Why did they leave us in this dilemma? Why did they not give us a chance to look after our own business? Why did they not build some links between the board of trustees and us, the members? Yes, those would have been very legitimate and stark questions. So the realization and decision came that the services at the top level for, for the benefit of the whole, and especially to the millions yet to come, would have to be linked directly to the members of AA. And we are one of the links so vital in this chain of links. So our delegates from each area, each state, each province in North America elected by assemblies could come to New York, sit down with a board of trustees and our office staff each year and act as a guide to them. Then in turn, our delegates could come home and say to all of us, "Yes, I have been there, and I know, and I've seen, and I've felt that AA is worth its salt. AA is worth its money. Let's support not only lovingly and willingly and financially." Such a cross-section of AA that can and does give this movement an honest opinion of itself based on realizations, decisions, but above all, more important, actual experiences. A cross-section that can and does advise the trustees and staff, or in other words, somebody or something that could take the place of Dr. Bob and Bill. So the realization that we had begun to grow up became evident. And so it became a-apparent that we should come in possession of all of our assets, our money, our book, our literature, our services, our way of sobriety, our way of life, our public relations, our principal magazine, and our office of mediation and propagation. All of these things, leaving nothing held back, were turned over to us, the members of Alcoholics Anonymous. So Bill and Dr. Bob prepared something called the Third Legacy. Oh, what a realization and decision that was. The legacy of service, and in general, in particular, those legacies of services that cluster around the structure around our general service office. And in the opening paragraph of the old Third Legacy pamphlet, now known, now known as the AA Service Manual, Bill writes, quote, "We, who are the older members of AA, bequeath to you, who are younger, these three legacies: the Twelve Steps of Recovery, the Twelve Traditions, and now the general services of Alcoholics Anonymous. Two of these legacies have long been in your keeping. By the Twelve Steps, we are recovered. By the Twelve Tradi- Traditions, we are achieving a supreme 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 services headquarters of Alcoholics Anonymous, the foundation, the AA book, the grapevine, and the AA general office. These are the principal services which have enabled our society to function and to grow. So acting on behalf of all, Dr. Bob and myself ask that you, the members of AA, assume guidance of these services and guard them well." And, folks, guard them well, because it has given us life. We cannot afford the price to start anything in AA that would start to erode that by being bombarded by these so-called experts in every kind of treatment field in the world telling you that AA is old-fashioned today, that it needs to be changed. Well, since when is it old-fashioned to be sober and to be happy and to have a heck of a lot of fun and to be able to live in this world as a reasonable, decent human being? Baby, if that's old-fashioned, I need more of it, and so do you. Because, you see, the future growth, perhaps the very survival of Alcoholics Anonymous, may one day depend on how prudently these arms of services are administered in the years to come. So now, my fellow members, is our third and last legacy. Our cathedral of the spirit is now completed, and today we're just simply the maintenance crew, because on its great floors we can see inscribed the Twelve Steps of Recovery. Alway– Already hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands have stood, are standing, and may we be joined by millions more. And now we can see its sidewalls now buttressed by our Twelve Traditions, which we hope will contain this beloved society of ours in unity for so long as God may need us. And now we can see that the spiral has been affixed to our cathedral, and our, and our, uh, and the spiral of our cathedral of the spirit we now call the Spiral of Service, a beacon to the millions who do not know, and may its symbolic finger ever point straight towards God, and for that we are truly responsible. Thank you. Let's have about a 15-minute break, and then we'll get into session. A question, uh, by some of the, uh, members that are here this morning, and they want to know how long I have been sober. Well, only because of God's grace through the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, uh, I have not found it necessary to, nor have I taken a drink of an alcoholic nature since April the 20th, 1967. And for that, I am so thankful. So that tells you that. Uh, now we will talk about, and we'll have some fun, about the history and the writing of the book, good old book, Alcoholics Anonymous. And basically, in getting the book together and getting this together, it's just simply a series of stories of actual experiences in writing the good old book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, the talking about writing a book first started in the living room of Bob and Anne Smith in Akron. Bill had landed in Akron in the summer of 1935. A little group got started, and Bill helped Dr. Bob briefly with it. And they went on to found, and Dr. Bob and a drunk or two went on to found the first AA group in the world. Although in those days, it was not called Alcoholics Anonymous. But it is a group as we are familiar with in AA today. And, uh, as it was, with new groups, it was nearly all failure. But now and then, somebody would see the light, and there was progress. Bill went back to New York with a little experience, and a group started in New York City. And by the time 1937 rolled around, AA had spread, uh, over into Cleveland and began to move south from New York City. But it was still, in those days or years, more or less flying blind. A flickering candle indeed that at any moment could be snuffed out. So on a late fall afternoon in 1937 in Akron, Dr. Bob and Bill were talking together in Dr. Bob's living room, and they began to count sober noses. How many people had stayed dry in Akron and in New York and maybe a few in Cleveland? How many had stayed dry and for how long? And when all this was totaled up, sure, it was just a handful, 35 or 40 maybe. But enough time had elapsed on enough really fatal cases of alcoholism so that when Bill and Bob grasped the impact of those small statistics, both Bill and Bob saw for the first time in their lives that this thing was going to succeed. That God in His providence and mercy had thrown a new light into the dark caves and tunnels where our kind had been and were living and by the millions existing. And even today, there are still millions of alcoholics in this world who have never heard of AA, don't know anything about AA, and there ain't enough beds in them goony roost and treatment facilities to handle the drunks. And if you'll read our latest survey, it's still the greatest percentage that come to AA. You have to remember that alcohol is the greatest 12-stepper that Alcoholics Anonymous has known or ever will know. And they're still, the greatest percentage are still coming to us directly or either by referral from a minister, a physician, or another member of AA. And so Bill became and Bob became thrilled when they looked over those statistics, and they started, began talking and reflecting. That even though there were a couple of score of sober members, it had taken three long years. Sure, there'd been a lot of failures, but it still had taken three long years to sober up only a handful. Now, how could this handful carry its message to all of those who still did not know? After all, not all the drunks in the world could, uh, could come to Akron or New York. So how could they transmit this message to the drunks, and by what means? Well, Bill and Bob thought that maybe they should go to the old-timers in the group. Well, in those days, everybody was an old-timer. A drunk would come in, get sober. He's sober two days. A new one would come in. The one sober two days would be the new one's sponsor. Then the sponsor would get drunk, and the new one, three days later, would be his old sponsor's sponsor again. So that's the way it goes. And everybody was an old-timer. And I believe that one of the reasons that Bill and Bob were so successful is they didn't have some old-timer looking over their shoulder telling them what they're doing wrong all the time, you know. And so everybody was an old-timer. Uh, and then, and, you know, and then also find a sum of money, somebody else's money, and say to them, "Now, take a year off your job," if you had one. Well, none of them had a job except Bob. "And you go to all parts of the country during this year and get groups started." Hospitals in those days were not too happy with drunks because in those days, you used to sneak a drunk in and put him up there for gastrointestinal problems. And they'd lock him up there with all the rest of the, the patients, you know. And the old drunk, he'd be laying in a bed, and he'd hop out of the bed 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and have on one of them kimonos, you know. I mean, real short, you know. Come down between his hips and his knees with two ties in the back, and he'd slip his feet in them paper shoes. And he'd go down the hall doing that Thorazine shuffle that they do and screaming, "Hey, nurse." And that was hard, and he'd set fire to the bed, and they'd drink the rubbing alcohol and all that other kind of stuff. And it was hard on the heart patients and hard on the regular medical patients. And so drunks, you know, and they were such unloving creatures. So then, therefore, they're going to have to have a great chain of hospitals, sort of like chain, uh, you know, drug stores, chain grocery stores, chain department stores, because back in those days in the 30s, the chain stores were the only ones making any money. So why not have a chain of drunk tanks? And then they could really make the money. So they decided they're going to have to have some missionaries to carry this message, subsidized, of course, by a chain of drunk tanks. Now, Bill, being the Wall Street promoter, was far more insistent about those two needs than was Dr. Bob. And after all, it would take a lot of money to finance all this. And after all, with this brand new light shining in, in the dark world, all they would have to do is, is they'd squirt it in the eyes of the rich and they would kick in the money. And also, they reflected, they would have to get a stand or some kind of literature. But now, up to this moment, not a syllable, not a single word of this program was in writing. It was a sort of word by mouth deal with variations according to each man's fancy. In a general way, this was the pitch. Well, if booze has got you down, then you've got an allergy and an obsession and you're hopeless. And if you are, you better get honest with yourself and take stock and you ought to talk this thing out with somebody in confidence. Now, I like that. And you ought to make restitution for the harms you did and you ought to make amends. And then you prayed the best you could according to your belief if you had any belief. And that was the sum of the word of mouth program up to that time. Now, variations of that had already appearing. And so Bill and Bob figured, how could we unify this thing? Could they, out of their experience, get certain principles, describe certain methods that had done the job for them? So it became obvious that if this movement was to propagate, it had to have literature. So its message could not be garbled either by the drunks or by the general public. And believe it or not, the greatest challenge that we have within Alcoholics Anonymous today is that there are hundreds of thousands of our members who do not know what Alcoholics Anonymous is not. And that's the purpose of the book. So, and our literature. So our message is not garbled. Now, so they decided they had to have a missionary, chain of drunk tanks, and a book. And at that early date, both Bill and Dr. Bob began to learn that they were not the government of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bob, perhaps more than Bill, already realized that the conscience of the group or the opinion of the group, when it was an informed opinion in the group's best interest, it could be better than both Dr. Bob and Bill's. So they thought they had better consult some people. Now, there was a non-alcoholic by the name of T. Henry Williams and his wife. They let the Akron bunch meet in their home. So a meeting was called on a, of the Akron group, that is those that had been sober any length of time. They managed to scrape up about 18. And Bill and Bob told them that they were within sight of success, that they thought that this deal would go on and on and on, that a new light was shining in their dark world. But how could this light be transmitted without being distorted and garbled? At this point, the meeting was turned over to Bill. And being a salesman and a promoter, he set right down to work about getting the chain of drunk tanks and subsidies for the missionaries. And he touched on the book. And the group conscience was consisted of 18 men were darn skeptical about it all. Almost with one word, they shouted, "Let's keep it simple. This is going to bring money to this thing. This is going to create a professional class and we will all be ruined." Bill countered by admitting that their arguments had merit, but he also reminded them that alcoholics were dying like flies and how were they going to carry this message to others? He reminded them that they had to take some kind of chances. He said, "We can't keep it so simple that it will become an anarchy and thus get complicated. We cannot keep it so simple that it will not propagate itself. And then we have, have to have a lot of money to do these things." And after Bill had exerted his cunning to his utmost, they finally got a vote in that meeting and a close vote at that by just a majority of two or three. And the meeting then said to Bill with some reluctance, "Well, if we need a lot of money, you better go back to New York where there's plenty of it and you raise it." Well, that's just exactly what Bill wanted to hear. Just what he'd been waiting for. So he scrammed back to the Big Apple and he began to approach some people with money and to describe this tremendous thing that had happened, but it did not seem so tremendous to people with money at all. "Why?" they said, "35 or 40 drunks sobered up. Why, they've been sobered up before. And you know, and besides, Mr. Wilson," they told him, "don't you think it's kind of like sweeping up the crumbs? Wouldn't something for the Red Cross or the Salvation Army be better?" And with all of Bill's cunning, he got one heck of a freeze from the gentleman with money. Now, things were rough in New York. They were starving to death on Clinton Street. Drunks were eating the Wilsons out of house and home because in those days they never charged anybody for anything. So Lois was making the only money and Bill was being the missionary and the drunks were eating the meals. And so this couldn't go on. But Bill kept plugging away to get them drunk tanks. And he said, "We've got to have those missionaries and we've got to have a book." One morning, Bill called on his brother-in-law, a physician by the name of Dr. Leonard Strong. And Bill began to bellyache about those rich guys wouldn't give him any money. This great and glorious enterprise that was well on its way. It seemed, however, that Dr. Strong, when he was going to high school Met a gal, and it was kind of a, sort of a girlfriend. And she had an uncle, and that uncle was tied up with the Rockefeller family and their charity. And he asked Bill, he said, "Bill, if you want me to, let's call up the Rockefeller offices and see if there's such a man. And if he is there, is he still alive, and will he see us?" Well, Bill hadn't tried the Rockefeller offices yet, so they agreed to give him a ring. Oh, and what, oh, on what slender threads our destiny sometimes hang. Remember, Bill's brother-in-law said he had a sort of a girlfriend in high school, and she had an uncle. So the call was made, and a voice came on the wire, the voice of Mr. Willard Richardson, one of the loveliest gentlemen that Bill and Alcoholics Anonymous would ever know. And the moment he recognized, uh, Bill's brother-in-law's voice, he says, "Why, Leonard, where have you been all these years?" And after a few exchanges, Dr. Frong explained to Mr. Richardson that he had a brother-in-law who was having success in sobering up drunks, and could the two of them come over to see him? "Sure," said Mr. Richardson. "Come right over." So they went over to the Rockefeller Plaza and right into Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s personal offices and asked to see Mr. Richardson. And after meeting Mr. Richardson, Bill sat down and told him about their exciting discovery, this terrific cure for alcoholism that had just hit the world, how it works and what they had done. This was the first receptive man with money or access to money, and above all, perhaps Mr. Rockefeller Jr.'s best personal friend. And so he said, "Why, yes." He was much interested. Then he asked Bill to have lunch with him, and for a rising promoter, Bill thought things were looking up. During lunch, they would go over the deal again, and after lunch, he asked Bill if he would like to have a larger meeting with some of Mr. Richardson's and Mr. Rockefeller's friends. He said, "There is Mr. Frank Amos. He's in the advertising business, and he was on the committee that recommended Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. to drop the prohibition business. And then there's Mr. Leroy Chipman. He looked after all the Rockefeller real estate. And then there's Mr. Scott, chairman of the board of the Riverside Church, and a number of people like that." And Mr. Richardson said he believed that they would like to hear the story. And so on a winter's night in December, um, in, in late 1937, a meeting was held. Called in posthaste for this meeting a couple of drunks and Dr. Bob from Akron. Bill came in with a New York bunch, four or five. The meeting was held in John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s personal boardroom, and Bill really got excited when he was told that he was sitting in a chair just vacated by Mr. Rockefeller, and Bill could just feel that money coming right up into his hip pocket. Dr. Silkworth was also there, and he testified what he had seen happen. And each drunk, thinking of nothing better to say, each told their story of their drinking, of what it used to be like, what happened, and what it is, was like for them today. And still today in Alcoholics Anonymous, there is nothing better than any of us have to say as our own personal stories of what it used to be like, what happened, and how it is today. And that is where the format started. Yeah. It don't take a genius to do those things, you know? And so, the, and as a result, uh, after seeing that these good new friends were interested, Bill immediately started putting on the big touch by bringing up the subject of drunk tanks, and subsidized missionaries, and this question of a book or literature. Well, God moves in mysterious ways and has wonders to perform, but it certainly did not look like a wonder to Bill when Mr. Scott, head of a large engineering firm and chairman of the Riverside Church, looked at this bunch of drunks and said, "But, gentlemen, up to this point, this has been the work of goodwill only. No buildings, no property, no paid people, just one carrying the good news to the next. Is that not true?" And that's where he dropped his bombshell, and he said, "And may it not be that this is where the great power of your society lies?" And believe it or not, that is where the great power lies, one drunk talking to another. Then he said, "Now, if we subsidize this, might it not alter its whole character? Now, we want to do all we can. We're gathered here for that. But would it be wise?" Then all the drunks gave Mr. Scott the rush and said, "There are only 40 of us, and it's taken three long years just to get 40 sober. Why, millions will rot before this thing gets to them, unless we have money and a lots of it." So one of the businessmen volunteered to investigate them very carefully. And since poor old Dr. Bob was harder up at that time than Bill, and since the first group was in a typical community situation in Akron, the drunks directed that that businessman, his attention out there. And Frank Amos, who later became a trustee on the old Alcoholic Foundation, at his own expense, went out to Akron, made all the inquiries about Dr. Bob. All the reports were good, except that he was a drunk who recently had gotten over it. He visited the little meeting out there. He went to the Smiths' home, and he came back with what he thought was a very modest, modest project. And he recommended that they could recommend a token amount of money at first, $50,000. And that would clear off the mortgage on Dr. Bob's home, would get the drunks in Akron a little rehabilitation place, put Dr. Bob in charge, subsidize a few of those people, start a chain of hospitals, get some subsidized missionaries, and then get busy on the book. However, Mr. Richardson took that report into John D. Jr.'s office to Mr. Jr., who read the book and told Mr. Richardson, "Somehow, I'm strangely stirred by all this. This interests me immensely." And then he dropped his bombshell. "But isn't money going to spoil this thing? I'm terribly afraid that it would, and yet I am so strangely stirred by it." The next turning point in our destiny came when that man whose business was giving away money said to Mr. Willard Richardson, "No, I will not be the one to spoil this thing with money. You say these men who are heading it are strapped for cash. I'll put $5,000 in the Riverside Church treasure. You folks can form yourself into a committee in drawing it as you like, but please do not ask me for any more." And the committee that they formed was the old Alcoholic Association, which later evolved, as I said before, the Alcoholic Foundation, which was later renamed the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. That committee was formed to look over that 5,000 bucks. But he said, "But please do not ask me for any more. But I want to hear what goes on." Well, the 50,000 had shrunk to 5,000. The drunks paid the mortgage on Dr. Bob's house. That took about 3,000. That left 2,000. And Bill and Dr. Bob started eating away on that, and what are they going to do now? You notice none of them ever thought about going to work. Well, they had more meetings with their newfound friends, Amos Richardson, Scott Chipman, and those fellows who stuck with the drunks from then on. And in spite of Mr. Rockefeller's advice, the drunks again tried to convince their new friends that this thing needed a lot of money. So one of them proposed that they, uh, form a foundation, something like the Rockefeller Foundation. So one of them got a free lawyer from one of the most prestigious law firms in the world in those days, from Elihu Root's firm, who was interested in this thing. And the drunks asked him to draw up an agreement of trust or a charter for something to be called the Alcoholic Foundation. Now, why they picked that name, Bill didn't even know. They didn't know whether the foundation was alcoholic or whether it had alcoholics in the foundation. And so none of them knew. The lawyer, however, was very much confused because in the meeting in which the foundation was formed, the drunks made it very plain that the drunks did not wish to be in a majority. And they felt that there should be non-alcoholics on the board, and they ought to be in a majority of one. Now, you know, drunks ain't no fools. The reason they wanted the non-alcoholics to be in the majority, so in case all of the drunks that were on the board got drunk, they would still have a quorum, could have a legal board meeting. convention. And it's real interesting about that. The first president of the old Alcoholic Foundation was an alcoholic, and his name was Bill Rudon, and he got drunk. So they kicked him off. The next president was Harry Britt, an alcoholic, and he got drunk, and they kicked him off. And since that time, there has been no president or chairman of the Alcoholic– of the General Service Board or Alcoholic Foundation that was an alcoholic. They have all been non-alcoholics ever since then. Yeah. Now, it doesn't mean that they can't. It's in the provisions that they can. And so, and so they wanted more. "Well, sure," said the lawyer, "but what is the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic?" Well, there's always a smart drunk running around said, "Well, that's a cinch. A non-alcoholic is a guy who can drink alcohol, and an alcoholic is a guy who can't drink alcohol." "Well," said the lawyer, "how do we state that legally?" Well, no one said they knew. Well, if you'd like to read and find out how it's stated legally, just read the bylaws of the General Service Board in the service manual, and they have two types of trustees, Class A, non-alcoholic, and Class B, alcoholic, and legally, those who can safely partake the use of alcoholic beverages and those who can't. And it's in, it's legal, and that's the way it's stated legally. So at length, they had a foundation aboard, which then consisted of about seven, consisting of four of their new friends and some of the drunks. And Dr. Bob went on the board. But Bill sort of coldly stayed off, thinking that it would be more convenient to get later on. And so with this new foundation formed with the idea of needing a lot of money, the drunks started again to solicit money from the very rich. Now, they had a list of them in conventions and letters from friends of Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr., and even if the Rockefellers and his friends didn't know them, they just added names to it, you know? And so, uh, and, and then they said, "How can we miss?" they asked themselves. So that foundation had been formed in the spring of nineteen thirty-eight, and all summer long, the drunks solicited the rich. Well, they were either in Florida or in Africa or Hawaii or in Canada, or they preferred the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and some thought the drunks were disgusting, and they did not get one darn cent in the whole summer of nineteen thirty-eight. Thank God. In the meantime, they began to hold trustee meetings, and they were commiseration sessions on getting no money. What with the mortgage and Bill and Dr. Bob and eating away at it and the five thousand about gone, here they were. They were all broke again. And Dr. Smith had trouble getting his practice back because patients were a little leery about being carved up by an alcoholic surgeon, even if he was three years sober. Things were tough all over. Isn't it utterly amazing about our two co-founders, Bill, a busted, conning stockbroker, and Dr. Bob, a rear-end surgeon? But Dr. Bob did realize that he was operating on drunks' brains. You see, our kind, we're wired backwards. Our brains is in our rear end, and our rear end is in our head. That's the precise reason we can't sit in a meeting more than an hour. We wear our brains out. And so as a result of it, then they didn't get no money. And, um, uh, and as a result, uh, well, what are they going to do? So one day in August nineteen thirty-eight, Bill produced at a foundation meeting a couple of chapters of a proposed book in rough and in mimeograph. As a matter of fact, they had been using those two chapters of the proposed book, along with some recommendations from some physicians, and they took it down to Johns Hopkins Medical School to try to, and let there get their okay and someone write a letter, and then they could use it for credentials to put the bite on the rich. Then Frank Amos said, "I know the religious editor down there at Harper's. Why don't you take the two book chapters down to Harper's to Mr. Gene Axtman, your story, Bill, and the introduction of the book, and see what he thinks about it?" And to Bill's surprise, Mr. Axtman, who became a great friend of ours, looked at the chapters and asked Bill if he could write a whole book by that, and Bill didn't even bat an eye. He says, "Why, sure, it's easy," you know? Well, Mr. Axtman took the two chapters into Mr. Canfield's office. Another meeting was held, and the result was that Harper's intimated that they would pay Bill, as a budding author, fifteen hundred dollars in advance royalties, which would bring in enough money for Bill to finish the book. At first, Bill felt elated about it, and then after a while, he didn't feel so good about it because Bill began to reason, and so did the other boys. Well, if this guy Wilson eats up the fifteen hundred bucks while he's doing the book, after the book gets out, it'll take a long time to catch up. And if this thing gets all the publicity that Bill says it's going to get, what are we going to do about answering of the inquiries? And after all, what is a lousy ten percent royalty anyway? Then they thought, too, even though Harper's was a fine publisher, if this book, if and when done, should prove to be the main textbook of Alcoholics Anonymous, why would they want them, their main means of propagation in the hands of somebody else? Then they said, "Shouldn't we control it?" Well, at this point, the book project really began to take off. And they said, "Well, what we ought to do is form a book company, a publishing company, incorporate it, and call it Works Publishing Company," this being the first of a great many works. Then they could sell, sell stock certificates to all the drunks and get some money coming in to support the author and the guy who was collecting the money, you know? And the gal who was helping on the book. So they took this idea to the next trustees meeting and the trustees all shook their head and said, "No." Well, they had an alcoholic rebellion and they told their non-alcoholic friends where they could go to and they said, "Well, after all, you haven't produced any money with all your rich friends and all your money and by gosh, we're going to try this thing on separate from the foundation." So Bill had a drunk helping him on this thing, one super promoter by the name of Hank Parkhurst. And Hank said to Bill, "This is simple. Come with me." And they walked into a stationery store and they bought a pad of blank stock certificates. They wrote across the top of them, "Works Publishing Company, par value $25." Then they took this pad of these stock certificates, of course they didn't bother to incorporate it and that didn't come for several years later, to the next AA meeting where you shouldn't mix money with spirituality and they say to the drunks, "Look here, this thing is going to be a cinch. Parkhurst will take a third of this deal for services rendered. I, Bill, the author, will take a third for, 'cause my service is rendered and you drunks can have a third of these stock certificates, par 25 bucks if you'll just start paying up on your stock. Well, and if you only want one share, $5 a month for five months." And all the drunks gave Bill and Hank that cold look and they said, "What the heck? You mean to say you are asking us to buy stock in a book that you haven't even written yet?" "Why, sure," they said. "If Harper's will put money in this thing, why shouldn't you? And they say it's going to be a good book." But the drunks said, "No deal." So Hank and Bill started a new pitch at the c- at the drunks. And they told them that they'd been looking at the printing cost of this book. "Now, we got a book here that'll have 400 or 450 pages and it ought to sell for $3.50." Now, back in those days, they found on inquiry from printers that a book that you'd sell for $3.50 could be printed for 35 cents. And they pointed out to the drunks, "Why, look, we're going to make 1,000% profit." Of course, they didn't mention the other expenses. "So just think, boys, when these books move out in carload lots, we're printing them for 35 cents, we're going to sell them for $3.50 by direct mail. How can you lose?" And the drunks said, still said, "Heck no." So Hank and Bill figured that they had to have a better argument than that. So how are they going to convince the drunks that we're going to move these books out in carload lots, millions of dollars? So they get the idea to go up to Reader's Digest. So they get an appointment with Mr. Payne, the managing editor, and I'll tell you how they got that deal. Now, you just don't run up to Reader's Digest and walk in and get, uh, an appointment with Mr. Payne. Dr. Silkworth was living in a house that he rented from Mr. Wallace. Mr. Wallace was a publisher and owner of Reader's Digest, and every month he would send his rent check in to Mr. Walters, who was the treasurer of Reader's Digest. And the drunks had conned Dr. Silkworth into sending those two chapters, the doctor's opinion and the intro- uh, introduction to the book and Bill's story, in one of the checks and slip it with the check, slip it in the envelope to Mr. Walters. So, and then in turn, Mr. Wallace would get ahold of it. That was a connection between the drunks and Reader's Digest. And so they get an appointment and say, Mr. Payne, the managing editor, and excitingly told him the exciting story of their budding society, and they dwelled on the friendship of Mr. Rockefeller and Harry Emerson Fosdick and everybody else they thought maybe the Rockefellers knew. And he said they thought that this socie- they told him the society was about to publish a textbook. Would not th- this not be a matter of tremendous interest to the Reader's Digest? And of course, the drunks were thinking, you know, with the Reader's Digest circulation in those days of 12 million readers, if they sh- just get a free ad, then they could really move the book. Well, Mr. Payne liked the idea. Asked Bill when the projected book would be finished, and then he said, "I'll take it up with the editorial board, and when the time is right, you get the book all ready to shoot and come on up. We'll put a special feature writer on this thing." Well, this was all that Bill and Hank needed to hear. So they went back to the drunks and they said, "Now, look here, boys. There are absolutely, positively millions of dollars in this thing for us. How can you miss? And after all, we only need four or five thousand bucks." So they began to sell shares in Works Publishing, not yet incorporated, $5 a month to poor people. One guy bought 10 shares. Then they f- uh, sold a few shares to ni- to non-alcoholics. And Hank, who was very important in this deal because he's the one that kept, went, kept on collecting and coercing for the money so Bill and Ruthie Hawks, the little secretary, could work on the book. And Lois maybe would some, have to have some ex- money for extra groceries, although she was the only one that was working. She was still working in the department store. Well, so the preparation started. Some more chapters were written. They went into AA meetings in, in, in New York with the chapters in the rough, and the drunks start chewing those chapters apart, and Bill suddenly found himself in a whirlpool of argument. And Bill became just an umpire, and he said, "Look, boys, over here you got the Holy Rollers who say we need all this good old-fashioned stuff in the book. And over here you say you gotta have a psychological book. And over here you got to have this or that. And that, and the psychological, and that never cured anybody, and they didn't to, do too much with the drunks and the missions. So I guess you'll just have to leave it to me to be the umpire." I'll scribble out some things here. Let's get the comments in." So they fought, bled, and died through one chapter or another. They sent them out to Akron for their comments and approval, and once again, terrific hassles began to develop on what should go in the book. Meanwhile, drunks were set to writing their own personal stories, and then came the night when they got to chapter five, because here is a point where in the book, the book had to say what this thing was all about and how this deal worked. And as I said, it was originally a six-step program. And one night, Bill was laying in bed trying to think of what this chapter five were to be all about. And then the idea came to Bill that they needed a definite statement, concrete principles that the drunks could not wiggle out of. There cannot be any wiggling out of this deal at all, and the six-step program had two big gaps in it. However, if this book goes out to distant readers, they have to have an absolute explicit program by which to go by. And while Bill was thinking about these things, and while he was mad as a tickings at the drunks because the money was slow coming in, there was a knock on his front door, and Bill opened it, and there was a member there. He brought a brand-new one to come to see Bill, and the member said to Bill, "Well, what are you doing?" Bill told him he's writing a book, and the drunk said, "We don't need no book. You need to tend to this wet drunk," and they had a terrific argument. And Bill got mad, and he run him out the house, and he went up to the, the bedroom to the bed, where there was a pad of paper and a pencil there, and he said to himself, "I have to break this thing up into small pieces." So he just started writing, trying to bust it up in little pieces, and when he got the pieces set down, he put numbers on them and was agreeably surprised when it came out at 12. And then he noticed, and here's where he plugged the holes. And then he noticed, you know, that instead of leaving the God idea until the last, he put it up front, and you know what the second hole he plugged? The two most potent steps in the 12-step program, the glue and the anchor of the whole program, steps six and seven. That's the baby right there. And Bill, you know, he didn't pay too much attention to it. He thought it looked pretty good. And so by the time the next meeting came along, Bill had gone beyond the steps, trying to amplify them in the rest of that chapter. And when he took the steps in that chapter into the meeting, all heck broke loose. The drunks said, "What do you mean by changing our program? What about this? What about that? This thing is overloaded with God. We don't like this. You got the drunks on their knees. Stand them up. A lot of these drunks are scared of being God-bit. Let's take God out of it entirel-
