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Source: Jim B – Early AA History (1958) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: jim-b-early-aa-history-1958-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:20:19
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My name is Walt, and ever since I heard our friend Frank change my introduction to say that I am powerless over alcohol, because he pointed out to me that that's what it says to qualify for this program, that I am not an alcoholic, that I am powerless over alcohol. But by the grace of God, I'm sober today, and by trying to follow you and the principles laid down in these steps, I have not had a drink since May the 14th, 1946.
You know, that makes me sound like an old timer until I get back to our subject of this afternoon, one Jim B., San Diego, California. Now, you know, us drunks, we're kind of like the two guys sitting on the side of a stream, and a log came floating down the stream, and there was 50 million ants on that log. Now, one of these drunks said to him, he said, you know, there's 50 million ants on that log going down the river, and I bet every one of them thinks they're stingy.
So, you know, we're all pretty important. We all share this thing. Alcoholics is a worldwide fellowship of a peculiar sort. We have no office, no formal organization, no duty. We consist entirely of ex-drinkers who find reunion or mutual sympathy, understanding, and brotherly love. We're not seeking benefactions published or endowed, only an opportunity to do for some sick alcoholic what a brother or sister alcoholic has done for us.
One of the possessions we hold in common is a belief in God, our power strong in ourselves, who alone presides over this strange group. That is not the preamble that's printed on our little wallet of literature that's now more or less official throughout AA, but that was the preamble that was written by our group, and I am from the three-fourth group of alcoholics among us, three-fourth Louisiana, and the similarity to that preamble that we used back in those days and the one we use today is very, very close.
Now, I'm just to be your chairman, and I'm just to introduce the speaker. However, I am an alcoholic, I suppose, because I never did get drunk until I started drinking, and I never sobered up until I quit drinking, and I quit drinking for alcoholics alone. We're all experts at drinking. Now, when a speaker gets up here, he don't want to point out that I've done this and I've done that, but I think that we'd be selling our speaker short if I didn't point out one or two things.
Since he is part of our history, he helped write part of the history of alcoholics among us. He had to do with the 12 steps in writing our big book, Alcoholics Among Us. This man's name, and he gave me permission, his name is Jim B.. He calls himself one of the under-40 boys, because in the very early days, he came in and he was under 40 years of age. He has been sober since June the 15th, 1938.
He came in in New York. He formed the fourth group in the United States, the Philadelphia Group, and we have two of his members here who now live in Shreveport. He is the second oldest member of Alcoholics Anonymous from San Juan, Nevada. Our own founder, Bill W., is number one, and Jim is number two. And our speaker sponsor, our speaker last night at the banquet, our client sponsor, Clarence S., is number three.
So we're all linked together very closely here. Now Jim, I don't want to take too much credit, and like all good A&As and pioneers in A&, he is truly one of the pioneers. He wrote a chapter in our big book called The Vicious Cycle, a very fine chapter. Now in the early days, as I understand it, they didn't go for God too much, the word God. And there was quite a hassle over that, and when they wrote the fourth chapter, they just had it, just God.
And this man, your next speaker, is the man that had them inject the four words following the word God, as you find everywhere in our closet, as we understand them.
[00:05:11]
And they found it worked when they added those words, and it did not work before. It was more acceptable. He is now manager of a collection agency. You know, that's got quite a switch, doesn't it? Usually, though, the manager was after that. Now he was also the chapter of the agnostic in the big book. He is also the man that inspired that chapter, because he was truly, by his own admission, a true agnostic when he came in, and he was what they called the image that caused them to write the chapters to the agnostic, which allowed many of us who didn't necessarily disbelieve nor didn't believe either to find God when we come in.
I'd like personally, and I'm sure now I'm saying this for all of us, is to express our gratitude to the Monroe Group and all the people that have put this magnificent program on. I'd like to express our gratitude, and I'm sure the Monroe Group will go along with me on the way the hotel has looked out after us, and we appreciate that very much. So I'm not going to say anything else. I'm going to sit down and listen with anticipation to what Jim B. of San Diego has got to tell us. Jim?
Jim? I would like first to bring a little California over to Louisiana. In Louisiana, I mean in California, we always say, my name is Jim and I'm an alcoholic, and the audience yells back, hi Jim. So I'm going to say, I am Jim and I am an alcoholic. It sort of warms it up. It gets you halfway through. I don't need to go any further since Wanda's already done it. But first of all, I do want to thank you ever so much for inviting me over here.
I don't get on the circuit very much. I'm scared of it, because you can get on it and not get off. And I've been in and out of it a long time, and I want them to still like me. And if you don't go back for ten years, they love you. If you come back sooner, it may not be so good. But it has been swell to come over here and see this little town with such a magnificent group and such a magnificent crowd.
I think it is really a stealth. Well, I am an alcoholic, as I said, and I'm one of the few people I bring to the AA to carry papers to prove it. Because in 1942, when I went to work for the War Production Board, I'd been sober about three or four years. I really got in there on a job way over my head. This was in Philadelphia. And I got in there because I'd been working with a few drunks in the War Production Board, and I needed a job, and they worked out very nicely.
So I made up my beautiful application with the ups and downs, as all of us drunks have. And I had to explain a lot of these downs because I hadn't had a decent job since I'd sobered up, really, in the three or four years. So they asked a lot of questions, very personal questions on that. Because the War Production Board was a pretty tight organization at that time, security-wise. They wanted to know how many times you were arrested.
Well, I started scratching my head, and I started putting down, and I did put down very honestly, the ones I remembered being fingerprinted. I didn't put down some of the others. And they asked, what organizations do you belong to? And I said, Alcoholics Anonymous, on my application. Everything went along swell. I got my job. Going along, held that election, and holding on pretty good.
[00:10:04]
People were covering and working along with me very nicely, and I was helping a few drunks in the War Production Board, best I could. Six months later, I got a letter, Federal Interior of Investigation. Would you come down and have a talk with us at your earliest convenience? And we'd like you to call us tomorrow morning. Well, I did, and I went down in the afternoon, and they pulled out my record.
They said, we know you're dry, we know you've been in AA, we know you've been sober, we know you've been active in helping a few drunks around Philadelphia, but you weren't quite honest there on your application. I thought, well, here goes the first decent job I've had since I've been sober. They said, how about these other arrests? And there were 45 on there, listed. Well, of course, there wasn't much answer.
But they said, we'll forgive you, because of what you've been doing. And he says, well, next time, take this back with you. They gave me a copy of it, so I have papers. So anytime I go to work at my age for the federal government, I will make a good, honest application. I'll just attach a post-ed copy. So, that was just one little thing of proof. Well, first I'd better qualify a little bit on my own little program.
And then I'd like to go into what the early members were like and what they were trying to do. And what, apparently, John Barleycorn saw different to make of it. I was in Washington, D.C., January the 8th. I was talking to Frank last night. The Council on the Prophets, 14th and Massachusetts Avenue. I was the end of a 10-day binge. In those 10 days, I'd lost my job, my car, my wife had walked out on me.
And I was locked out of my furnished apartment. I'd been in Gallenger City Hospital, Psycho Ward, for suicide. I'd been in jail. All this was in 10 days. All these things had happened before, but none of these, but all of them hadn't happened at one time. This is important to me. And I went home to my mother, who had a little apartment. And we'd played this game before, but this was the last time she was fed a four- or five-day beer.
I was completely washed out. Fleet Bank Hotels. She finally said, well, I'll let you come in. She had lost her sight then. If you'd give me your clothes and your cigarettes, so you won't burn the joint down. And you can have a little dark closet room. Well, anything to get in out of the rain. I was really fed up. And that was January the 8th, when a fellow named Jackie W. came to see me. I didn't know the guy from Adam. I'd never heard of him.
He'd never heard of me until that day. I never asked anybody to come to see me. But my sister, who had known the southern gentleman in the book, Fitz M., who's died. Fitz and I had gone to school together. I'd sent this guy to come to see me, to straighten me up. Well, this guy brushes in, all like this, feeling fine and grand. And he says, well, I'll let you come in. Graham, and he says, I understand that you've been having a little problem lately. I said, who me? Nothing wrong with me, it's just a damn bunch of circumstances. If I could only have a job, and a decent front, everything would be all set, but everybody's taking advantage. And he said, well, I was like you.
[00:15:25]
And then he started naming attendants in Bellevue Hospital, where I'd been. He started naming attendants in the Philadelphia General, where I'd been. He started naming attendants at Art Gallinger Hospital in Washington, who I knew. So I knew he spoke my language. And he said, I've also, and I think today he still holds that record, been in 250 paid sanitariums. He had been the son of a Carnegie Steel president, a spoiled brat like most of us are.
Well, he spoke my language. He started telling me, there was a few people in New York, this was a year and a half before the book, law book, they hadn't even thought about the book at this time. And he says, they're staying sober by holding on to each other. They're in what is known as the Oxford Group. I'd heard something of this group, a whole bunch of people, now moral re-armament. And he says, they're holding on by straightening up their thinking and by praying to God.
I said, there it is again. Here we go again. I'd hit the sallies, I'd hit, carried the banner. I knew the story of that. This God stuff. Well, I was down in the Reverend Joyner today. I went to Fisterville High School in Virginia. I don't know whether any alumnus here, I'd like to meet them after the meeting if they are. And we had Bible reading before every meal. And we had church four times a Sunday. And I swore if we got out of there, I would never go back to church again. And I've done pretty well, except for funerals. Because this AA seems to work so well.
So I've become a pretty damn agnostic, a militant agnostic. I've been in the first war, I've seen people killed. What the hell's it all about? We're getting back to Jackie T. and he starts talking about this God stuff. Well, for the first time I start talking back. Start telling about myself. Start putting my hair down for the first time in my life, I believe, to anybody. This guy spoke my language. This awful lonesomeness, this uselessness, this frustration, nothing making sense. Success, failure, nothing seems to do any good. You're just a square point in a round hole of a world.
But this guy spoke my language. The funny part of it is that this Jackie W., this same Jackie W. brought in 60% of the first people that came to New York and he died of alcoholism. He never could face over himself. And that's the key to my start of going to New York and meeting these people. Because we played around together in Washington for two or three days while I got rid of the shakes. I'll never forget he took me to a slide show down on 9th Avenue and they had some snakes there and here I was like this.
So this lasted for about a week or so and I didn't ask too much about New York. I was trying to get some of the things back together again and Mother had allowed me to stay there for a while. My wife still wasn't talking. But I might have gotten my job back. And all of a sudden Jackie was suddenly taken from me. My sponsor. And then I started really finding a guy that was an expert. He had me linked in space.
[00:20:15]
Served the nuts. I pulled him out of one thing after another. Finally for three or four days bad checks and what not. Finally he gave me Bill W.'s number in New York. This was in Washington. And I called Mr. W. up and I told him who I was. I told him I had Jackie. What should I do with him? He loved him. Bill I can almost see him on the telephone now. Wow I don't know. You better bring him up here. If you know Bill you can almost see him.
So I did pack Jackie up and we went to New York. And that was an experience. Mr. W., 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn. That's not south of Oakland. And at the house was Hank P. who we can thank so much for. Well Bill talked to me for two hours. You see in those early days you've got to understand this thing had a spark. Bill had an overnight revelation. I don't mean by that he lost all desire to drink. No he didn't. I mean he lost desire practically. And he had this terrific we always call it a hot flash he had.
But anyway he kept himself sober ever since that time he got it. So Bob S. who was number two guy in acting was the same way. An overnight conversion practically. So naturally us underlings that were coming along had to have this experience. Win, lose or break even. We couldn't grow we had to have it right now. So Bill started praying over me. I mean praying. He walked me down on my knees and I said Bill look there's nothing wrong with me. I have nothing wrong. I just don't drink. I drink too much. That's all. I get that straightened out and everything will be, I mean get my front and everything will be all straightened.
So he worked on me for about two hours. Bill at that time had been sober about two and a half years. And Hank P. escaped him after Bill got through and relieved him. And he worked on me for a couple of hours. And after they talked for these three or four hours I don't know how long it seemed like indefinitely other boys got together and said well do you understand this thing? Have you seen the light? Do you feel this thing? And I said no. Can I have an aspirin?
I never had any more trouble with them after that. They left me alone. I was too hard of a agent for them. So I was the philistine agnostic of the original craft. Well that was my introduction. Now I will go back a little bit to show you my progression in a pattern that may be of some help to some new person here or to a person. My father was a doctor, fairly well fixed, nothing exciting involved in the world. I had a rather normal schooling, public school and then boarding school. And then Virginia for a couple of years.
And I never had any great ambitions. I never had any great frustrations. What I'm driving at, I'm a great believer that about 75% of us are born alcoholics and about 25% like Mac, developed over a period of time.
[00:25:02]
Any of us we know, they drink long enough to build a belly. Mine was almost the first drink, it was the first night. But I was trying to get back to the schooling and general activities. And then I go to Virginia, which is quite a drinking school, which some of you all know. And I remember my first drink down there. And this is important. It may be of some use to some of you folks. Or you maybe look back and see it. Because this thing happened to me every time I took a drink, the first drink. That first drink, I could feel it going down through every member of the body, right down to the toes.
And then each drink after that would be a little less. Then after four or five, it was just like water. One kind of booze was just the same as the other. It was all the same. But I was always trying to pick up that lift. I got on the first one. And all the time I'd go down. And every time I drank, I would try to be the soberest one in the party until I would fall down on my face. Rubber legs was my trouble. I wasn't a fighting type. Mine was just common drunk.
So that was my pattern, the first drink. And then I go in the Army. It was one night stands, of course. And the next day, not too much, because I wasn't hurt. I go in the Army at 18. And I go through for a year and a half on the other side. And we got a wire that the arms was going to be signed on November the 6th. Well, that was five days before the real arms, if some of the older folks will remember this.
So I went AWOL. And at 19, I had a five-day blackout. I went backwards and forwards across France. I had the slightest idea until I woke up at 4 a.m. on the real arms this day at 19. So I was allergic to the first drink. I'd like to think that I was a controlled alcoholic for about 10 years. And then the toboggan for the last 10. Well, by control, I mean holding it down for two or three days at the most.
But it was always a bad drink, even when I had controlled alcoholism. It was such an animal. So being a spoiled brat, not having too much, but having enough and not having any need for anything particular, I went out and got my first job. At 22, I went to work for commercial credit companies. There were 10 men in the corporation at that time. This was in Baltimore, Maryland. Right now, I think last year they did $4 billion worth of business.
When I was 25 years old, I opened up their first branch office, the commercial credit ever had outside of Baltimore, in Philadelphia. I woke up, and two years later, I was watched out of the finance business as irresponsible, no good, to show you what booze will do. Well, that's just the beginning. This is my control alcoholism. Then I go to work with G.F. Gingrich. And I go to Baltimore branch. And I get a job as a country peddler, a salesman. And I work myself up to city salesman, half the city.
When I woke up, this was all done in about two and a half, three years. This was all done in about two and a half, three years, and I had the city, and all of a sudden they said they were going to give me the branch at 29. I was 29 years old. The branch had about 60 people in it at that time.
[00:30:15]
And before they gave me the branch, they wanted me to go down to the conference down in Atlantic City, and all the big wheels, the whole country, the national conference for boogers forever. And I was to be the only salesman in the whole United States that was going to get up and tell them how I'd done this wonderful job on tires. Of course, it shocked me. So, I go to Atlantic City, hadn't had a drink for three or four weeks. I hadn't even thought about it. That was always a thing with me. I never knew when these things were coming. I could go three or four weeks and never have a desire, but once a pimple pulled, down the rabbit hole.
So, I go and check my badge on the rubber down at the President Hotel in Atlantic City. Little sign under the glass. There'd be positively no drinking at this convention. Signed, James E. Swain, General Manager of B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company. And I hadn't thought of a drink. Oh, me? They telling me that? Immediately after seeing the sign, I go downtown, buy a pint, and I have not been back to Goodrich Rubber since.
Insanity. Crazy. But they told me I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I broke it. Well, that was the beginning of B.F. This was in 29. And those last eight years, nine years, I had 38 jobs. I'd been in 60 jails, five psycho wards, three attempts at suicide. And this constant uselessness, hopelessness, ruthlessness. Constantly. And always battling back. Like most of us drunks going down to these flea bags to hide out.
I couldn't stand the stink. But if you go down there often enough, you can take it. It becomes pretty. Then you become a boss down there, and it's not hard to take. Sometimes I wonder who's right before he's on Skid Row, a guy there working. It's hard to tell sometimes. So that's my little background on drinking. So getting back to New York, for Hank P., which I said before, everyone in this room owns their lives to Hank as much as they do to Bill or anybody.
Because Hank is the promoter that made Bill write the book. Bill has always been a do-it-tomorrow boy. And Hank is a do-it-now. Not tomorrow or any time, but right now. Hank P. had been sales manager of Standard Oil in New Jersey, and he'd been washed out of there completely when Bill had picked him up in Towns Hospital, where Bill had sobered up. So when Hank offered me a job selling automobile polish that our company, he and Bill owned, called the Stain Ons Company, and I was to go out and sell this polish to distributors wherever I could find them.
And we would soon have DuPont out of business, of course. This polish was really good, automobile polish. And Mr. P. was going to give me $10 a week and my key. But it didn't seem like much, but here are these big shots. Here's a Wall Street broker. Here's a guy, good sales manager of Standard Oil. He's a good bunch of people to hang around with.
[00:35:04]
I didn't know that they were unemployed and unemployable. They had been, but they weren't. And all of us were at that time. At that time in New York, in January 38, they were probably in the New York division. Probably. We used to meet in Bill's second floor living room, and we'd have eight and nine, and we'd sit around in a circle, and Bill would be in the center of the little three-legged stool he used to have sitting down and he used to spout off because he'd read a couple of books that we had.
And that was the meetings we went to on Tuesday night at Bill's. Those were the first New York meetings. And there were eight of ten at the meetings, and there were probably fifteen or twenty that called themselves part of this fellowship. You see, we had no label. We had no name. We had no text. We had nothing to follow except Bill. And the same thing was in operation out in Hackeran with Dr. Bob. They had about the same number out there.
They had just pulled away from the Oxford group because here they were after three and a half years with only four people sober over six months in the Oxford group, and it hadn't worked because we were mixed up with other people other than our own. They didn't speak our language. Looking back, we can all see this now. So Hank is the one that got us to pull out of the Oxford group. We've got to do something about this. We've got to get a bold pamphlet of our experiences of what we've got to do. Here comes the beginning of AA.
So they kept rambling at poor Bob S. and Bill, and finally they wrote the stories as they now are in the book, Bill's story and Dr. Bob's. And then they got Dr. Silkworth, who was in Tom's hospital where Bill sobered up on his last journey, to write how good we were and what we had to do about this thing. And this was our original pamphlet, and we were going to write this up. It was all typewritten, and Hank, the big promoter, says, I know somebody up at Harker's, Harker's Publishing Company.
And I got an in up there. Maybe they'll print this for us. We'll get 50,000 copies. We thought there were about 50,000 alcoholics at that time. We didn't have any idea what there was. There wasn't any statistics. Until Gare came into the picture and made a few. And he says, I know he'll do this for me. He's an old friend. We'll get it done real cheap. So he and Bill go up to Harker's, and Harker's reads the manuscript over him.
He says, Mr. P., Mr. W., this is wonderful. This was around June 1938. If you will make this into a full book, we will advance you $3,000. Boy, that was money in those days. It still is. And give you regular royalties. Now Bill and Hank had never written anything before in their lives. Never thought about writing anything. And Harker says, now if this is as good as I think it's going to be, then we'll have the Reader's Digest come along. And Charlie Towns of Town Hospital says, I can get Fishbein, the president of the American Medical, to give an okay on it. And we'll be in big business and we'll sell these books from coast to coast.
So that was the original A.A. A book selling deal, whether you like it or not. However, John Ballycaugh changed it and changed it real tight. So Hank says, if it's worth $3,000 to Harker's, we'll publish it ourselves.
[00:40:26]
We'll make a million out of this thing. You see, the real idea was that all you had to have was a spiritual experience. Get down on your knees, understand your problems, and no more booze. We had no more idea in the world, I'll give you my word for this, in 1938, that the reason we were staying sober was because we were holding off each other. We didn't have any idea that was a fact. We didn't know it until a year after the court.
We didn't know that that was the secret of this whole thing. The cement between one drug and another. We speak the language. There's nothing new in the A.A. book. Everything we have in there is stolen. We've stolen the best. From the psychiatrists and from the religionists. But we didn't feed it to each other. And the original idea was that we'd just publish books. We'd sell a million books the first year. Win, run, be easy.
Unknown publisher and everything. We wouldn't let any one person's name go on that book. We weren't going to let anybody get billed off. It wasn't a case of we were anonymous. It was just a case of everybody wanted to be in there or nobody was in there. So, they started writing the book. Now, this will explain in a little bit how this got as you understand it thing, which I do like to say is my little contribution. I feel it's quite good.
Well, I was the only one of those 15 or 20. All the rest of them were agnostics except Bill, including Hank. But I was the only honest agnostic. The rest of them were putting an act on the godliness, but I was honest completely. I was eloquently agnostic. So, at these meetings I'd always say, yep, this is all good stuff, but damn this god stuff. That's not necessary. And the boys. This was between January and June. I really had them rolling in the aisles. They didn't know whether they were going or coming.
But they couldn't fire me because I was selling automobile polish pretty good. They were living on my automobile polish. And I was getting $10 a week at my key good Hank's place out in Jersey. So, I didn't find this out until a year and a half later that they had several prayer meetings on B.. How to get him out. Or how to get him drunk. Well, this is an interesting thing from my point of view, and it's my way of working with new drunks.
So, who am I to argue with God or Bill or Hank? I just got my suddenly taken drunk. I was on a selling trip up in Providence. Sold a bit more than usual on a Saturday. Went in to have a couple beers with the fellas. And that's the first drink I'd had in six months. And I didn't even stay for the sandwiches or what not. I just walked out of that place, walked around the corner and bought a bottle and went up the road.
And then the wires started going back, going to New York. They didn't come this way very much from Providence. I was in a flea bag in Providence. Broke down and out. And for four days I was in this car. I was in this bar, this is the first time I couldn't black out, this is the first time I couldn't get drunk, this is the first time that nothing could work, I told these guys that all my problem was booze, I had no mental problems or anything, I still thought that evening I drank, and those songs singing so and so's down in New York,
[00:45:22]
whatever they think they are I'll show them, and then I'd get remorse, for the first time I got fired, I got washed out completely, they wouldn't send me any money, not even money to get home on, and there I was in Providence, Rhode Island, down and out, and my own time had turned me down, the only people that had made sense to me, that broke my back, I crawled back to New York and I was wide open for the rest, that's why I always say, and I always qualify by saying I didn't forget once, I always say if I remember the day that Jackie W. came to see me in Washington D.C., as long as I remember that, that's how long I'll stay sober, I've developed a habit, I've told a couple of people here, that when I go to a meeting, I renew that, I renew my thinking, that lonesomeness, that uselessness, that nothing makes any difference, it makes it easier, you get a tough day at the office, and you think, is it tough or not, is it as tough as that 8th of January, and I've never found a day yet that's been as tough as that one, so I got myself drunk and I came back, so during, from June to December they started writing me a book, in 38, you see it came out in April of 39, so they started writing, and we started getting a few people to write, I was just an on-looker here, I just had this trouble when I was on the spot, I had a show, and it was a couple of months before I got my job back at $10 a week, and so I was an on-looker going along trying to sell polish, and they were talking about this book, and they were putting it together, well this might be of interest to you how they did put it together, Ruth Hock was our original secretary, Ruth Hock had worked for our polish company, so she was the stenographer, Bill would dictate about a chapter a week, walking backwards and forwards on the floor, and off the cuff, and Ruth would write this down, double spaced, and we'd send one copy to Akron, one copy would go to our New York Tuesday night meeting, and we would hassle over it, it was changed a hundred times, this a way and that a way, I always claim it was called by alcoholic lawyers, there wasn't a loophole left in it, so when we got through with the thing, the book doesn't actually say you have to do anything, it says we find some people do it this a way, some do it that a way, it seems like the people that do it this way have a little bit better luck than that way, but try it that way if you want to, but that was what us blokes were doing, we had to satisfy our goals, because we were going to put our money into it, so we were getting along pretty good on the book, and how to finance it, we decided as I said before we were going to publish it ourselves, so we coned our group, we coned our friends, we decided to set up first an alcoholic foundation, it's now a general service council,
[00:50:01]
the alcoholic foundation was to be allowed to open hospitals, solicit on the streets, we could do anything, sell and operate real estate, the alcoholic foundation had one of the most beautiful nonprofit corporation clauses in the country, it was beautifully done, and at that time they put two non-alcoholics on it, that was Bob and Bill, they had two alcoholics on it, that was Hank and Bill, Bob wasn't having much to do with this book at this time, there was a bunch of screw balls, he's a New York promoter, he couldn't understand it, so we had to do a lot of that dirty work in New York, because Bob still loved the old Oxford group, then we had three non-alcoholics, and they were friends of Bill, one was Bill's brother-in-law, and one of them was a friend of the Rockfellers, and that was the original foundation, well the real idea of this foundation was to get some money in, so we could write this book, or it wasn't anything else in the world, then we stopped Bill with his Wall Street background, stopped thinking about cocktails I guess, so we had another corporation, the book was going to be called The 100 Men, and this was in 1938, wow that sounds swell, we had a bunch of women, we didn't know if there were any women alcoholics or not, we were just involved with ourselves, and all of a sudden Florence, Ireland, had gotten themselves to be sober as long as a lot of us have, most of us a year, so the 100 Men corporation, which we sold stock into, we sold stock in the alcoholic foundation, we sold stock in the 100 Men, and then Florence comes along, and then we had another corporation called Publishing, the Works Publishing Company, in case you're all interested in where they got the works from, Hank named it that, he said it works, so that became the Works Publishing Company, all these cartels, we didn't know which man was which, so the book finally got itself together pretty well at the end of 1938, and we still had no name, we still had not mentioned anything about groups, we still only had the two groups, Akron and New York, and it was pretty damn godless, and then we had the Battle of the Royal Bungow, then we had a psychiatrist come in and say, Bill you can't do this, you've got these two Oxford Troopies, make it wide open, so finally we did get God as you understand it, I'd been sober then 5 months, I was a senior member then, so then we got a guy out of Rockland State Hospital, he'd been in there for about 2 or 3 years, pretty insane, alcoholicly insane, he came down, he had been quite a big shot publisher, he came in when we were talking over the title, and all of a sudden out of a clear sky, he'd been sober, out of the hospital, well he'd probably been sober for about a week, he said how about this, anonymous alcoholics, yeah anonymous alcoholics, now you want to make this thing anonymous so that they won't think there's any statement of this thing, and you try to get this word alcoholic over it, you see the Alcoholics Anonymous book is the first book that was published really for the layman under alcoholism,
[00:55:01]
it was all this dipsomania, if you had a couple of drugs, or you were a drunken bum, if you were broke, but alcoholic was not known on a public level, the medical profession knew it, and there were a couple of technical books on it, but there was nothing really worthwhile known, so all of a sudden we all said, wonderful, we'll call it Alcoholics Anonymous, that field behind P.'s AA would be right at the top of everything, of the publishing list, as I told you before, the book was going to do it, all the guy had to do was get down on his knees, pray to God, read the book, understand it's problem, no more booze, well after we sold these million books, we'd have a million dollars, the net profit, we had it all figured out in this box selling game, we showed you if you bought Colgate at one dollar in 1900, how much it would have been worth in 1938, or the same thing with this AA, Alcoholics Anonymous book, we were going to really build it up, but we decided then, well there's maybe a few people that wouldn't get well on this book alone, maybe a few, so what we'll do, we had a lot of other boys there that were experts to try, a year or two, or a year, six months, and they needed jobs, and they had money in this thing, we had to do something for them, so they decided that after they sold these million books the first year, made a million dollars, they would open up these drunk forums right across the country, for these poor unfortunates that couldn't get well, on this book alone, we would have this little drunk forum, located, self-supporting, we had it all fixed up, it would be a stockade, and our little cottage would be on the outside, we had it all fixed up for what our salary was going to be, two hundred dollars, and our keep, which was a lot of money in 1938, and we had all this figured out so beautifully, so finally after much razzle and tassel, we got a publishing company, to publish the AA book, he did it on the cuff, and we had to pull those books out ten at a time, we had to pay two fifty a piece to get a book out to sell for three bucks, and we sold them to YMCA's, we had an ad in the New York Times, and nobody seemed to be interested, you should have seen us galloping down the post office, hoping that this thing was going to bring in this million books, we actually sold in the first year, a hundred and seventy five books, a little different from a million, and we were broke, Bill was barred, and everything else he could, everybody was barred, and Hank, he and Bill were talking to the Rockefeller people at this time, trying to get their interest, and they weren't interested, and that's a story that comes a little later if I have time, but those were some of the razzles that happened at first, do you realize that in April 1939 when the book came out, us experts that knew all the answers, there were only eight people in the United States, dry one year or more in alcoholism, we had a hundred names, so we put a hundred names down there, and we were stretching things a little bit, but after the book came out, and so many of us found there wasn't any money in the building, a lot of the boys fell off the wagon, now you've got to realize, I shouldn't say it's hard for these early boys, it was hard in one way for us, but then again, we were going to change the world, we were fanatical to feel that we had this terrific talent, To feel that we had this terrific power, we thought we could help other people outside of drugs.
The first book said to help others, didn't say anything about alcoholics. To carry this message to others, didn't say alcoholics at all.
[01:00:04]
We were missing the boat. But after the book came out, and we had number three groups in that Cleveland, we began to see that only those going to meetings were staying sober. These spiritual boys that had nothing else were blowing high rotten pens. These guys that knew all the medical angles, unless they were in the fellowship, they were long drawn. And in my estimation, the secret ingredient of Alcoholics Anonymous is drug to drug.
We are experts. We can take it to each other, where the same thing, we won't accept it at all from anybody else but another drug. But when another drug lays it on the line and tells us where he came from, what he did, we know he speaks our language. And when we see him sober, it's a challenge. If that's sober and so can do it, so can I. If he's that happy, he's got a couple bucks more than I have, if I stay sober a little longer, maybe I'll have a buck or two.
It's a gradual, if the guy is sincere. Of course, those things only last emotionally a short time, but it's a start. So that was that thing. Now we would have gone flat on our hands, even after the book was published, if the Rockwells hadn't come along and held a big dinner. John D. Jr. had the hundreds of biggest men in the country at the Union League in New York to come in and hear the story of Alcoholics Anonymous.
This was in January 1940. Sixty of them showed up. Wilkie was there, Souroson from Ford, Henry Ford Jr. was there, Nelson Rockefeller, Foster Kennedy, chief psychiatrist of the country at that time. We had them, some of the personal friends of John D. Jr.'s. And Bill said, now we're made. I.B. Lee, who was the publicity man for Rockwell at that time, estimated there was $3 billion in bankroll. And Bill said, this is it.
We're over the hump. The book came out, we were $20,000 in the hole. We were going root-mock our secretary. The gal that wrote the book hadn't been paid. She was a non-alcoholic. Hadn't been paid for six months. And we were really in a flop. So at this dinner in New York, Dr. Fauci got up from the church up there and said, I think AA is good. Foster Kennedy told us about Marty M. being recovered through alcoholism.
And that was the case that Foster Kennedy thought there wasn't a chance in the world. And then Nelson Rockefeller was there. He said a few words. And after it was all done, Bill, of course, spoke. Not two hours, as he does sometimes. Without a doubt, he used to give a hell of a good talk. He still does, but I mean, he was short. Not like me. So finally, at the end, Nelson Rockefeller said, gentlemen, you see, these people came there.
They weren't sure what they were coming for because he didn't tell them what it was all about. And they thought it was another one of those dry things of Rockefeller's. You see, Rockefeller was behind prohibition. He's the one that got a lot of the industrials together to help put over prohibition. And they thought, well, here's another one of those Rockefeller gadgets. This guy. And after the thing was all over, John D. said, gentlemen, this group is different.
I've had you here. I want you to meet these men. Talk to this learned doctor, this great spiritual leader, Bostick Emerson P..
[01:05:10]
Of what they see in this alcoholic scenario. I believe it's good. But there's one thing about this group that is different than any other group we've been interested in. They don't need any money. As Bill used to say, the three billion dollars won't close the door. But he said, I think enough of this group that us Rockefellers are going to finance Bill and Bob S. for a year or so while this book is being put over.
We're going to give $1,000 a year to Alcoholics Anonymous. No, $1,000 to Bill and $1,000 to Bob. $2,000. And we'd like you other folks to contribute. Naturally, if John D. Rockefeller puts up $1,000, you know what a little guy like Standard Oil New Jersey or some place like that, he only put up a few bucks so he didn't get together. And we have for three years $5,000 financed from the Rockefeller group.
But we've got one thing. We've got the greatest thing I don't think that's ever been done before by the Rockefellers. They sent it out on the wires. The Rockefellers Foundation and its friends think Alcoholics Anonymous is good. That was worth millions. That was much more than any money they could have given us. Because we had to struggle. We had to do this thing. We had to bring it down. We had to have John Barley Cohen knock us out of the money.
Hank's got drunk. It was a good thing he did. He's the guy that made Bill do the job. But Hank would have run us out of business. He would have promoted us too far. A lot of others. Jackie W., the fellow who saved me, would have hurt a lot of people if he'd stayed around longer because he was living on these people he was bringing in. But all these people were necessary, were God's way of helping us perform this fellowship of getting his body on a regular basis.
So you can see the growing pains. The Alcoholics Anonymous in those early days was like a floating crack game. Your sponsor was your complete boss. Nobody else got it. He had full control of his state. And you took dictation. If he got drunk, then you had a chance to pick up another sponsor, which you did. And, of course, in New York, they'd all gotten drunk. So Bill was the sponsor of a hell of a lot of people in that early crowd.
But the kiss of death has always been Bill will sponsor anybody. He's put this thing together and does such a terrific job. But as soon as he works on a drug, something happens. You don't see it go through. But then we had, a year later, of course, in the 40s, after this article, Rock Fellows, we got our Philly group started, which had done before. Los Angeles started about the same time. And they started going up all over the country.
Because we were traveling once, and we were carried from one message to another. And we had to. We were educated in those two original groups. That if we didn't get out and get other drunks, we'd get drunk. So as soon as we moved to Newtown, we had to start something. We'd go to the hospitals. We'd go to the jails. We'd go anyplace we couldn't get. And we were still going down. And we were losing money.
And we were about $40,000 in the hole. Where Bill got it, I don't know. At the end of 40, then the Sardine Post article came out. That's the most remarkable thing to hear that whole story. This happened in that Philadelphia group. Judge Buck, whose family owned the Sardine Post, was a great attendant at our AA meetings in Philly.
[01:10:12]
And one day, Bill was down there. And I said, Bill, how about getting something in the Post? He said, that would be a wonderful idea. I said, who do you know? He said, we know Judge Buck. So I took Bill down there. And Judge Buck says, sure, I'll take you down to the Post and we'll get you an article. We go down there. And the editorial staff opened the doors wide open. We'd been thinking about writing a story on alcoholics anonymous.
But wait till you hear the catch. So they assigned Jack Alexander to write this article for the Sardine Post. Jack Alexander was a racket buster. He busted the Heinz case in New York. And he busted rackets all over the country. And he was a hard-fisted reporter. And the reason they gave us Jack Alexander, because anonymous was an offspring of the alcoholics group. And they would really do a good job on alcoholics anonymous and the Oxford group.
They busted wide open this new racket. Well, we didn't know this. As far as I know, we didn't. But anyway, Bill told Jack Alexander. And he said, Jack, please promise me one thing. You won't put one word down until you've visited at least seven or eight groups. Jack said, I'll make that promise. Well, he says, I don't like the smell of this thing. Because this Oxford group has been an appeasement group.
This was at the time of the war, don't forget. Chamberlain, who went to Munich, was an Oxford group. It was an appeasement group. Decent as it was. And they were pretty damn tough. So Jack did. He went to Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Akron. Or maybe one or two more. And he stayed to pray. Do you know that that article in the Standing Post, March 1, 1941, drew more inquiries than any other publication in this United States has ever had?
Fifteen thousand personal pleas for help came through. Two people in the New York office who was bonded to the clubhouse and everybody, and everybody was writing letters to these people for help. But the Standing Post said we were good. Rockefeller said we were good. We were in business. Then we became a club. Bill had lost his house, lost everything. He was living around in different AA's. He hadn't had a new suit for seven, eight years.
Yet he could borrow $40,000. I don't know why he couldn't buy a suit. But he was that kind of a guy. He believed in this thing. And where a lot of us would have got jobs, Bill stuck by the ship. And Bill was a terrific guy on that anchor. But then we started flying apart. We started getting mixed up in civic organizations. We started getting money from other people, soliciting on the street for clubs and places.
And then we started to get mixed up with WCTU. And only we were really mixed up. And the Yale group. And Marty M. went out with all the ideas in the world. Program activity. Press labels. Bill located anything to get the gals. And so he did bring out a lot of women. But from 41 to 45, we were still pretty damn slushy. Anything could have happened. I mean, we could have gone, gotten mixed up with some Catholic, I mean, some, some religious group or, because they were Catholic AAs and they were Protestant AAs, and they could have
[01:15:02]
been Democratic and Republicans, and we could have smashed the screen wider, and some of the groups were in Florida and they could have pulled away, Chicago, pulled away for a while, so we had all these hotspots around the country, and we didn't know where, thank God we never had one thing to go across the country, not a thing, there's always personal problems in one spot, a little person, another one over there, but it's been dreaded that they haven't gotten together and made a lawn slaw and a whole work, and that's the time that they start thinking about these traditions, and that was the cornerstone that held us together, the traditions were extensive, they came out in 45, of very few groups, they all said, well that's for those boys up north, or south, or down west, it's not for us, we don't need that stuff here, we used to say that about the 12th and 7th, at least the high commodity groups, Cleveland, Mackin groups, didn't have books, they called it self-outlaws in the mountains, but they didn't have any books for sale or on their stands, because they were mixed up for the auction group for about three years, so we needed something to cement this fellowship together, and then the traditions came up, which in my estimation, or maybe is more important than Ms. Wells' death, because our common welfare must come first, we must keep our unity, because without you I'm drunk, and without me you're drunk, and also nobody in AA is important, but everybody in AA is important, and then the traditions, and then the third legacy, so this thing has gradually been done, now you can say, Bill is a writer of this stuff, sure, but the architect, the guy that actually built this alcoholic phenomenon, this is John Baricone, he's the one that put the first soccers into place when we started getting out of line, we started learning what we could do, what we couldn't do, because we could see by the guys dropping off and getting drunk, but this has been a wonderful experience to see this fellowship go through like this, I guess I've talked so long that you all want to talk, but when you get wrapped up in this history thing, I like Augustus' illusion that we were saints, we were a bunch of screwballs, and we, in the first place, we didn't think anybody was an alcoholic, unless they were in the same, unless you had a famous alcoholic, you weren't one of them, so when these guys started coming in from general hospitals and stuff like that, we thought it was near everything, what is he after, what is it, what's the racket, what's he on, is he writing a book or something, so we were right there, now we know, oh, he wrote something else I'd like to read with you, as a parting word, how come there's 6.5 million alcoholics in this country, there's only 3% of Lone Skid Row, there's not, statistically I don't blame them, there's only a million and a half of the alcoholics that AA hasn't touched, there's 5 million that we haven't touched, they're guys that got homes, that got cars, that got jobs, so that's our job, to get those people, save them from going through this ringer, it's so easy to say, oh, and he has brought them and he's come, how do we know, suppose that guy hadn't come to see us, it's important, but thank you, thank God, as I understand it, for allowing me this privilege, and I was going to say if anybody wanted to ask any questions, but Waukee has said, better not do it, it'll get the uproar, so if anybody has any other questions on the early days, only on the early days and around New York and Germany, now if you ask me what makes AA work, I'll tell you the same story that Bill and Bob all tell, we don't know, all we know is that it works,
[01:20:03]
thank you.