothing new about it. But for me it did do the trick. I feel as though my obsession had been taken away from me. He said, I feel that I have been released. Strange statement for a man on the water wagon to make. No, this was something different. Well, I said, what's the formula?
Tell me. And so then he gave me the elements, which today lie at the core of our procedure in IA. And he put them in very simple language. All ancient principles, all the details. Said he, by contact with a certain group of people, I picked up these ideas. They emphasized them, certainly there's nothing new. I got honest with myself about my own defects. I quit this living alone. I sought out my defects with another person.
I made a confession. I made a list of the people I'd harmed and visited them and made as what amends and restitution I could. And I learned about a new kind of giving, at least new to me, the kind of giving that demands no reward. I was told that I ought to try to help other people without any demand for prestige or material consideration. Now he said, I know you're awful gun-shy on this religious stuff.
He said, I'm not a guy with any theology or any fingers. He said, I do believe in God. God as I understand him. And he said, in order to make this simple program work in my life, I found it necessary to pray to whatever God there was, as I understood him. Such was my friend's message to me. And such has this message in its essence been ever since. As simple as that. And yet, in the hands of another alcoholic, capable of penetrating and healing, as those ancient verities never healed alcoholics before.
The secret was, of course, that one alcoholic was talking to another. Saw what he said struck me deep. Indeed, he lived in my sense, had lived in my strange world, but now I saw that he had been taken out of that world. His sanity had been restored. Talking to me, he didn't try to evangelize me, or frighten me, or save my soul, as desirable as that could have been, and probably would still be. He finally took his leave.
Well, I went on drinking. In those days, I was on a bottle of gin a day to be teed up, and two and three a day when I got tight, which was pretty awful. Lois was at work in her department store. I was pretty rough on the great Wall Street guy. She's now being a provider. You guys here understand that, some of you. So I sat in that kitchen. I kept on drinking several days. But in no waking hour could the thought of my friend leave me.
In no waking hour could I expel those principles from my mind he had advocated. And yet I rebelled at the God concept. How could one get that? But at length, I came to the same conclusion you fellas have, and you gals who have been in this extremity. I said to myself, after all, who are beggars to be chosen? I am a doomed one. And if I had cancer, if carcinoma was my trouble, If carcinoma was my trouble, I would gladly place myself in charge of any physician there was who could exorcise those hellish cells.
[00:15:08]
And is not this thing alcoholism a cancer of the body, a cancer of the emotions? And yes, if there be such a thing, is it not a cancer of the soul? So if there be any great physician, you had better seek him out. So with that realization, I took the decision, as you have since, to go to the hospital and get dried up. Incidentally, being kind of a conservative damn Yankee, I didn't want to have any of this down south shot of religion, you know.
So I went up to the hospital. Like all other drunks on their way to be cured for the last time, I got tight as a tick and came in there waving a bottle and shouted at the doctor I had something. He said, well, I'm afraid you haven't, boy, you better get upstairs and go to bed. So I went upstairs and I went to bed and in three days I was all free of alcohol sedation. You see, I'd gone a month early before the DCs caught up with me.
When suddenly one morning, a day I was feeling mighty low, in the door there stood my friend. Well, I hadn't seen him for years. I knew he was tired up. There he was, way uptown New York, early in the morning seeing me. I thought, as you have since thought, this man practices what he preaches. Then it got a little scary to evangelize me. Turn on that Squeezing Through Life business. Oh, no, he's cagey, just like we've learned to be.
He said, just came up to pay you a visit, Bill. Heard you were up here. Hope I can be of a little help. But still he didn't tell me what that formula was again, that prescription for recovery from alcoholism. He waited. He made me ask him, what is it, Eddie, how do you do this again? Oh, well, it's simple, said he. You get honest with yourself. You talk it out with another in confidence. Make a confession, holding back nothing.
You look around at the damage you've done other people and go and make restitution. You try to be helpful to other folks without any demand for a reward. And you pray to whatever God there is, and that's all there is to it, period. And he said, if you can really come to the decision to try that, even though you've got no faith, I think maybe it'll help you. It did me. So he talks about the weather and a few friends, and off he's gone again.
Sounds very familiar. It's happened a lot of times since then. One alcoholic talking too much. One alcoholic reaching out to that depth that no other human being has ever been able to plumb. So there it was. Well, the rebellion went on, this God business. I began to get more and more depressed. I finally sunk into another blankness. I was a child, alone, hopeless, crying in the dark. And at last, in desperation, I said, well, now, just like a cancer patient, I will do anything to get well, anything to be rid of this fateful thing.
And then I said, if there is a God, will he show himself? At once, it seemed to me, that room lighted up in a great bright light. I was caught up into an ecstasy for which there is no description. The overwhelming thought came, you're a free man. And in the mind's eye, it seemed as though I suddenly stood on a mountain. And around me is a great wind blowing. Not of air, a wind of God. The grace of God.
And I knew I was a free man. I don't know how long I was in this singular state. At length, it subsided. Of course, I still lie on the bed, just where I was. But now, seemingly, I am in a different world.
[00:20:05]
And a great peace steals over me. I feel as one with the universe. And my first cogent thought was, so this is the God of the preacher. Thus came to me in a great flash, in a cataclysm, the realization that there was a God. That he was at hand. And that his grace could do for me what I could not do for myself. Well, that realization, which I then had, has since been shared with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of us, if we include our families.
And I hear some of you saying, well, I didn't have any hot flesh like that guy Bill. I think he was a little malnourished at the time. Yes, you have. The identical thing has been given you. A gift of grace by which you were able to do that which you couldn't before. And in most cases, it has come to you in a week, in a month, in three months. In some cases, belatedly, in several years. But has it not come, that indefinable something, that contact with that higher power, that once we make ready for him, does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
So there was another cornerstone realization. And with this realization, I took the decision that any of you would have taken. I thought this is a matter of thing of great power. Simple principles in the hands of one alcoholic talking to another. Utterly simple. Yes, with great and mysterious power. Why all the drunks in the world should be able to get a thing like this. So I frantically wrecked around, working on drunks.
And of course I made the usual mistake. Some of you made them. I thought they ought to have a hot flesh just like mine. See them stars and things. They all tapped their heads and looked the other way. And said, uh, Maltby. Nothing happened. Nobody got well. And yet now, somehow I felt, and never lost the conviction, that here was a clue, a key, which might unlock that dark secret of alcoholism. So I kept on working.
Meanwhile, very sad to relate, my first friend fell by the wayside. He never did quite recover. God love him. He's just as much a founder of this movement as God. Incidentally, there are many founders of this movement. I wish we could abolish that word, founder. In fact, dear people, if you will leave with me the satisfaction of having been one of the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous, I will sell you the foundership for $1.98.
My earnings takers. Well, at any rate, I finally clear right through around trying to fix drunks for six months. And finally, my more practical relatives began to say, well, when in hell is this guy going to work and support law? How long is he going to be a missionary here? And egged on by them, I used to go over and sit in Buford shops on those nice customer chairs they have in there and look at the ticker.
And, you know, I used to be in Wall Street. So I made a shift to going back to work, but none of my old friends would have me, of course. They didn't have much time for us in that hot flash business. Of course, I was telling that about everybody in the loud voice. So one day I'm sitting beside another stranger. And unwittingly, he played a part. He became a link in that chain of destiny that began to stretch out from those hours.
And I fell into a business deal, and the business deal led me to Akron, and it was a struggle for control of a little company there. And it was a proxy row, and it looked like we had control, these new associates that I had suddenly picked up. And the other side had more votes, and so my side went home and left me flat broke in the Mayflower Hotel, kind of a fly-by-night job. Well, I had counted on this new opportunity.
It might have made me president of a small concern in a new town.
[00:25:00]
And I thought, well, again, we'll hold our heads up. We'll get Lois out of that goddamn department store. And life will look up, and, of course, in my spare time, I'll work with Trump. Well, destiny led us to take Providence. Perhaps it had other ideas. So my effort to go back into business failed. And walking up and down in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, I suddenly panicked. In all those ways of self-pity and anger, I was mad because I thought some of those proxies were forged, which had defeated me.
All of a sudden, I'm in a sprite of getting drunk. Well, I couldn't pray it away. I couldn't wish it away. There it was. I began to look in the bar. It was a Saturday afternoon. The folks in there were filling up, you know, and the buzz was getting better and more interesting. I walked to the other end of the lobby. There I saw a church director. At random, I called up a preacher. I told him I was a drunk from New York who needed another drunk to work on.
And that's the first time that I probably ever used those words. Up to this point, I'd been preaching from this fine spiritual and moral hilltop on which I thought I'd been divinely set. But this time, I realized I needed another drunk just as much as he needed me. I needed him to keep me sober. So another deep realization, a new one showed up. And a good many of you know how that quest led me face-to-face with dear old Dr. Bob, who passed out of our site in Caring last November, but who is right here tonight in my belief.
Well, when I set eyes on that drunk, I told him right away I needed him as much as he needed me. Gone was the preaching. Gone was this divine appointment to fix all the drunks in the world. Now I'm busy on how am I going to stay sober. So we talked around, and we were brought together by a non-alcoholic who, out of a long list of people who turned the other way, found time and cared enough to bring us together, even as my doctor had cared enough.
Non-alcoholics have played critical parts in the destiny of our society. Well, the outgrowth of the talk was that Bob Dwight, dear Annie Smith, invited me and some to live at their house for a few weeks to see if I could revive my business venture. If she had a more practical reason, I could keep an eye on that husband of hers. He could keep one on me. We weren't there long before Smithy said, well, what about working with some drunks?
And we'd better be getting busy, if only in self-protection. And I said, you bet your boots. So he calls up the city hospital where he had been ousted from his staff, knew the head nurse down in the receiving ward, told her over the phone that the guy had come along from New York, and between he and me, we had a cure for alcoholism. Bob blushed at that point. The nurse had said, well, doctor, you'd better try it yourself.
Well, she said, we've got a dandy prospect for you, just come in here. Used to be a good lawyer around town, formerly a member of the city council. Hasn't been dry for years, getting in awful shape. Can't even go home from here without getting drunk. I'm sure he wants to stop, but somehow he can't. He's got the DTs now. He just knocked down one of the nurses and blacked her eyes, and we got him strapped.
How would that taste, Julia? Bob said, that sounds really promising. Let's put him to bed, and we'll be down when you get him cleared up, and here's what you want to give him. So, a little later, doctor Bob and I saw a sight which thousands of you have since seen, and God willing hundreds of thousands of us shall still see. The sight of the man on the bed, who doesn't know that he can get well. The man on the bed, however, was a skeptic, as many have since been.
The man on the bed said, well, it's too late for me. You fellows have been through the wringer. But you haul me up to your knees, up to your waist, I'm in up to my neck. It's too late. It's too late. I'm worse than that. I don't even dare go out of here. I'll be drunk before I get home, I'll go out of here. I'll be drunk before I get home and somehow I don't want to be, but I will.
[00:30:01]
And he said, oh, the religion, don't talk to me about that. He said, I am already a man of faith. I still got faith in God, strangely enough. But God has got no faith in me. I don't know what's got a hold on me. It's too late. We said, can we come tomorrow? Yes, he said, I'd like to talk with you. It's wonderful to talk with someone who understands. So on the morrow we came and Dr. Bob saw the sight that you have since beheld.
The man on the bed looked up as we came in and said to his wife, why, there they are. They are the ones who understand. And she had been saying to him, why, what's got into you? My husband, you seem so different. He said, this is the reason. They understand. They have been through the mill. They are the alcoholics I was telling you about. And unexcitedly he related how during the night hope had come to him.
And after that, something more than hope. Because the moment that he decided to try our simple formula, something began to happen. He felt lighter. He felt a sense of release. A weight had taken off of his chest. He began strangely to feel all in one piece again. His confidence began to grow with it. If Dr. Bob and I could find this answer, so might he. And by now he was bursting full of confidence.
This hopeless one of the day before he said to his wife, My dear, please fetch my clothes. We are going to get up and get out of here. And A.A. No. 3 rose from his bed and went out from there, never to drink again. And that was the summer of 1935. Though we realize it's not, the first group has taken shape. The promise of a good book started to be literally fulfilled. Two or three of us were gathered together.
Well, last summer we went on working with drunks. Returning now to New York with a more becoming humility, I got another one started out there. I made a shift to return to business, but again it blew up in my face. So by the fall of 1937, three years later, I came west looking for something to do. Meanwhile, of course, having contacted Bob a great deal. Meanwhile, having worked upon hundreds of alcoholics, and he had done likewise.
There was failure upon failure upon failure. But a few of the children of the dark seemingly had turned their faces to the light. Though in Antwerp and New York there were small groups, and there was a little bit of a beginning in Cleveland. A little indication in Washington and Philadelphia perhaps. So at length, Dr. Bob and I come together again. It is now the fall of 1937. And in his living room, which to me is a hallowed place today.
He and I shared a realization. One of the greatest hours of realization that I've ever known. Excepting that of my spiritual experience. We had been talking over the results. How many of the phases? How many of the sections? And finally we made a list of those who had stayed dry any length of time. And suddenly it burst upon us. Enough time has now elapsed on enough cases. So that something new has happened.
Something wonderful has begun to happen. Something can now be spread chain style. Alcoholic talking to alcoholic. I asked. We could clearly see the new light. And that for three years had been falling upon us children of the night. Now the light was plain for anyone to see. And here were the recovered. Oh, I don't know, maybe 40 of us. So with this realization, we are saddled with an immense responsibility.
How is this message going to be transmitted to the many who don't know? Even to the hundreds right here in Akron. It's taken us three years of hard work to produce these two little groups.
[00:35:04]
How shall we spread the message? Dare we allow it to go just by word of mouth? Dare we remain in this house in simplicity of the front fryer and coffee and cake? Now hospitals don't want us. Shouldn't we have a chain of hospitals? And at that time, we supposed nothing but the old master barbers, you know, could put on this shave. So shouldn't some of the old timers be subsidized? Kind of a mid-temporary missionary could go out to, you know, Chicago and L.A. and Kansas City and Dallas probably.
Just drunk there. You know, subsidize two missionaries. But above all, shouldn't we have a book? Shouldn't we put it on the record what had happened to us? And how this thing worked? Didn't we owe at least that much to these million drunks right here in America who did not know? Well, of course, that involved a radical step. So Dr. Bob called the little Akron group together. I remember that meeting in the late fall of 37 as though it were yesterday.
I can see the faces there in that living room. And of course, by this time, I had become wildly excited. I'm a promoter by nature, a salesman. I'd already begun to dream about the greatest religious and social and medical development of all time, and I was flailing my arms around them. When I began to talk about books and missionaries and hospital chains and finance drunk tanks, I could see their faces fall.
And as the discussion went on, that meeting divided into three parts, three characteristic parts. The same parts that this movement has divided into over the question of whether we should go on with this general service idea. And the conservative or orthodox section said, let's keep A.H. simple. We pass this word on mouth-to-mouth. No money, no obligation. That's why it works. If you go into the hospital business, you'll be ruined.
If you sell drugs, you'll be ruined. That's why it works. If you go into the hospital business, you'll be ruined. If you subsidize missionaries to carry this out, you'll create a professional class. It'll ruin us, it'll spoil us. Don't do it. Then it says, hey, well, even if you get a book, we're going to quarrel over who's going to write the damn book. Will it be any good? And who's going to make the money out of this book?
Even if the book will spoil us, don't do any of these things, said the conservative, orthodox people. Well, those folks weren't entirely wrong. But, thank God, they weren't entirely right either. Then we had another section in that little meeting. They were the indifferent people. They said, oh, well, it's Bill and Doc wanting to raise money and have missionaries and books. All right with us, but don't bother us.
We're all right, we don't… Then there were the promoter guys like me who said, look, if you don't do these things, this thing will fall right apart. In other words, if you don't have at least a book, your public relations will get garbled, we'll bust up into a hundred different cults, and worst of all, we will not bring it in front of those million alcoholics What has happened to us? My God, they aren't all going to come to Akron to get wild.
Are you going to wait years while this babbles around by word of mouth? No, we've got to have a book. And in the back of my head, I was still thinking about financing the string of them drug tanks too. And I kind of wanted to be a missionary myself. You know, the Wilsons were kind of hard up, Lois was still in that damn department store. Well, the upshot of it was that the promotion element in the meeting, which was me and Cura Criado, Smithy's kind of in the middle, he's conservative.
The promotion fellas, plus the indifference fellas, created enough votes, so the meeting decided, well, now Bill, if you think this is all important, we get a lot of dough, you go back to New York City. Where there's a lot of dough, you get it up. Get these drug tanks and the missionaries and that book. Well, by this time, I was just as high on a pipe. You know, drunks can get intoxicated on other things than gin.
I was just intoxicated with this idea. I got it all ballooned up. I figured I was a good salesman, you know, and I primed, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars just for a starter out of the rickshed.
[00:40:01]
It just looked like no nothing at all. My God, here was alcoholism, the hopeless, hopeless disease, gentlemen. And now look at these killers, 40 of them, 40 of them. Well, I began to solicit the very rich on my acquaintance, and then I made a very disheartening discovery. I discovered that the very rich had no interest in drunks, that is, at least of investing money in drunks. They probably had all had a bad experience.
So then I went to the Rockefeller Foundation. Well, I figured this is, you know, has social implications, medical implications, religious implications. It'll be right up old John D's alley. John D will like this because it's got that alcohol angle in it. Well, at the Rockefeller Foundation, right after that break in the market in 1937, they fell kind of hard up up there. They were kind of short of money at the time.
Besides, this didn't fit any particular category. It wasn't exactly medical, religious, social, or what have you. Something like that fellow used to run around at the tail end of Barnum and Bailey's circus. They used to call him Zip. What is it? You probably remember him. Well, AA was something like that. In fact, we didn't even have a name. They used to ask me what this was, and I used to call it a bunch of drunks trying to get along.
So I'm pretty discouraged. When I get discouraged, you know, I'm one of them psychosomatic guys, I get imaginary ulcers. So I had a bad attack of imaginary ulcers. I went up to my bone law. He's a doctor. He'll see what to do about the imaginary ulcers. I get valiation to him about how stingy the rich are on account that he's drunk. Got to get money, else it's going to fall all apart. He says, hey, why don't you talk to Shirley Wynn, the health commissioner?
He shares an office with me. So I go in and tell the story of Shirley Wynn. He says, the guy for you to see is John D. Rockefeller personally. Oh, I said, Dr. Wynn, what about an introduction to the Prince of Wales? I mean, he could probably help out on this if I could only get to him. How do I get introduced to John D.? Then comes one of those strange events. My brother-in-law said, well, when I went to school, I used to know a gal.
She had an uncle. Maybe he's dead. I think he was a member of the Rockefeller entourage, great friend of the family, somehow mixed up with a charity. Maybe he's alive. I'll call up Mr. Rockefeller's office and see what about it. So I call up, and this old man comes on the line. In jigtime, within an hour, we were right in Mr. John D. Rockefeller's private personal office talking to one of his best friends.
Now, figure that one out. So I figure, well, we're getting hot now. This thing's really getting warm. I mean, we're getting near that big dog. And the old gentleman asked me to have lunch with him, and I have a meeting with a lot of Mr. Rockefeller's friends, and they listen to all these drunk stories, and they're all head up about it. The one I'm meeting comes out to Akron, makes an investigation, comes back to New York City, and says, well, this is really it.
We stared him in the direction of Akron because Smithy was higher up then. They were just going to pull the pucker string on the mortgage on his house. Go on. Gee, things look good. The guy came back with a report. Well, I'll start this off with $50,000, you know, just a starter, Mr. Rockefeller's money, and we need a drunk tank in Akron. We'll put Smithy in there. He's a doctor. And, of course, we'll get a little subsidy for a few of these guys, and a little money for the book.
And, of course, this will be just a starter, just to kick things off. Well, then came another great realization and decision. You see, at that time, I had got all the drunks sold, and we just needed a hell of a lot of money to make this thing go, and it splattered. Naturally, we thought in business terms, and, naturally, I thought in terms of eating, too. I thought in terms of eating, too. I was hungry.
A lot of days, I had them temptations before or since. Well, we soon heard that Mr. Richardson was taking this report to Mr. Rockefeller, his old friend Junior, as he called him. So he lays the report on Junior's desk, and Junior raises it, for soon he's talking to his old friend Dick. Mr. Rockefeller sinks his head in sin. Somehow, Dick, I'm very strangely affected by this moving account. This thing is moving.
This thing is moving. The Account, This Thing Is Small, But It Might Have Very Great Possibilities, Because Dick, This Is Pure First Century Christian, Dick, I'm Terribly Afraid That If We Give This Thing Any Money, We'll Kill It,
[00:45:11]
Ordinarily, Yes, Sure, It Affects Me Very Deeply, Alcohol, Medicine, All These Fields I'm Interested In, But Dick, I'm Afraid, I'm Afraid We'll Spoil It, Said John D. Rockefeller, If We Give It Some Money, And So That Man Took A Decision That He Would Not Give Us Money, Even Though He Was Already Deeply Interested, And We Had Engaged The Interest Of Some Of His Closest Friends, In Other Words, He Took A Decision, I Am Sure, Under The Guidance Of God, Which Has Deeply Affected Our Destiny, Well, Boy, When The Bad News Came Out, It Was Tough, I Am Telling, Mr. Rockefeller Did Put A Few Dollars Only In The Riverside Church, Treasury, And For A Few Months, They Were Doled Out To Smithy And Me, And The Heat Was Taken Off That House, Mortgage On Smith's House, And That's All That Happened, No Books, No Missionaries, No Hospitals, No Nothing, Well, We Have Not Persisted With These New Friends, We Opine That Mr. Rockefeller Might Be Mistaken, And How Could We Just Sit And Pass This On, At Least We Needed A Book, We Needed Some Money, Well, His Friends Agreed To It, So, Somebody Said, Why Don't We Form A Foundation, Kind Of Like The Rockefeller Foundation, We Will Give You Boys A List Of Names That You Can Solicit For Some Dollars, And You Get The Money In Here, And The Rich Can Put It In Tax-Free, And We Will Have Money With Which To Do This Book, And We At Least Finance A Few Of Them, So, With A Great Deal Of To-Do, With The Free Services Of One Of The Biggest Law Firms In New York, H.R. Was Drawn Up For Something That You Have Since Heard Of, Called The Alcoholic Foundation, Sounds Very Imposing, But It Was Nothing But An Incorporated Committee Of Some Of These Friends, And Two Or Three Of Us Drunk, I Stayed Off It, You See, Because I Figured I Would Be One Of The Beneficiaries, Well, Anyway, We Began To Have Meaning To This Foundation, And We Were Sure Enough Supplied With Credentials By Which To Pry Some Money Out Of The Very Race, So, All During The Summer Of 1938, We Salesmen In New York, Went After These Rich Alcoholics With The Back End Of Mr. John B. Rockefeller's Friends, Now, Figure That One Out, Any Promoter In This Audience Would Say That Ought To Be Plenty Good Or Not, At Least For A Few Bucks, And Believe It Or Not, People, We Worked All Summer To Raise Money For That Foundation, And We Didn't Get One Damn Cent, Praise God, Well, It Was Pretty Discouraged, The Rich Were Either Going To Florida, Or Maybe Texas, I Don't Know, They Thought The T.V. Was The Better Call, They Said To Us, Well, Why Scrape Up The Last Miserable Dregs Of Society, The Rich Had No Interest In Drunk Theory, That Was For Sure, And How Fortunate It Was, Had We Got In Money In That Period, This Society As We Know It Today Would Never Exist, Therefore, That Decision Of Mr. Rockefeller Not To Give Us Money, Saved This Society, And Later, As You Will See, He Gave Very Greatly Of Himself Out Of His Money, Well, By This Time, Our Big Ideas Are Whittled Down To The Size Where We Figured We Just Had To Have A Book, So, I Mean, We Had To Put This Thing On The Record, So, There Wasn't Any Money In The Foundation To Feed Me While A Book Was Being Done, And Hire A Gal, And So On, At That Time, Now The Midsummer Of Thirty-Eight, We Got Testimonials From Johns Hopkins, And We Had A Couple Of Chapters Of This Book Attached To The Perspectives For The Rich, At A Foundation Meeting, Which Was One Of Those Commiseration Gatherings With These New Friends, One Of Them Said, Well, Bill, Why Don't You Take This Book Down To Harper's, I Know The Religious Editor, To My Great Surprise, Harper's Bid On It, They Said, Sure, We'll Give You Fifteen Hundred Dollars Advanced Royally, Mr. W., See, I Was Flabbergasted, That Sounded Like About Fifteen Thousand To Me, We Were Really Hired Up And Always Working That Department Store Stuff, And Then It Came To Us, The Alcoholics, We Couldn't Give This Book To A Publisher If It Amounted To Anything, This Movement Should Own That Book, We Should Publish This Book Ourselves,
[00:50:13]
Well, We Went Back To The Hard-Headed Business Friends Up At Rockefeller Center, And They Said, Why, Amateurs Never Publish Books And Get Away With It, You Can't Do That, Well, We Said, After All, Gentlemen, There Isn't Any Money In The Foundation To Do It, I Used To Say That Quite Pointedly About That, Why Don't We Get Up A Subscription Among The Drunks And See If We Can't Do It, And Against Their Unanimous Advice To The Contrary, We Went And Did Just That, In Other Words, Decision Number One That Has Saved This Thing From Professionalism And Great Money And Wealth And Property Ownership Was Made By Mr. Rockefeller And His Friends, The Decision That This Fellowship Should Publish And Own This Book And Control It, Also A Very Vital Thing As You Shall See, Was Made By Us Drunks Over Their Objection, Thereby Giving You Just A Little Fragment Of Our History Where Time After Time, Events And People Have Intervened Constantly To Turn This Thing From The Left-Hand Path Always Into The Right, Well, The Fantastic Story Of How We Sold $4,500 Worth Of Stock To All The Drunks Around New York In A Book That Hadn't Yet Been Written, And How The Sheriff Almost Dropped The Book, And How Finally Mr. Rockefeller, Three Years Later, Gave Us A Dinner And Told The World That This Thing Was Good, All Of Those Things I Told You Last Night, But We Did Come Up With The Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, Which Today Is Owned By This Same Board Of Trustees And Held In Trust For You, The Members Of A.A., The Income From It Is All Yours, It Goes To The Foundation Of The Group, Accepting Their Royalty On That Book, Which I Receive For Authorship, Which Is The Only Money I Receive Out Of Any A.A. Source, Which I Earned, I Think, As An Author, And Not As A Missionary, In Fact, You Drunks Sitting Down There, I Have Got You For 50 Cents Every Time We Sell One Of Those Books, How Do You Like It?
Well, How We Got Through Those Years, I Don't Know, Somebody Felt Kind Of Sorry For Me The Other Night, Said It Must Have Been A Terrible Bill, I Said No, It Was Wonderful, Those For Me Were The Wonderful Years Of A.A., The Years Of Struggle, The Years Of Flying Blind When We Were Never Quite Blind, When We Still Had Faith, The Years In Which The Fundamental Principles Were Hammered Out And Applied, Those Were The Great Years Of A.A., Why? Because We Could See That People Had Begun To Get Well, That The Chain Reaction Was Starting That Might One Day Spread Over The World, That's What Kept All Of Us Going Then, What Was A Little Problem, What Were A Few Difficulties In The Face Of A Spectacle Of God Bringing Something New Into The World, Especially Into That Dark World We Knew So Well.
Well, You All Know How In The Year 1941, Jack Alexander Published That Piece In The Post, Which Brought Thousands Of Frantic Inquiries To Our Little Office In New York, Right Then And There, A.A. Entered A New Phase. And Incidentally, The Decision About That Was Not Taken By Alcoholics, It Was Taken By A Non-Alcoholic, Just One, And I Only Recently Heard The Complete Story. We Had Some A.A.'s In Philadelphia With Sanity Post Connections, And They Suggested A Piece, And The Post Would Always Turn To The White. And Finally To Our Great And Sudden Surprise, Jack Alexander Was Assigned To Do That Piece, Star Writer For The Post. Gee, Are We Excited, What Had Happened?
And As You Know, That Piece Spelled Out Recovery For Thousands Of Us. To Some Of Us, It Meant Even Life Itself. And Let's See What A Slender Thread That Decision Hung, And Who Made It. It Occurred That One Day The Editorial Staff Was Discussing Us, Whether This Was A Fact, Or A Cult, Or Something Phony. Whether It Was A Racket, Whether It Did What Was Plain. And Some Of Them Thought It Was One Thing, And Some Of Them Thought It Was Another.
And They Were Quite Undecided As To Whether They Dared Publish Anything About It. Although Liberty Had Already Published This, And John Dee Had Held This Dinner For Us, In Which He Had Published To The World That He Believed In It. He Asked The Post To Expel Suspicious And Doubtful. And They Were Having This Editorial Discussion.
[00:55:18]
Should They Publish Anything About This New Society? Which Then, Incidentally, Had Run Up From 100 Members In 1939 Up To Almost 2,000 By That Time, Under The Impetus Of The Liberty Peace And Mr. Rockefeller's Interest In It. Should They Do It? Well, I Have Only Recently Been Told That The Owner Of The Saturday Post Happened To Be Present At That Meeting. And He Listened To This Discussion For A Long Time, And He Said, Well, Gentlemen, I Rarely Hate To Interfere With Editorial Decisions On This Magazine. But I Must Speak Up And Tell You That I Personally Know Two Of These Recovered People. And Gentlemen, It Is A Miracle. It Is Miraculous. I Think The Post Should Publish This, Please.
On That Splendor, How Many Lives Hung? Only God Knows. Ah, Yes, There Has Been A Long Succession Of Great Realizations And Great Decisions. Well, With The Advent Of The Saturday Post Peace, We Were Confronted With An Entirely New Problem. The Problem Now Was, Could These New Groups Hang Together? We Found The Individual, He Could Hang Together, He Could Get Well. But Could These Crazy Drunks Hang Together In Groups? We Found That Even Saul Was Sobered Up.
A Bunch Of Locusts I Mean. Why They Sprung Up Everywhere. They Even Sprung Up In The Mail. My Gracious What A Discovery That Was. That This Thing Could Be Done In The Mail. And Then They All Began To Write The New York Office Of The Terrible Troubles They Were Having. These Awful Problems. And Then Pretty Soon They Had The Clubhouse Problem. And They Had The Poker Problem. And What Were Those Boys And Girls Doing In The Clubhouse Besides Saying Sober Problem?
They Had The Organization Problem. And We Had The Missionary Problem All Over Again. And We Had The Big Money Problem All Over Again. And We Had Problems Of Prestige. And Oh Dear, It Was Nothing But Problems. And I Used To Just Sit In That Desk At New York And Say My God, Are We Going To Present All Of America, Each With A Group Of Alcoholics Who Does Not Wish To Say Sober? What A Present That Would Be.
Well, Those Were The Days Of Our Adolescence. Or With The Advent Of That Saturday Post Feast. We Passed Out Of The Pioneering Times. We Passed Through Our Infancy. And This Was That Exciting Fearsome Period Of Adolescence. And On Its Anvil, The AA Tradition Was Hammered Out. Those Principles Of Group Relations. Our Relations One With The Other. One Group With The Other. Our Relations With The World Outside. And We Commenced To Make A Lot Of Very Marvelous And Singular Discoveries About Ourselves.
We Found That This Society Of Ours Was Destined To Be Quite Unlike Any Other Human Form Of Society. Here Was A Society Where In Some Respects The Welfare Of The Whole Had To Be Paramount To That Of Any Individual. God Knows It Was Important For The Individual To Survive. But If This Group And This Movement Couldn't Survive, There Wouldn't Be Much Recovery For Anybody. Especially The Million Yet To Come.
We Also Made Another Discovery. That This Society Didn't Run On Permanent Inspired Leadership Like Me. And A Lot Of Other Inspired Ones You Had Since. No Sir, We Began To Talk About Something Called The Group Conscience. I Remember When That Word First Began To Be Used. I Don't Know Who Called It. And The Old Timers Would Look At Me And Say What The Hell Do They Mean The Group Conscience. That Group Of Mine Ain't Got Any Conscience.
After All The Good I Done To Them, Look What They Done To Me. They Slipped My Throat And Tossed Me Out. What Do You Mean A Group Conscience? Why Those Galoots There Are The Most Ungrateful Monks. But Still We Learned That The Group Conscience. Once It Was Informed. Once People Had Begun To Practice Perception Their Lives. That The Conscience Of This Group Could Be A Wiser Thing Respecting It's Own Survival Than That Of Any Inspired Leadership.
On Survival, The Data Money Inspired Leader, How I Well Remember, They're Instructing Me for the First Time in That Principle, That the Group Could Be Wiser Than the Individual, And What a Critical Decision It Was, Too,
[01:00:05]
After this thing had been going on about three years, we were still awful hard up, as you know, Rockefeller hadn't coughed up, Lois was still in that goddamn store, and one day I'm up at Old Charlie's Town, who ran the drunk-in for him, where Old Doc Silkworth was, Old Charlie, he'd been kind of skeptical about this drunk-fixing business, but all of a sudden he caught fire. So he called me into his office, and he said, look here, Bill, I'm a business guy, but, he said, unlike some of these drunk-tank proprietors, I'm a man with a heart, I guess I am, and he said, it looks to me like a lot of these drunks are getting well, and they're going back to work, and most of them are bright, and they make good money, and you're starving to death, isn't that right? I said, you bet your life, that's just right, I'm starving to death, and they're getting along. One of those days I felt sorry for myself.
Well, he said, Bill, ain't it a fact that you had that funny spiritual experience in here, in one of them front rooms? I said, yeah, that's right. He said, ain't it a fact that Dr. Silkworth was the odd guy who introduced the idea of sickness into the society of yours, and that that's a cornerstone principle today? I said, yeah, that's right. Well, he said, didn't we let you come back here and visit drunks in the early days and incur the ridicule of every doctor around New York City? I said, yeah, that's right.
Well, he said, look, Bill, he said, why shouldn't you weed out of this? Well, I said, I've often wondered, I've tried to, but I can't yet. Well, he said, here, I'm going to make an offer. He said, now look here, during 1929, this drunk tank used to make a lot of dough, that was the day of the stricken Wall Street stockbrokers. We used to make $1,000 and his hospital was full. Now, he said, we've been having kind of a hard going, it's about break season. But he said, mark me, young guy, someday this movement of yours is going to fill Madison Square Garden, and I really believe it.
Now, he said, since the movement started right in here, at least in part, why shouldn't I give you an office here? Why shouldn't I give you a drawing account in this place? And he said, I'll go further. I'll give you a third interest in the place. If you just come in here and make your headquarters in here. He said, there isn't anything unethical about that. You could join my staff as a lay therapist, as indeed you are. You've done more for drunks already than anybody I know anything about. I'll guarantee not to advertise you unethically. Why don't you do it?
Well, I don't mind saying that at my age, I like fancy. There wasn't anything unethical about it. It was quite all right. Well, excitedly, I ran home, was cooking supper for a lot of them drunks we were boarding for nothing after a hard day in that damn department store. And I said, well, Mama, we're going to eat. Going to go to work for old Charlie, have some kind of a head and tail to this thing, a little drawing account. If we fill up Charlie's drunk tank, why, we might even get $1,000 a month caught up there someday.
Well, it kind of sounded good to her. She was getting tired. The next night we had a meeting, a little AA meeting. It wasn't even called an AA meeting then. We hadn't coined a name down in the front parlor. By this time, I had got a wonderful rationalization. You know, we drunks are great on this phony rationalization business. And sad to relate, there is no nonsense which cannot be made out of even the Bible itself.
And I got this biblical reason for going to work for Charlie's town. And in this case, it certainly was a hunch. The laborer is worthy of his hunch. So I tell my drunk friends the wonderful story of how, once they've been so blessed to know that I'm going to be able to eat and wash and come in out of that department store, we can hold up our heads like other folks. How nice it would be to have a headquarters up there. How good old Charlie and Dr. Silkworth have been to us. And I can just see the faces of those drunks fall, fall, fall, fall.
They knew we were having a damn hard time. They really hated to say anything to me. But finally one of them spoke up. And I since realized that he was speaking for the conscience of that group.
[01:05:18]
And what did he say to me? He said, but Bill, if you hire us as Charlie, you make yourself a professional doing therapeutic work. Bill, don't you realize that if you tie this thing to that one hospital and no other hospital will have anything to do with it? And Bill, don't you realize this thing works because we ain't got any professional guys? And finally he said to me, Bill, I choose a fellow who has so often sat in this meeting and told us that sometimes the good is not good enough. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the bad.
So what Charlie says is ethical. What he offers is ethical. But Bill, it isn't good enough. And then he looked at me and he said, Bill, you can't do this thing to us. And so spoke the group conscience to me. And I suddenly realized that it was far wiser than I. And fortunately, oh how very fortunately for this movement, I bowed to the group conscience and I obeyed. And from that day to this, I have realized that I am the pupil of this movement and not its teacher.
Well, membership, we put that rule in reverse today. Any guy who's a member of AA who says he is, can't keep him out. I used to think I could run this whole movement and now the AA tradition guarantees every group to run its business the way it wants to as long as it doesn't interfere with the surrounding group. Years ago, we had that foundation chartered to research and educate and do everything for a drunk driver's place all the time.
No more. We can't endorse other enterprises. Other enterprises can't use our name and raise money and get publicity out of the AA name. It took us years to learn that. We know that AA can devote itself to only one purpose, and that's to carry the message to that other alcohol. And from the very beginning, as by some deep instinct, we knew that this movement could never quarrel about the kind of things that society outside quarrels about.
We knew that if we ever quarreled about religion here, if we ever quarreled about politics, if we ever permitted this society as a movement to become rich, we would be done. So in AA, we squabble about, well, how you're going to fix the clubhouse, how you're going to do the most good for drunks, sometimes who's left with who, all that kind of thing. We don't quarrel about politics and religion and reform. No, no, no. We know we can't.
So came our non-controversy tradition. And all this time, we found that our usual traditional American attitude about public relations was being put right in reverse. In this beloved land of ours, we love to have our public heroes. We erect great monuments to great people. Even our advertising is run on personal ballyhoo. But we of AA have discovered over the years that is not for us. And we began to say, let us place principles before people. Let us remain anonymous at the public level.
And over the years, we've discovered that anonymity is not only a protection for the people coming in, it has a deep spiritual significance. It betokens our individual and our group humility, the willingness to put this thing ahead of our own welfare. And we have also laterally learned that it is the greatest protection against exploitation that this society can ever have, anonymity at the public level.
[01:10:05]
And so, dear people, in these exciting years of adolescence, we have developed a tradition which indeed is no body of law. There are no rules or regulations. But we have learned that in a tradition confirmed in the heart of each one of us, and in our experience of AA, in such a tradition there is immense containing power. And we are now becoming confident that in the application of that tradition in our daily AA lives, that we have a force of incomparable power which can bind this movement together, which may keep us proof against the forces of destruction that rend other societies of men apart.
The world around us is breaking into pieces. Society is fissioning, splitting up into bits. As AA grows, we are getting more and more and more unified. I don't mean that we are complacent. I think we should be prudent. We must realize that someday we may have to face this religious issue, that political issue, that reform issue. We shall have great problems that will cut across this movement. Of course we shall.
All societies of men have those problems, and all societies of men today are succumbing to those problems. But in 1950, only last summer in Cleveland, 7,000 of us there concluded that the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous is a platform on which we dare commit this movement to its future. And there in Cleveland, that 1950, we took our destiny by the hand and declared that this movement had grown up.
So those are the first two of the legacies which we old-timers are leaving you. A legacy of recovery by the Twelve Steps, and a legacy of unity by application of the AIDS tradition. Now this concludes the first two sections of this yarn. I'm spinning. And I suggest that we now have a five-minute intermission. Don't go running out because you can never get these drunks back to get the yakkin' out there.
But stretch yourselves a little bit, and then I'll pour on the last installment a little faster. Thank you. So now we have finished that exciting, pleasant, and very dramatic journey through our beginning, through the days of our adolescence, and now you and I stand looking ahead together along the broad highway that is AA. Next to our own recovery, it is, of course, the dearest wish of each of us that this society remain in unity and in the greatest possible effectiveness in the cause of the million who don't yet know, for so long as it shall be needed.
Since the very beginning, there has been a principle in operation which sometimes we overlook, and it is my prime purpose in coming here to elevate that principle so that it stands alongside of our recovery principle and our principle of tradition. For AA is something more than just a belief in the twelve principles of recovery. AA is something a great deal more than a belief in the traditions. If AA is anything, Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of action.
When the drunk takes a look at those twelve steps, if he would recover, he has to do something about them. If we have a body of tradition, and would remain in unity and usefulness, each individual and each group, each area, and AA as a whole, has to do something about these things. So
[01:15:04]
AA is a program of action. And anything which enables AA to act, to function, we are coming to call a service. Therefore, AA consists of recovery, it consists of tradition, but it also consists of activity, and many of those activities take the form of services. As I just said, a service is anything that legitimately enables AA to function, and to grow, and to propagate itself. For example, when the first doctor told me what alcoholism was, he performed a great service for this movement, although he himself is not a member.
When he encouraged me to come and work in his hospital, he performed a great service. When he sobered me up, he rendered me the service of hospitalization. For AA, you must remember, is no monopoly of we alcoholics. We draw from the principles of religion. We draw upon the principles of medicine. Together we can do what we could not do separately. I suppose one of the very earliest services performed for AA, and it is still the biggest service that is performed in a money sense, and I don't know, but in a real sense.
When Lois W. and Annie Smith brewed those first pots of coffee, and baked those cakes for the drunks out in the living room, those women were doing something that helped AA to function. I was guest tonight, among many others, at a dinner given by a friend, and he was one. That was a service that greased the wheels of progress, that helped AA function. So anything legitimate that helps us to function, which doesn't violate our tradition, is a service. Now today you will hear a cry which rings all throughout AA, and I hope it never stops ringing. People say, let's keep AA simple. Beware of organizations, the least possible organizations. But I draw your attention that since the beginning we found that too much simplicity could presently result in great complications. When those meetings got too big for parlors, and we had to move out of the halls, AA got a little bit more complicated.
It wasn't quite so simple. In the parlors there weren't any founders, there weren't any officers, there wasn't any money. It was utterly simple. But supposing AA had been in parlors ever since, and no services had been provided. Well, we moved out of parlors into halls. Then we discovered sometimes, to our pious indignation, that landlords wanted rent for places to sit down in. So that brought in a subject of money. And then somebody had to pass the hat. And after a while, the fellow informally passed the hat, and the old-timer stuck the money in his pocket and handed it to the landlord. He gave away to a treasurer, which your group probably elects. Or if it's a club, you elect it. And then it got to be something called a secretary. Sometimes it was a hell of a rattle. It was the girl with the blue hair or the girl with the green hair, but at any rate, you got yourself a secretary.
She'd answer the phone, maybe, and write some letters down, get some books. And by and by, your group or your club, it has a chairman who looks after arrangements. And maybe visits the local newspaper and gets in contact with the doctors. In other words, you began to develop a class of service people who did not govern AA and who never will, because it is certainly no blasphemy to say that even God couldn't govern a bunch of drunks. But the drunks will and must name people to perform chores so that the group can function. Is that not obvious? We have been really doing this since the beginning. True enough, those service jobs, even the volunteer ones, the thankless ones, what they get done? Well,
[01:20:03]
when you get a lot of groups in an area, what happens? Got to have a little head or tail to it. The original group can't be permitted to run everything. You don't like that. So by and by, each one of your groups names a representative, and you have some kind of a central service or intergroup association. Finally, you probably hire a little office and put in a phone and hire one guy or a gal or even two or three of them in big places.
So several hundred or several thousand drunks in an area will have actually one paid employee or two. Well, when that happens, there's an awful lot of grinding of the wheels and a hell of a commotion. Great cries of professionalism go up. A person is hired, you think they're A.A. professionals. Years ago, we commenced to crank all that up. I remember the first time we had this A.A. professionalism business come up. We had started a little club up there in New York, the first A.A. clubhouse in the world. A little bit of a place. Volunteers came in and they scrubbed and they painted and gals hung up little tins of curtains and see, it was clubby, you know? Everything went along fine for a while. The volunteers did everything, except for the landlord, of course, who had to be paid. We couldn't mix any money with this. Well, after a while, the volunteer folks, they kind of bogged down a little.
The floor didn't get swept and there were drunks laying around the place, much to the drunks. It was even said that other people were laying around the place. It was obvious we had to have somebody there all the time. So we had in mind a good old guy that we just got out of one of the insane asylums. We got over our jitters about that. He was an ex-fireman, New York City Fire Department, and old Tom Mulhall had been around in his day. So we said, well, now it would be just wonderful to get old Tom to come over here to the club and let us kind of look after things, you know? So we approached old Tom and we said, Tom, how would you like to come over to the clubhouse? We'll give you a free room over there, Tom. Tom says, what's the angle? What's the angle? Well, Tom, we'd like to have you move over to the clubhouse. If we gave you a room and you were right there on the spot, you could kind of look after things a little. He said, what do you mean look after things?
Well, we said the floor got to be swept every day here and for volunteers laying around you got to answer the telephone. Naturally, in the wintertime, you'd fire the furnace. Tom says, seven days a week for all this? Yeah. Then Tom, you know, the drunks get too drunk, you know, you have to leave them outside. Well, Tom says, ain't you going to pay me nothing? Oh, no, he said, you couldn't make money out of Alcoholics Anonymous, Tom. Oh, God, no. Money will ruin this thing, Tom. Tom looked at us with a very fishy eye and he said, I think you guys have got a hell of a nerve. I think you've got a hell of a nerve. What you guys really want is a janitor, is that right? He says, what in hell has that got to do with that 12 steps? He said, I think you guys have got a big nerve. You all come in here and you use this clubhouse and you can't or you won't sweep it out and you won't tend to the furnace and you won't get down here and answer this phone. So you want me to come in and be a janitor for you for nothing, to do that which you want or can't do yourself while you go out and make good living, huh? Oh, we said, but Tom, you've got a pension from the fire department. He says, what's that got to do with it? He says, what you want is a janitor and if I'm coming in here to be a janitor, you're going to pay me for being a janitor. I do me 12 step work. You ain't paying me nothing for that, but you're going to pay me for being a janitor or I don't come, see?
Well, it took us years and years and years to learn that that old boy was absolutely right. In other words, here were we who were out making good livings, drawing good pay as a direct result of Alcoholics Anonymous, and here were we trying to coerce this old gent into contributing about a hundred dollars a month worth of labor to that club when most of us weren't given the club five dollars a month. It wasn't even questioned. Why did
[01:25:02]
we take the attitude? One, because we were afraid of professionalism, and two, because we had made the unhappy discovery that those drunks are individually generous, collectively people, they're tight as a box on a tree. And we actually beat that poor old guy down to half price to get him in there, too. Well, little by little, this society has learned that when it needs to hire a janitor, when it needs to hire a secretary, and pardon me, when it needs to hire an author, it ought to pay up. And that doesn't make an author or a janitor or a secretary a professional AA, too, if they got a legitimate job to do over and above that 12-step. One thing we learned to do, you cannot sell that 12-step for money. But if we're going to ask somebody to work full-time for this society, we ought to pay them, and we ought to pay them, if our group is able to pay them, the going commercial rate. Otherwise, we're forcing a money contribution out of those people that we wouldn't make ourselves. So the line got drawn on this professionalism, and that's where it now stands. We don't say we're cheap for AA. If we got the money, we'll pay you like we would any non-alcoholic we'd ever hire. It's taken years to evolve that, but thank God it's now here. And thank heaven our bills of that kind are very small. And thank heaven there aren't even a handful in the AA who are paid for these special services. And the number never can be very large.
Well, to continue. Then the club found that it had to have a committee or a board to run it. It found, as a club, it found it had to have a janitor. The office found it had to have a secretary. The area found that it had to name representatives to get together to choose a committee to look after its office. And those things represented services that enabled this society to function and to grow, without which it just simply couldn't function and grow. In fact, it could fall into decay and into confusion. Too much simplicity would soon make for too much complication.
Now, I think we all ought to distinguish between any effort to organize the AA movement and an effort to organize these simple services so they'll stand up and work. You cannot organize a bunch of drunks. Alcoholics Anonymous can never have a government. Why? Because drunks simply won't be governed by print people. If anything characterizes us, it has been a lifelong history of disobedience to people, to government, to principles, to everything.