AA’s Three Legacies — New York, 1951

This is much more than a building. It is a veritable cathedral of the Spirit, into which some 120,000 of us have now come and have therein found a liberty, a brotherhood, a chance to serve man and God, of which none of us could have dreamed in yesteryear. Nowadays, as this structure approaches completion, we clearly see AA in three dimensions, the dimension of recovery, the dimension of unity, and the dimension of service. Without any one of these, AA couldn’t function. The individual must lose his obsession. As groups and as a movement, we must need to remain in unity. And above all, AA being a program of action, we must function, for without us, for with us of AA, faith without works is very dead indeed, as we look out upon our destiny. Let us pause and mark those moments of realization and decision that have made AA what it is today. When you stop to think about it, AA is made up of a series of such realizations and decisions by individuals and by groups. Let’s see what some of those were. The first one is common to every alcoholic here tonight. It came to me one summer day in 1934 when I lay in town’s hospital and knew for the first time that I was utterly powerless to go on living. I knew that I was in the grip of a power greater than myself, and he was John Barleycorn. It is by a singular paradox that that conviction of hopelessness is a cornerstone of our success. It is the essence of the first step of the AA program. So I came to that point on that summer day. But this realization was not only shared by me. It was shared by another. It was shared by Lois, my good wife, who sat downstairs talking to Dr. Silkworth, and the good man went on to explain that my habit of drinking had become an obsession, almost an insanity, that guaranteed that I would go on against my will, drinking to the very end. And she said, what do you mean, doctor, by the end? And the good man had to explain that since my obsession condemned me to drink, my increasing physical sensitivity or allergy would finally condemn me to madness or death, perhaps within a year. So as we alcoholics present tonight have shared the conviction of hopelessness, so have our good wives, and mothers, and fathers, and friends. Well, leaving the hospital that time, I’m kept sober by fear for a spell, a few months. But the obsession caught me once more, November 11, 1934. And I fell to drinking again, this time alone in the kitchen at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn. I was alone because Lois was at work in the department store supporting me. Not long after that, a realization came to a friend of mine, himself a hopeless alcoholic. I had so branded him. But now he had been released, and being released, he thought of me, just as your friends in their turn have thought of you and brought this message. So presently, he’s in the kitchen at Clinton Street, sober. I hadn’t known of his being sober in New York for years. I said to him, what about a drink, Ebby? No, he said, I’m not drinking. I said, are you on the water wagon? No, I’m just not drinking today. Very curious, I questioned. I said, what’s got into you, my friend? And looking at me, he said simply and smilingly, I’ve got religion. Ah, what a jarring thought that was. I fancied that he had exchanged alcoholic insanity for religious insanity. Well, one had to be polite. I said, what brand of religion have you got? He said, I wouldn’t call it a religion at all, the religion of common sense, perhaps. I met up with a group of people, and I drew from them certain essential ideas, not peculiar at all to them, about a way of life that did the job for me. And here is what I did. I got honest with myself as never before. I talked over my personality defects with another in confidence. I visited the people I had harmed and made restitution, thereby sweeping away the debris of the past. And then I had learned of a new kind of giving, a kind of giving that demands no reward, either of money or prestige. And he said, Bill, I know that you’re a very skeptical one. This may jar you. But I found that I couldn’t make that simple program of living work until I asked God, as I understood God, to help me. Such was my friend’s story over the kitchen table. The impact on me was terrific. Why? Well, you all know, one alcoholic was talking to another. One alcoholic was carrying this message where no other person on earth could. But like many of you since, I rebelled at his concept of God. Fortunately, he didn’t try to evangelize me. He soon took his leave. He left me to think it over. And think it over I did. In no waking moment thereafter could I get the vision of his face and the sound of his voice out of my mind. Drinking on a couple of weeks, I finally said what all alcoholics here have said, in effect. I said to myself, after all, who are beggars to be chosen? Who am I to say there is no God? And if there is a great physician, perhaps I had better seek him out. I will try my friend’s simple formula. Well, I started for Towne’s Hospital. And on the way, I bought a bottle. You know, it is customary with us who are about to be cured for the last time to get terribly stewed. Arrived there, I waved the bottle over my head and shouted drunkenly at good old Dr. Silkworth, this time, doc, I’ve got something. So three or four days later, I’m not in bad shape, free now from alcohol and sedative. I’m just depressed, terribly depressed. For you see, I still rebelled a little. Then one morning, something happened. It’s happened to all the alcoholics and their families. My friend stood in the door. As you have thought, so did I. I said to myself, here is a man who practices what he preaches. You see, I hadn’t seen him for years. What was he doing up here so early on this morning? Well, again, he’s prudent. He said, well, I’ve just come to pay a visit, Bill. Sorry you’re up here. Thought I’d drop by. And he put me on such a spot that I finally had to ask him, what, my friend, is that neat little formula by which you got released, as you say, from your alcohol? Oh, yes. He said, well, it’s very simple. You just get honest with yourself, talk it out with another, make amends to people you’ve harmed, try to help somebody without getting without any demand for reward, and pray to whatever God there is. For me, it was as simple as that. And when I had done these things wholeheartedly, I was released of my obsession. It seemed to me that it was taken away from me. I don’t feel like I’m on the waterway. Soon after repeating this simple tale, he left. Then came to me the great realization of my life, the central one of it all, and the very same one which has come to each AA member here. Rebelling a little still, I sunk into a deeper and deeper depression. And in the bottom of that pit, I suppose the last trace of my obstinacy was crushed out. I was, in fact, a child crying in the dark. And I said, as you have said, now I will do anything to get well, anything to get well. God knows this is more serious than cancer. And indeed, I have a cancer of the mind, of the emotions, and of the soul. Yes, I will do anything to get well. And then, with no hope, no faith at all, I cried out, if there is a God, will he show himself? My experience was granted to me very suddenly. It seemed to me that place lit up in a great white light. In the mind’s eye, I seemed to be on a mountaintop. A great wind is blowing. And I know it is not of air, but of spirit. There are no words to describe those minutes. At length, I find myself on the bed. But now I lie in a different world. I am at one with the whole universe. A sense of presence is around and through me. And I say to myself, so this is the God of the creature. Thank God that I’m a free man. I lay there a long time in this new state. Presently, however, my modern education got busy. It began to say to me, you’re hallucinating. You had one of these emotional conversion experiences. Maybe it isn’t so. Better call in the doctor. So comes that brave and good old man, Dr. Silkwood. I tell him this story. How many skeptical men of science would have said to me, oh, Bill, you’ll feel better tomorrow. Don’t be worried about this little hallucinosis. But he didn’t say that. He listened carefully, sympathetically. Because he was a great human being. At length, he said, no, my boy, you’re not crazy. There is some subtle difference in you. I can’t put my finger on it. Some great psychic event has happened here. I have never witnessed one of these conversion experiences. But once in a blue moon, they do sober up drunk. I’ve read about them in the books. No, my boy, said the great man, you are not crazy. And whatever it is you found, you’d better hold on to it. It’s so much better than what had you only a brief hour ago. Some here will say, but I didn’t have an experience like that. My answer is, yes, you did. And yes, you have had an identical experience, in that you, too, have been enabled to do the impossible by a power greater than your own. And I fancy that had your experiences come in six minutes instead of six months or six weeks, you, too, would have seen the stars at once. So, appears another cornerstone principle in IA. Well, I was terribly impressed by the impact of this experience. Wondered why such simple principles in the hands of my friend could have produced such a powerful effect. It must have been that he somehow struck me at a deep level to unhook this obsession. That was it, one alcoholic talking to another. Then I did just what you would have done. I began frantically working with other alcoholics. Nothing happened for six months. I was preaching. When I talked about that hot flash, the drunks just tapped their heads and said, well, you know. Meanwhile, Dr. Silkworth kept insisting on emphasis upon the medical side of the picture. He said, why don’t you pound it into them, that this is a fatal progressive malady. An obsession condemns them against their will to drink. And so did Doc. And I had just begun to do this, things were looking up a little bit, when some of my relatives and friends began to say, when is this guy Bill going to go back to work and get Lois out of that damn department store? Goaded by these remarks, I began to go over to Wall Street, where I had no friends. I began to sit in brokerage shops, hoping, like McCobber, that something would turn up. And sure enough, it did. A chance acquaintance with a stranger, a business deal, I’m taken to Akron, Ohio. Looks very promising. I may even become president of a small company. Then the deal falls through with a crash. I’m alone in the hotel. My fair weather friends had gone home. Then, for the first time in months, I thought about drinking. I got frightened. I said to myself, look out. This is it. I’m walking between the church directory and the bar room at the other end of the lobby. Then another essential idea put in its appearance. I realized how much working with these other alcoholics had meant to me, though it had meant nothing to them yet. How, when I worked with others, those waves of self-pity, anxiety, and the like would magically disappear. And I thought to myself, now I need an alcoholic just as bad as he could possibly need me. I think the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was also struck. And then said to me, Bill, why don’t you come and live at our house? You could keep an eye on Dr. Bob. He could keep an eye on you. Soon I go to stay in that really hallowed household. Presently, Dr. Bob said, don’t you think we’d better be working on some drunks? I’ll call up the city hospital. He got a hold of the nurse on the receiving ward, said to her that I had come from New York as a friend, an alcoholic, who had a cure for alcoholism. She retorted, well, doctor, why don’t you try it on yourself? But he already had. Then she went on to say, well, we’ve got a wonderful case for you here, has just arrived, been here six times in the last four months, member of the city council in this town, or was, is in a terrible state. He can’t even get home from here without getting drunk. He’s just blacked the eyes of one of the nurses. We’ve now got him strapped down and full of pyraldehyde. How would that one do you, doctor? So Smithy said, fine, medicate him, and we’ll be down by and by. A little later, Dr. Bob and I saw a sight that tens of thousands of us have since seen, and God willing, hundreds of thousands of us shall still see. It was the sight of the man on the bed who didn’t know that he could get well. The man on the bed was no optimist. We told him our stories. We told him how we had been released. We told him the nature of his ailment, but he still shook his head. Said he, you fellows understand this business all right. You’ve been in the wringer, but you’re in only up to your knees. I’m in up to my neck. It’s too late. I don’t dare go out of here. We said, may we come back tomorrow? Oh, sure, he said, please do. Please do. You know how lonely this business can be, and you really do understand. Back we come on the morrow, and there we see the now familiar sight. The man’s wife is at the foot of the bed. She is saying, husband, what has got into you? You seem so different. Excitedly, he pointed to us and said, yes, there they are. They are the ones who understand. Then he told how during the night a little hope had come, and then more. And when he had resolved to follow this simple formula, it seemed as though a great weight were lifted off him, and he felt that curious sense of freedom that we all know so well. And by now, hope was swelling into a great confidence, so much so that he said, wife, fetch me my clothes. We’re going to get up and go out of here. So AA number three rose from his bed, never to drink again. That was the beginning of the first group, though, of course, we knew it not. The three of us worked on a lot of Alkeys that summer in Akron. One or two clung, but the failure was immense. I returned to New York, more humble now, more chastened, more expert. A group started here. Little by little, we grew, though failure was our daily companion. Then three years later, there came another tremendous realization. Dr. Bob and I sat talking together in his living room. It is the fall of 1937. We have got together for the first time to count up the results. Not how many failures, they were legion, but how many successes, how much dry time had elapsed on how many individuals. We added it up, and then it burst on us that something new had come into the world. A new light could be seen clearly shining upon us children of the dark. That realization brought with it a terrific responsibility. It had taken up almost three years to sober less than two score people. How could what we few knew be carried to the million who didn’t know? Even there in Akron, people were dying within gunshot of us. How could we transmit this thing? Dare we wait for it to spread painfully slowly by word of mouth? Dare we risk it being garbled, distorted? Didn’t we need hospitals, for we had discovered the hospitals didn’t want us? Didn’t we need to send some of our old timers to distant cities on a temporary subsidy to start other centers? And above all, didn’t we need some kind of literature, some kind of book? In other words, we realized for the first time the need of some sort of organized service effort. Well, we presented these ideas to a little meeting there in Akron. Many said, let’s keep it simple. If you have books, if you have missionaries, if you have hospitals, you’re going to create a professional class. You’re going to bring in money. We’re going to quarrel. It’ll break it up. Let’s not do any of these things. Let’s keep it simple, said the orthodox people of that day. But the promoter element in that meeting, plus the indifferent ones who didn’t care too much, voted to send me back to New York to raise a lot of money for this mighty enterprise to be undertaken by the 40 drunks. I thought raising money here would be a cinch, that the rich would gladly invest in the future of 40 drunks and those to come. But apparently, the rich had already had too much experience with drunks. They were not interested. Neither was the Rockefeller Foundation. One day, after a period of frustration, which always brought on an imaginary ulcer attack in me, I went to my brother-in-law. He’s a doctor. He reassured me about my ulcers. I commenced to gripe about our lack of money. Said he, why don’t you see Shirley Wynn? He shares an office with me here. He used to be health commissioner in New York. So I’m soon talking to Shirley. He said, well, you certainly have got some. If you’ve got 30 or 40 of these fellows with real time behind them, that’s something. Those fellows are tough. I really ought to know. Besides, he said, you surely need a lot of money. What about the Rockefeller Foundation? No, we’ve tried them. Then he said, I’ve got a better idea. What about Mr. John D. Rockefeller himself? This hits his every interest. Has a social aspect, medical aspect, alcohol aspect, religious aspect. You couldn’t miss. You ought to see Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Well, I said, Dr. Wynn, how about seeing the Prince of Wales? How do you get this introduction? Then and there, our destiny hung on a very slender and tenuous thread. And the thread seemed to be attached around my brother-in-law’s scalp. He commenced to scratch his head. He said, when I was a young fellow, I used to go to high school. I knew a girl. I think the girl had an uncle, an old man. He may be dead. Seems to me his name is Richardson. And as I remember it, he was somehow connected with the Rockefeller family or their charitable enterprises. Don’t you think I might call up the Rockefeller offices and find out if there is such a man, if he is alive? Well, I sense a long shot, my friend, but try it. He called up. Dear Willard Richardson, one of the greatest friends this society will ever have, immediately came on the wire. My brother-in-law told him that he had a relative working on alcoholics. There had been some success. Could we come over for a chat? And the old man said, yes, come over. And we walked right straight into Mr. John D. Rockefeller’s private offices and were soon talking with one of the closest friends that family has ever had. Well, as a fellow promoting money, I felt kind of good. It looked like we were getting close. I told the story. He was immediately interested. I had lunch with him the next week. And this eventuated in the late winter of 1937 in a meeting with some of the Akron alcoholics, some of the New York crowd, Dr. Bob, and me. And where do you think we met? In Mr. Rockefeller’s private boardroom. I felt that we were really getting warm now. In fact, somebody said that I was sitting in a chair just left by Mr. Rockefeller himself. So it looked like we were going to get next to the big money. Again, the alcoholics told their story. Again, these friends listened and were deeply impressed, though one of them drew our attention to the perils of property ownership and to the perils of professionalism and asked, isn’t this a work of goodwill, one carrying the message to another? Well, our argument was that it was still more dangerous to do nothing, that something must be done. At length, one of them, Frank Amos, still on our board of trustees, went out to Akron to see Dr. Bob and his group there, AA group number one at Akron, Ohio. He came back with a glowing report. The report was put before Mr. Rockefeller. And again, Providence intervened. Mr. Rockefeller read and reread that report. And turning to his old friend, Dick, he said, Dick, this impresses me deeply and strangely. It may be the beginning of something great. But something tells me not to give this thing money. I’m afraid, Dick, that money in any quantity would spoil it. Don’t ask me for money. And right then and there, John D. Rockefeller Jr. took a decision that probably saved Alcoholics Anonymous, one which surely did save it from professionalism and great property ownership. Well, we drunks were terribly disappointed. The mortgage was high on Smithy’s house. Lois was still in that damn department store. A lot of the drunks thought jobs fixing other drunks would be good. So did I. Well, we commenced having more meetings with these friends. We almost convinced them that Mr. Rockefeller was mistaken. We convinced them to such an extent that they created for us something known then today as the Alcoholic Foundation. At the close of the summer, at a trustees meeting, Frank Amos said, Bill, why don’t you take the two chapters of that prospective book down to Harper’s? I think they’ll be interested. I know the religious editor, Gene Axman. Soon I’m in this gentleman’s office. He reads what are now the first two chapters of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, showed immediate interest, inferred that Harper’s would advance me $1,500 in advance royalties, which by then, after our deflation, seemed like a huge sum. Well, I’m elated. I’d never tried to write anything before. He said, Mr. Wilson, could you finish a whole book like that? And I lied valiantly and said, why, of course, of course. Coming away from Harper’s, though, my spirits fell. I realized that if I used up, ate up this $1,500 while the book was being prepared, that we’d still be out of money for a long time because these were advance royalties. Besides, if the papers and magazine printed accounts of AA and we had a lot of inquiries, there’d be no money to answer those. The final thought was, should a private publisher own this book? Shouldn’t this book become the property of our society? And then the idea of publishing the book ourselves burst on us. So a friend and I went to a stationery store, bought a pad of stock certificates, began to offer them to drunks an investment in this new book. $25 par, works publishing. Have some alcoholics. It’s going to be wonderful. Well, that was my first experience in trying to pry any real money out of drunks. And you know what they said. They said, well, you fellas have got a fine nerve. Trying to sell us stock in a book not yet written? Well, the upshot of it was that we got the Reader’s Digest to promise a piece. And that convinced the alcoholics that we could sell these books by the carload. And so the shares in Works Publishing began to be sold. Some fellas contributed as little as $5 a month. Between the fall of 1938 and the spring of 1939, the very few alcoholics in this area and their friends put $4,500 into that thing. Besides that, we hooked the proprietor of Towns Hospital for $2,500 more and then went to the Reader’s Digest only to be told they decided not to print anything about it. Well, that meant that the book was broke. Lois and I were broke all right. The bank foreclosed Clinton Street. And that was the state of Alcoholics Anonymous after four years. We had 100 members, and we had this book, and we were all broke. Well, Liberty Magazine in the fall of 39 printed a piece. That moved some of the books, enabled us to keep our little office open. Next spring, Mr. Rockefeller, who we hadn’t heard of for three years, suddenly decided to give a dinner for AA, called in a lot of his important friends. Dr. Fosdick was there. Dr. Foster Kennedy was there. The alcoholics were planted at each table with the bankers. And we thought, now our money troubles are all over. But no, at the conclusion of the dinner, Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, who came in place of his father who was sick, rose and said, nothing more affecting has ever touched my father’s life. He is so glad that his friends could witness the beginning of this great and promising thing. But fortunately, gentlemen, this is a work that requires no money, whereupon about $2 billion worth of bankers got up and walked right out. Soon after, Mr. Rockefeller wrote each of them a letter, sent them a book. We sold those books to Mr. Rockefeller very cheap, too, only $1 apiece as promotion material. And he also gave them a letter in which, again, he reiterated his interest, again stated that this work required little or no money. And then he said, I am giving this society $1,000, which was something like his father giving a dime to the folks in Sunday school. And the other bankers kind of figured it up on the cuff quickly. And they said, well, if Mr. Rockefeller is giving $1,000, how much would that mean for me? So one very rich banker sent us $10. Think of that. The result of that dinner was $3,000. And each year for five years, we raised $3,000 in that fashion. And that $3,000 was divided equally between Smithy and me so we could keep going. And praise God, this movement was saved from professionalism, big property ownership, and perhaps complete dissolution, as I have described it to you. Then the Great Ten Strike came in 1941. Somebody else, not an alcoholic either, took a decision. And that was no less person than the owner of the Saturday Evening Post. The editors down there had been thinking of a piece about Alcoholics Anonymous. They had almost decided against it, too controversial, medically and religiously. Might turn out to be a cult. The drunks all might get drunk after all. Ridiculous. I believe it was Mr. Curtis Bach who was present at that meeting. And he said, gentlemen, I don’t like to interfere with editorial policy. But I myself know two of these miracles. And I am positive this thing works. And I’m positive it’s going to spread. I do hope the piece is published by the Post. Ah, what a decision for how many of us. And instantly, Jack Alexander’s piece appeared. Thousands of frantic inquiries began to descend upon our little New York office. We had become a national institution. Our word of mouth program had been translated into 12 steps, fenced into a book. And now our friends had begun to rally around us. Friends of medicine, friends of religion, and now this great friend of the press. At that moment, Alcoholics Anonymous stepped out of its infancy. After all of those inquiries swarmed into our little office from the Post article, groups began to form. You see, we had lists of alcoholics and their families in hundreds of cities. Consequently, we were able to supply traveling AAs with lists of prospects. And then we found, to our great joy, that groups could actually be formed in the mail, the so-called mail order groups. It was not long, for example, before we reached out to Hawaii and Australia, a process that has since carried us into more than 30 countries. But as these groups took shape, without any old time guidance, only by the counsel of the office and an occasional traveler, group trouble started in a big way. Then the clubs began to spring up, and their peculiar brand of trouble began to roll back on our office. Well, you know what those troubles were. Money trouble, prestige trouble, committee trouble, secretary trouble, panhandler trouble, the big bad wolves in the Little Red Riding Hood situation. Then all sorts of strange people, alcoholics with complications, began to show up. Up to that moment, we had always talked about something called the pure alcoholic. We were looking for alcoholics with no other complications. Alcoholics began to appear out of asylums and out of jails, and very queer specimens indeed turned up. And there was a long period in which we were literally frightened to death. All of the forces that bear on modern society to rend it apart settled down on us. Those forces which cluster around prestige and security and money and sex and the like. And we were afraid that we could not function as a movement, that our groups would be torn apart, that the forces which held us together would not be great enough to contain the terrific anarchy that was developing. In fact, we thought that we would actually present every community in America with a group of alcoholics who did not wish to get well. And that would really be something. Alcoholics singly are bad enough, but organized into regiments and platoons of those who did not want to get well. And we used to sit over here in the foundation office and shimmy and shiver as those mounting problems poured in, group problems of every kind. Well, those forces didn’t tear Alcoholics Anonymous apart. The forces that contain us are immensely superior to any that have yet shown up. But in this time of adolescence, we began, of course, to apply the spirit of the 12 steps of recovery to the problem of living and working together, to the problem of functioning, to the problem of serving. And this experience, beat out on thousands of anvils, began to take definite shape after a time. In a fresh set of principles, the 12 points of AA tradition, those principles that we AAs trust, with God’s help, will contain us in unity for so long as he may need us. We began to develop many principles which were entirely contrary to custom in the modern world. We ran counter to society in many, many respects. Many of our traditions are almost paradoxical. Of course, the very first one is just plain horse sense. In effect, our common welfare should come first for personal recovery depends upon unity. We knew that we had to hang together or hang separately. Then the next one has to do with the idea of a group conscience. And looking back a few years, I couldn’t imagine such a thing as a group conscience. I thought I was the conscience for this group. How well I can remember the first time the group conscience spoke to me and began to teach me. Things had been going pretty rough. We were awful broke over at Clinton Street. It was about the third year of AA. One day, old Charlie Towns up there at the hospital called me in his office. And he said, Bill, you’re helping sober up all these drunks. They’re getting good jobs. They’re getting on, but you and Lois are broke. Why don’t you come in here? Let me give you an office. Let me put you on my staff as a lay therapist. This thing actually began here in Towns Hospital. You had this funny experience of yours. I think this society will someday fill Madison Square Garden. And Bill, I’ll go further. I’ll give you a third interest in the place. Oh, that sounded awful good to Lois and me. Better to me than it did to her. I told her that night when, after a hard day’s work, she was cooking supper for the drunks at Clinton Street, the house was full of them, you remember. It sounded awful good. And I stilled the last of my fears by saying to myself, well, even the Bible says that the laborer is worthy of his hire. Then comes a little meeting down in that front parlor over at Clinton Street. I tell the meeting of this new opportunity. Finally, someone begins to speak. I now realize that he spoke for the group conscience. And he said, but Bill, that will be the beginning of a professional class. That will tie us up to a particular institution. Bill, you can’t do this thing to us. You say it’s ethical. Of course it’s ethical, perfectly ethical for you to be a lay therapist. But Bill, you can’t do this thing to us. It isn’t good enough. Aren’t you the fellow who has often told us that sometimes the good is the enemy of the best? So spoke the group conscience to me, saying, Bill, it isn’t good enough. You can’t do this to us. And thank God I listened and I obeyed. Since that time, I have been a pupil of AA and not its teacher. Then we came to have very queer ideas about membership in AA. At the beginning, scared to death, we made all sorts of membership rules, excluding undesirables. We couldn’t have the, well, we were scared. Well, we were scared. We were afraid of these people. They might tear us apart. We had so many membership rules at one time that one all listed on one piece of paper would have kept us all out if they’d been in effect at once. I remember one case in particular. At Clinton Street, a fellow sober six months, allowed to speak in a meeting for the first time, got up and said, this is all wonderful, all except this God business. And as for this God business, the hell with it. We don’t need it. And we deacons took him in a corner and said, look, Jimmy, you can’t talk that way around here. He said, is that so? Is that so? I don’t have to believe in God to belong to this. Right in the front of that book you’re putting together, it says the only requirement is an honest desire to stop drinking. I have got that honest desire. I have stopped. I got the family together. I got a job. I’m working with drunks. So am I a member or am I not? Well, he had the deacons where their hair was short. So we grudgingly admitted that he was a member. But we waited in high hope that he would soon get drunk. By and by, he accommodated us. Not a soul went to see him. And in his agony in that hotel room, he hit bottom and hit it right and hasn’t had a drink to this day and became founder of our Philadelphia group. And now we look back and say, suppose we had closed the door of the court of last resort to Jimmy. Where would he be and all those he helped and all those they have helped since? So today, you’re a member of AA if you say so, putting the ordinary social custom exactly in reverse. Nobody can keep you out. You declare yourself in. Then you remember I told you about the episode with Mr. Rockefeller. Well, we’ve come to adopt his view that this society should have no professional class, that we ought to pay our own bills. And God knows we can. The members of this society are earning $600 million a year. We have something to give to the community. Of course, we’ll pay our own bill. We had a bad time with that professional business, though. The time they hired old Tom Mulhall down at the clubhouse for janitor. We were just going to give him a free room, you know. And Tom said, ain’t you going to pay me nothing? Oh, we said, no, this is Alcoholics Anonymous, Tom. You can’t make any money out of it. Tom says, listen. He said, I think you guys have got a nerve. You want me to do seven days a week, 24 hours a day, a job that you guys can’t or won’t do. What you want is a janitor. And you ain’t willing to pay for it. And if you don’t pay me, I don’t work, see? And what has that got to do with the 12 steps, said Tom? So very painfully, we discovered that we could hire a caretaker. We could hire a secretary. We could even hire an author like me. Incidentally, folks, I got a raise recently. Every time you buy one of them books, I got you for $0.52. How do you like it? Well, then came other problems. When that foundation was set up, it took in a terrific territory. We could research. We could educate. We could do anything but lobby for prohibition. But in late years, we see that AA should stick to its single purpose, that of carrying the message face-to-face to that other alcoholic. The purpose for which we are so well-suited, the thing nobody else can do, that thing we should do and do supremely well, instead of many things badly. So that we have decided that AA shall have only one sole aim. We cannot make alliances. We cannot give endorsements. We cannot loan out the AA name, even to the best of enterprises, so that they may have publicity and raise money on our credit. That would be to divert us from our aim, to confuse us, and finally, to make it possible to attach the name Alcoholics Anonymous to all sorts of controversial situations. I know a fellow came in the office one time, said he got a job working for one of the liquor associations. I can be an educator. I said, what kind of education? Well, he said they want to teach people that too much grog is bad for everybody, and that these drunks shouldn’t drink at all. I said, fine, why don’t you hire out? Much surprised, he said, I thought you were against education. I said, on the contrary, I’m very much for it. But what I want to know is this. Do they just want to hire you? He said, what do you mean? Well, I said, do they want something else? Or do they just want you because you’re a good publicist, because you had the drinking experience? Well, come to find out, they wanted to be able to state in all their publicity that Mr. Joe Bloke of Alcoholics Anonymous heads up our program of education, which would mean that in a subtle way, the AA name would be transferred over into a controversial area. I said to my friend, are you going to take the job? You know, in AA, we have no rules, laws, regulations. We only have a tradition. He said, of course I’m not going to take the job. If I took a job like that, pretty soon some screwball would hire out to the Anti-Saloon League for their brand of education, and then the fat would be in the fire, and Alcoholics Anonymous would be right in the middle of that controversy. Of course I’m not going to. And that’s why, as much as we would like, we cannot loan out the AA name, give endorsements, or finance other causes. Like shoemakers, we had better stick to our last. So that much is decided. We are also certain that as much as we quarrel about things that don’t matter too much, we may never quarrel about religion, politics, or reform. Because those are the issues that are dividing the modern world. And thank God, ever since this thing began, I haven’t heard a really angry religious or political argument. Today in Ireland, where politics and religion are terrific issues, Alcoholics Anonymous is the only friendly, really friendly roof on which people of those opposing parties can meet. So it must always be with us, or else we may really perish one day. And then we’ve developed very strange ideas about public relations. You and I love this good old American tradition. You and I love to stand before statues of Lee, Lincoln, Washington. We revere those people. That’s not a bad trait in us. But in late years, this country is really carrying that a little far, perhaps. Today, everything in America is transacted on big names, big ballyhoo, big personal publicity, strutting public characters, and sometimes strutting public villains. Now, we know that for a society like ours, such things cannot be. For us, weak people that we still are, that would be the road to ruin. So we are firmly convinced that all of us, everyone, should be personally anonymous at the general assembly at the general public level, meaning by that the level of the press, the radio, the television, and motion pictures, so that we don’t create those public figures, so that we have a standing guarantee that with us, principle shall always come ahead of personality. And that very policy of anonymity at the public level, I dare say, has brought this society millions of words of freely given publicity, which has carried this message to others. Every reporter who enters here knows that no one wants anything personal. He is pleasantly refreshed that here is a society which, indeed, does really place principles before people. And anonymity is the guarantor of that. Indeed, I am beginning to fear that the reputation of this society is far better than its actual character, but we don’t tell the reporters that. Yes, and we see in this anonymity a key to our whole tradition, a token of our group humility. It is the cornerstone of them all. Years later, I sat in a projection room. The March of Time was making a picture about Alcoholics Anonymous, a 15-minute job. The vice president of the company said to me, do you realize that this will be shown to 12 million people? And three times during that film, the book Alcoholics Anonymous was held up to view, and it said Alcoholics Anonymous, period. I thought to myself, if I had my name on that book, would the March of Time be displaying this society to 12 million people? Of course not. How fortunate. Oh, thank God that I did obey the group conscience. So it was that we evolved the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous during that exciting time of our adolescence. That time, I think, came to an end with our international convention at Cleveland last summer, 1950. As Jack Alexander’s article marked the end of our infancy, so did we emerge from our adolescence at the Cleveland Convention. For then and there, 7,000 of us reviewed our 12 points of AA tradition. We asked ourselves, is this the platform on which we are going to stand? Are these really the principles that will contain our society and unity? Do we dare commit our future to this platform? And the answer was a great and affirmative yes. These are the principles on which we shall stand. And right then and there, I believe, we entered maturity and we took our destiny by the hand. Now, during infancy and adolescence, there was another great idea at work. It was the idea of service and the idea of services. None know better than we that faith without works is dead. If the drunk will stay in one piece, if the drunk will stay in one piece, he not only must believe, he must act, and he must keep acting. He has to get sober and stay sober and function as a going concern. The same is true of the AA group itself. Unless it carries out its primary purpose, carries its message to the other alcoholic, unless it conforms to these traditional principles within reason, it too, we well know, can wither and die. But when we think of AA as a whole, we are not always so clear as that. We have not yet begun to realize how necessary it is for AA as a whole to function, else it too might sometime die. We have the naive notion that if we get sober, if we do some 12-step work, if we attend a group meeting or two every month or oftener, then we have done our duty, we have played our part. And as for Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole, well, God is taking care of that. Well, that notion is almost as naive and mistaken as would be the idea that God will not only provide us with forests, but he will also saw lumber and build houses. All these years, AA has functioned as a whole because of a cluster of services surrounding that original empty foundation we created back there in 1938. And you saw how independently of it, we Alkies here, with the help of stories from Akron, financed and put that book on the map as works publishing. I didn’t tell you that later all those shares were given to the foundation so that your trustees have been holding one of your principal service tools in trust for you all these years. Then when those inquiries came in by the thousands, somebody had to answer those. And we wrote out to you and said, won’t you help us? We’ll make the arrangements. If you’ll send us just a dollar a piece a year, it’ll do the job. And incidentally, it still will if everybody would send it a dollar a piece a year. So we helped to spread this movement. Then when group problems came in tremendous numbers, the foundation office retailed experience from the older areas to the new and growing groups, even on very distant beachheads, and has been doing it ever since. The reach of that foundation and that book is very long. A couple of years ago, a couple of prospectors went into the northern wilds, two of them, both of them drunk. They went on an awful tear, and the fire went out. They almost perished of cold. And when the fires were rebuilt, they found in an old oil drum a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, our courier under the northern lights. And one of them got sober. I guess he was the fellow who started the group up there that has the Eskimos in it. Then we found, too, that AA had to have a public relations policy. Could anybody rush to a microphone, to a radio station, or into print in a national periodical? Lord, how we used to shiver about that. Years ago, down in Florida, a well-meaning but power-driven Alki went on the radio with 30,000 people on the radio with 13 lectures about Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous plus his ideas plus some high-power evangelism. He actually brought in a few Alkis. It was a good job. Soon he was writing up to us and saying, well, I just got a contract with the Gulf Life Insurance Company. I’m going to give my 13 lectures to all America over a national hookup. And he wasn’t going to keep his anonymity either. He sent up the 13 lectures. And from the AA point of view, they really weren’t too good. They wouldn’t have properly represented us. Had they been put on, the drunks would have been very angry indeed. So the office writes down in its diplomatic way and said, well, shouldn’t you consult about this? Shouldn’t these scripts be changed around? Should you break your anonymity? And the drunk wrote back and said, the hell with the board of trustees. Boy, that scared the daylights out of us. Could anybody do that any time to us? Or did this movement need to have a little bit of control over its own relations with the public? And so with the million who didn’t yet know. A very serious question. Well, that particular situation was solved by drawing his attention to the fact that not only did he have the right of free speech, but that a couple of thousand AA members might be encouraged to write his sponsor and his life insurance company what they really thought about the lousy program. And that killed that one off. But we then wrote out to your groups and said, will you authorize these trustees to look after these things for you? And they have been doing these things unseen and quietly all these years. You just read a swell piece in Fortune magazine about AA. I’m sure you liked it. But very few here would know that your office spent many, many hours with the author of that piece. Spent some of your money in long distance telephones to Florida. Had several consultations with the members of Fortune staff. All to be sure that that piece took in the territory that it should. All to be sure that it represented AA rightly. And the difference between right representation and poor or wrong representation is spelled out in live. So that today here in our board of trustees, we have the custody of your money, your public relations, your principal literature, your propagation, your mediation of group problems, your correspondence with loan members, your translations making AA available in foreign lands. AA functioning as a whole. A few years ago, it was realized that an isolated board of trustees couldn’t carry on for the longer future. Because when some of us old timers went, the link between them and you would go. And then one single blunder, one public relations error, one movement problem too hot to handle, and we’d get a collapse right here in the middle. Right in the middle of our service structure. So therefore, we saw that we had to build many links out to the movement. Links which would not be perishable like Dr. Bob and me. We saw that your representatives would have to come down here and help look after your service affairs. Otherwise, the million who didn’t know could really suffer. Last summer, Lois and I were in England. There, AA is no better known than it was here 12 or 14 years ago. They have only a couple of medical friends. The press still won’t print anything much about them. Only the Financial Chronicle will accept a paid ad that Alcoholics Anonymous is in business in London. Why the Financial Chronicle, I wouldn’t know. The Church of England, so helpful to us here, is still indifferent over there. Now, supposing we had a breakdown some fine day right in the middle of this thing. We had a movement problem and no way to solve it. No way to hear the collective conscience of Alcoholics Anonymous. What do you suppose it would do to AA in England? Well, I know it would slow it up. It wouldn’t stop it, but it would grievously retard it five years, maybe 10 years, and so on throughout the world. And I ask you, dear AAs, supposing that AA had arrived five or 10 years late for you. That is what the continuance of these services here mean. Your foundation, your office, and your grapevine, they have to go on so that AA can function as a whole. And this General Service Conference you’ve been hearing about is just a state and provincial representation gathering yearly with our trustees so that those services will go on. In other words, we’re now saying, you’ve grown up. Come and look after your own business. Come and maintain your lifelines to the million who don’t know. And that is what led to this whole idea of a legacy of service, because we realized that we must function, or wither, and maybe die. So before Dr. Bob passed away, a pamphlet was prepared called The Third Legacy, in which we offered to you this whole ideal of service and these services clustering around the foundation in particular. In conclusion, then, I will read you an excerpt or two from that document and conclude with a reading of the actual legacy itself. Suppose, then, all these years we had been without those services. Where would we be today minus the AA book and our standard literature, which now pours out of AA headquarters at the rate of eight tons a month? Supposing our public relations had been left to thoughtless chance. Suppose no one had been assigned to encourage good publicity and discourage the bad. Suppose no accurate information about AA had been available. Imagine our vital and delicate relations with medicine and religion left to pot luck. As a matter of fact, almost every religious denomination has endorsed AA. Great medical associations, such as New York State Medical, American Psychiatric, have heard papers read by us laymen. It can’t be supposed that was an accident. Somebody has been looking after these things. Then, too, where would thousands of AAs be today if the office hadn’t answered their frantic letters and referred them toward help? In what shape would hundreds of distant groups now be if that office hadn’t started them by mail or directed travelers to them? How could we have managed without a world group directory? What about those foreign groups in 28 countries clamoring for translations, proved experience, and encouragement? Would we be publishing the book at Oslo, Norway, and London, England? What of those lone members on high seas or in far corners of the earth, those prisoners, those asylum inmates, those veterans in service or in hospital? Where might we one day be if we never had the grapevine, our mirror of AA life, and principal forum of written expression? How grateful we are for those secretaries, editors, and friendly trustees who have stood sentinel all these years over our principal affairs. Without these things, where would we be? You must have guessed it. We’d be nowhere, that’s sure. So it is by the steps we have recovered, by the traditions we have unified, and by our headquarters services, we have been able to function as a society. Why not leave well enough alone? Some may still say, of course, the foundation should go on. Certainly, we’ll pay that small expense. But why can’t we leave its conduct to Dr. Bob and Bill and their friends, the trustees? We always have. Why do they not bother us with such business? Let’s keep AA simple. Good questions, these. But today, the answers are quite different than they once were. Let’s face these facts. First, Dr. Bob and Bill are perishable. They can’t last forever. Second, their friends, the trustees, are almost unknown to the AA movement. Third, in future years, our trustees couldn’t possibly function. Without direct guidance from AA itself, somebody must advise them. Somebody or something must take the place of Dr. Bob and Bill. Fourth, Alcoholics Anonymous is out of its infancy. Grown up, adult now, it has the full right and plain duty to take direct responsibility for its own headquarters. Fifth, clearly then, unless the foundation is firmly anchored through state and provincial representatives to the movement it serves, a headquarters breakdown will someday be inevitable. When its old timers vanish, an isolated foundation couldn’t survive one grave mistake or serious controversy. Any storm could blow it down. Its revival wouldn’t be simple. Possibly, it could never be revived. Like a fine car without gasoline, it would be helpless. Hence, our legacy of service, and here it is. We, who are the older members of AA, bequeath to you who are younger these three legacies, the 12 steps of recovery, the 12 traditions, and now the general services of Alcoholics Anonymous. Two of these legacies have long been in your keeping. By the 12 steps, we have recovered. By the traditions, we are achieving a fine unity. Being someday perishable, Dr. Bob and I now wish to deliver to the members of AA their third legacy. Since 1938, we and our friends have been holding it in trust. This legacy is the general headquarters of AA, the foundation, the book, the grapevine, your general office. These are the principal services which have enabled our society to function and to grow. Acting on behalf of all, Dr. Bob and I ask that you, the members of AA, assume guidance of these services and guard them well. The future growth, indeed the survival of Alcoholics Anonymous, may one day depend on how prudently these arms of service are administered in the years to come. So there is your third legacy of service. And with me, I am sure that you now clearly vision that our cathedral of the spirit is approaching completion in its main outlines. On its great floor, we see the 12 steps of recovery inscribed. You and I have seen its sidewalls go up, now firmly buttressed by our 12 traditions. Now, clearly, we see that the spire is there in place. And we know the name of that spire to be service, a beacon to the million who do not yet know. And may its symbolic finger ever point straight upward toward God. Thank you.