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Source: 1950 Cleveland International Convention – 1950 Cleveland Bill W. The Big Meeting.mp3 File: 1950-cleveland-international-convention-1950-cleveland-bill-w-the-big-meeting.mp3 Duration: 01:08:46
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In AA, we do things together, and I want you to stand and say with me the AA prayer. O God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference of it. I merely want to say how much I personally appreciate the tremendous help that Cleveland AA, Akron AA, have been to the committee that has tried to get this conference together.
The cooperation has been marvelous, and Cleveland AA, Akron AA, want to welcome those people who have traveled from far places to be with us and help us express our gratitude for 15 years of AA. I teach at nothing, but in my dad's death, and I owe it to him, one of our co-founders, Dr. Bruce. My good friends in AA and out of AA, I feel I would be very remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to welcome you here to Cleveland, not only to this meeting, but those that have already transferred.
I hope very much that they have the presence of so many people, and the words that you have heard will prove an inspiration to you. Not only to you, but may you be able to impart that inspiration to the boys and girls back home who are not fortunate enough to be able to come. In other words, we hope that your visit here has been both enjoyable and profitable. I get a big thrill looking over a vast sea of faces like this with a feeling that possibly some small thing that I did a number of years ago played a small part in making this meeting possible.
I also get quite a thrill when I think that we all have the same problem, we all did the same thing, we all get the same result in proportion to our zeal and enthusiasm and stick-to-it-iveness. If you will pardon the injection of a personal note at this time, let me say that I've been in bed for five of the last seven months. If my strength hasn't returned as I'd like, so my natural necessity be very brief.
But there are two or three things that flash into my mind on which it would be fitting to lay a little emphasis. One is the simplicity of our program. Let's not blouse it all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind but have very little to do with our actual A.A. book. Our 12 steps when simmered down to the last resolve themselves into the words love and service.
We understand what love is and we understand what service is. So let's bear those two things in mind. Let's also remember to guard that air you remember to come. And if we must use it, let's use it with kindness and consideration and tolerance. And one more thing, none of us would be here today if somebody hadn't taken time to explain things to us, to give us a little pat on the back, just to a meeting or two.
Two have done numerous little kind and thoughtful acts in our past. So let us never get the degree of smug complacency so that we're not willing to extend our attempt to that help that has been so beneficial to us to our less fortunate brother. Thank you very much. I'm sure that we here in Cleveland and those of us who enjoyed reading
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and being associated with Doc through all these years will appreciate that he spoke from experience when he spoke of having the tolerance, being not only willing but to help of the alcoholics. And I just think that one might send the result and he may have had any different sort of personality. And I know that he might be embarrassed when I say that he has in the last 15 years worked with four or five thousand people that were hospitalized in addition to the thousands he's spoken to at meetings and in private conversations, always having the time necessary to do that work.
Today has been the result of the joining together of two experts, one Doctor and the other Bill, whose signature is mine to introduce. One Doctor and the other Bill, whose signature is mine to introduce. Twelve years ago this fellowship commenced with a pair of books. The book we know today is Alcoholics Anonymous. And in the last pages of its text, the book expressed a hope. Yes, it was more than a hope.
It told of a dream that we then in this fellowship had. And we expressed our hope and our dream in these words. Someday we hope that every alcoholic who journeys will find a fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at its destination. To some extent this is already true. Some of us are salesmen and gold miners. Little clusters of twos and threes and fives have sprung up in other communities through contact with our larger center.
Those of us who travel drop in as often as we can. This practice enables us to lend a hand, at the same time avoiding certain alluring distractions of the road about which any traveling man can inform us. Such was our dream. And it has been given to only a few to see an impossible dream come true, almost in its entirety. One wonders what could be added to what we have already seen and felt and heard in these last two or three days.
The song of this assembly is gratitude. And we rejoice in our world unity, now spread into some thirty-four countries and reflected back upon us here. We rejoice today is still simple and more deeply meaningful than ever. Yes, this is a time for gratitude, a time for rejoicing. It may be, too, a time of happy reminiscence. When we can think back a little upon the days of our birth, our childhoods, and our adolescence.
It may be a time when we can think together once more about those principles upon which we resolved yesterday,
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which may bind us together in unity for so long as God shall lead us. Let us think about the things for which we are grateful. Of course, we are grateful, and find no words to express it, to the Father of life who presides over us all, who has asked for it in great defiance, and has made this salvation possible. And right away, one begins to think of friends who have been part of this denying conspiracy which is alcoholism.
I think right away of the friend who first came to me with a very simple message. Today, thank God, still the core of our proceedings. I think of a wife who stood by. I think of Dr. Sposnick, the first Protestant clergyman to say that AA is good. I think of Father Dowling out there in St. Louis, the first Catholic clergyman ever to say that. I think of my own doctor in town hospital, who when I had my sudden experience said, No, Bill, you are not crazy. You had better hang on to what you've got.
Those were indeed faithful words for Alcoholics Anonymous. Suppose that man of science had said, Ah, this is but an illusion. It will soon pass away. What a vital contradiction. And I think of the first psychiatrist who defended us, and who has since brought us before his whole field. I think of the editor of the Saturday Post, who published the good news to the world, and made us a national institution.
Yes, these men of medicine. These men of religion. Once upon a time we stood in a no man's land between them. We weren't exactly scientific, and some thought we weren't religious enough. Today, we find ourselves in a common meeting place, working together as one. Ah, yes, the friends who defended us, without whom this movement could never have been. And each of us, of course, thinks of that one who was the very nearest.
The husband, the wife, the father, the mother, who saw us through, who went down into the cave with us, and stayed when all others had gone. I think of Lois. And she and I would like to join in saying a special tribute to the one who was the mother of the first AA group, Ann Smith. She was the mother to that first group, and all of the attributes of motherhood, her deep understanding, her constant attention to the needs of her children, are things we old timers shall never forget.
God bless and keep Ann. I am sure she looks down upon us here today. I think of the one who perhaps is here, Henrietta, who had time, when nine or ten others did not, to bring Smithy and me together. Yes, another link that made this wondrous thing possible. You know, in AA, we have what amounts to a rule that we never praise people. But I think for once we ought to get around that rule. So I'm going to tell you why I am so grateful for Smithy.
You remember, after working with alcoholics, or rather, freaking at them for six months, I came to Ashland, Ohio, and I failed miserably in a business matter. For the first time, I realized that I was a failure. I realized that I needed another alcoholic, as much as you could possibly need me.
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And Dr. Bob is the man who has fulfilled that need. He and I have been associated together in all these wonderful years that have gone by. I cannot think or remember a time when we ever had an angry argument, an angry word between us. And this is a tribute indeed to him, because as many of you know, I have been mad at lots of us, too. On Tuesday afternoon, Bob and I made our pilgrimage, and I mean it when I say that, to Henrietta's house.
And she used an expression which I think is so fitting. She described Dr. Bob as the rock on which AA was found. How fitting that was. How apt. So I bid you, as you leave here, perhaps not to return for another ten years, but to bear away with you an image of those two, the mother of the first AA group and the rock on which it was found. You know, people are apt to say nowadays, in genuine concern, that AA is very different than it used to be.
It's got to be complicated. It has become big business. There are those who would commercialize it. Well, I'm glad that that concern exists. For so long as we exhibit that prudence, those things will never happen. And a recent trip to Europe convinced me that our essential message is just as simple, and yet just as mysterious, in its workings as it always was. On May 12th, a plane descended on Oslo Airfield, bearing well as to leave for Norway.
Our contact with that country had been so slight that we didn't know whether we'd find a dozen AA's, or maybe at the outside, a couple of dozens. Well, while we were going through customs, we heard a commotion. We heard a language of what we didn't understand, a syllable. And Lawrence looked at me and said, yes, there's the drop. Oh, God, no! And we came out of one, and we could not make out a word from that which was said.
By a sign language, we were in motion to the car. We got down to the hotel. Another dozen turned up, among them a fellow who could speak a little English. Ah, they couldn't talk English. But how well in their faces they expressed our universal language of love. That is an experience that we shall never forget. And then that picture unfolded. And we found that AA was just three years old in this city.
Yet they had taken through their hospitals in that place something like a thousand cases. That their membership might run in hundreds. Although because of their extreme anonymity, nobody could say just how many there were. You see, in Norway we found that there are two kinds of people. Because of the tremendous stigma, you have the kind of people who dare come to meetings, and you have the kind, the vast majority, who dare not.
After a while, we learned that there were six waiters in an hospital restaurant. None of whom knew that the other was in AA, yet they'd all been sobering to them over one year. And to be fair.
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And the old ones formed themselves into little squads of one and two and three, and visited these people. Every other day. Ah yes, we found they'd taken over a German barrack. They had a club room. We found that the finest psychiatrist in Oslo had sent his stamp of approval upon these Norwegians. And then we learned to our great joy that he was a man of deep religious conviction. One of the finest lawyers and judges in Oslo had already associated himself in a benign way with the Enterprise.
And then we journeyed to Bergen, and to Christiansen, and to Stavanger, and found there flourishing AA groups. And how did this all happen? How did this all happen? Very simply. Very movingly. And very miraculously. As it always has happened. Five years ago, at Greenwich, Connecticut, a Norwegian-American who had been drunk for 20 years sobered up by contact with that group. He commenced to write to the old country, telling the family what had happened.
And sending along a little money, which he could ill spare as an artist of it. Finally, he got a letter back, saying that his brother was in this same terrible situation. What could be done about it? Well, the man from Greenwich talked it over with his wife. And following the classic pattern, they decided they would sell all they had in the world. Namely, a very small restaurant. And with the cash, they would buy a round trip to Oslo to see if they could help that party.
So, like Lois and me, three years before, they came down at Oslo Airport. Some of the families, but not the alcoholics, were there to meet them. And that was all. With great vigor and enthusiasm, they laid our message before this suffering drunk. It turned out he was a typesetter on one of the papers. Why, he said, I'm no alcoholic. Where have we heard that before? He said, I'll have no part of any salvation visit like this.
Where have we heard that before? And he wouldn't have any salvation. Well, they visited him out in his home, a twenty-five cent den, out on the fjord, opposite where the Norwegians sunk that great German battleship. But to no avail. So then the man from Venice said, well, there isn't going to be an AA group in this town. So he sent out and he visited all his clergy. And they praised him for his enterprise, but they gave him no drops to work on.
Apparently they didn't know any. And he visited some doctors. And there was no result. So the man who had sold all he had felt it was now time to turn around and go home and start over. At that very moment, his recalcitrant brother pitched a drop that was a honey. It was the waning day to end them all, as indeed it did. And in the agony of his hangover, the praetor called to his brother, the man from Venice.
And he said, say, tell me once more about this thing, the anonymous alcohol. And the man from Venice said, well, it's very wonderful, but it's very simple. It's very wonderful, but it's very simple. I just admitted that I could no longer control my drinking, that it controlled me. I got honest with myself as I have never got honest with before. I quit this business of living alone and taught myself out to somebody else.
I went to the people who I admired, and I made amends.
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And then he said, you know, I was not a person of any faith. But I have come to believe in a power greater than I, a power which has indeed worked a miracle in me, for I was hopeless. And then he said, I was taught of a new kind of giving, the kind of giving that demands no reward. One alcoholic helping another. And that is why, my brother, I have come to Norway to see you. And that was the entire message of the man who had come from Venice to Iceland, the man who had sold all he had in the world to him.
Before he left, he took a little pamphlet, printed, of course, in English by the White Plains Group, and he made a longhand translation in Norwegian, which he had forgotten. And he left that translation with the printer. And that was the beginning of AA Oslo. The printer hadn't had a drink to this day. The printer inserted ads in the Oslo paper saying he was a recovered alcoholic who wished to help others without cost to them.
The ads ran for weeks. Because of the stigma, nobody responded. And finally, as he was about to give up, he got one reply. It came from a florist who and his wife ran a little sidewalk shop in Kangersee, in Arkansas. The florist was a grand case in pieces. He heard the story. He read this translation of the Twelve Steps. He went to work on other alcoholics, and he had not had a drink to this day. And he put more ads in the paper.
And they grew very, very slow. And then he came in contact with this doctor, where we find these wonderful friends I don't know, who, though a psychiatrist was, as I said, a man of deep religious conviction, who instantly saw the implications of what went on. And that's how AA got to Oslo. Does that sound like big business? Does that sound like over-organization? Isn't that arguably simple? Yes, it's serious and it's working indeed.
Yes. And I think if we were to look around us anywhere in AA where new people are receiving this message, if we were to look around us anywhere in AA where new people are receiving this message, they will see the same thing re-enacted. And, of course, all the Irish from here will want to know how it got to Ireland. In much the same fashion. One time, a little over three years ago, an Irish-American in Philadelphia, whose bankroll was better, decided that he and his wife would take a vacation.
They'd go over to Dublin, revisit the old land. But he'd been in Dublin no time. And he began to forget about the vacation. Why? Because there's no AA group in Ireland. They'd better have one. Again, he looked up a doctor. Maybe we're down on the psychiatrists, but this was another one. And this man was also a man of deep religious conviction and saw the point. And he told this doctor the story. And the doctor had charge of a large hospital, once endowed by the writer Swift, for people who were ailing mentally.
And he put some alcohol. And he left this simple message and the pamphlet with just one name. And when Lois and I came to Dublin, we found 300 members in South Ireland. We found groups at Cork. We found groups at Limerick. In fact, let me tell you, Irish, that that group at Cork is within sight of Blarney Castle. And so it came to London. A Canadian metallurgist brought it there. I, as Lois and I, saw Alcoholics Anonymous transcending every single barrier of race, creed, tradition, and language.
and Language, It Was a Never to be Forgotten Experience, Comparable with the day when she
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and I discovered that I could be free, Comparable with that day when Smithy and I sat in his living room after three years and counted to come up, and there were forty who had been sober, and we realized that a new life had come into this dark world of alcoholism. Yes, it was an experience like that. I ask, indeed, that this is a time for gratitude, gratitude for all these things neat. Let's look back once more, briefly, upon the time of our birth.
I don't need to qualify as an alcoholic. I won't marry those who already know about it, with a fresh account of that sudden experience which released me. But I would like to bring you again, and let us reflect together. What happened over here in that room, fifteen years ago, last year? I have come here, as I said, on a business trip, which I hoped would repair our fortune, and bring Lois out of that department store where she was still supporting me.
I have been working with alcoholics, or rather I have been preaching at alcoholics, rather piously, I suspect, and quite rightly, nothing has happened. But I suddenly find myself in need, and desperate need indeed, and there are many in this audience who have since felt it. I was alone down in the Mayflower Hotel, walking up and down that lobby. It was Saturday afternoon. My business deal had fallen through.
I was dispirited. I was full of self-pity. And suddenly I panicked in fear of getting drunk. And then came the thought, oh, how much I need another alcoholic. And I remember seeing a church directory out at one end of the lobby, and I went to it. And sort of absentmindedly drew my finger down the list of names there. And the finger stopped at a man who has since proven himself a great friend of our society, Dr. Walter Tunnell.
He turned out to be an Episcopal compadre. I called up the good man and said, well, I'm an alcoholic from New York who is looking for a drunk to work on. He seemed a little dumbfounded at that, a very unusual request. Quite naturally, he felt that one alcoholic at a time might be enough. And he gave me a list of people, some of them connected with the old Oxford group, to whom we owe so much, both as to what and what not to do.
And he said, some of these people may be able to, you know, find an alcoholic for you to work on. I think I had a list of about ten. And I began calling. It was on a Saturday afternoon. Quite naturally, these people said, well, I'll see you in church tomorrow. I'm sorry, we've got a holiday. Others were out. Others didn't seem to take in my need at all. And finally I came to the very end of that list.
And by then I was getting very blue indeed. And the name there was Henrietta. Her last name is a well-known name in the rubber industry. Oh, I guess that good lady wouldn't want to see an alcoholic on a Saturday afternoon looking for another alcoholic to work upon. Oh, no, I can't fault her. And then something said, well, it's better. And I called, and a delightful sudden voice came down over the wire.
And I told her of my need. And she said, I think I understand. Won't you come right up? Of all those people, she was the only one who had time to look after my need. And when I arrived there, we talked a bit. And she said, I think I know just the man. Well-known doctor here in town, but he's in terrible shape now. Tried medicine, tried religion as best he could. I'm sure he wants to get well. Supposing I call up his wife, Anne.
And I said, yes, please do. The chance that it was mother's day. So Henrietta explained to Anne that here was a man from New York who thought he could help alcoholics and was probably needing some help himself. Wouldn't she and Bob like to jump over? I don't know just how Anne put it to Henrietta, but to some of it was this, it was mother's day and the good doctor had just come in with a great big potted plant.
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He had placed the potted plant on a table as a tribute, but had gone upstairs and was so potted that he himself could not rise. Ah. Nothing, darling, Henrietta, but would you come tomorrow? Oh, yes, I would. And that afternoon, the door opened. And in walked Smithy and Anne. I tell you, none of us felt like condors that day. And I ardently wish that we can soon get over the feeling nowadays. But this time I knew I needed him as much as he needed me.
He had an awful hangover. He thought he could only stay five minutes. He was very thirsty. Ah, but we talked for hours. And there, I suppose, for the first time, we became worthy of the grace of God and the spark that was to be alcoholic phenomenon was struck. Learning then of my business difficulty and my hope of reviving it, and I think with the idea of keeping a weather eye on the old boy back here, Anne said, why don't you come over to the house and live a while?
So when I got over there, it wasn't long before Smithy looked at me rather quizzically, and he said, don't you think it's about time we did some work on some drugs just as a matter of self-protection? Well, maybe you've got something there, I said. He said, I'll call up the Anchorage City Hospital. I'll talk to the head nurse down in the receiving. And soon he was telling her that well, along with a man from New York, he thought they had a new cure for alcoholism.
He blushed a little, and I since learned the nurse said, going, well, doctor, why don't you try it yourself? At any rate, she said, yes, it's out of the dandy. Just came in here. Found a lawyer around town. He was once upon a time a member of the city council. All fallen apart. Been drunk six times in the last four months. He can't even leave here and get home without getting screwed again. Just now he's got the DTs.
He's pushed the nurses around. But he's full of paraldehyde and strapped down. Now how would that work, do you? So the next day, or the day thereafter, Dr. Bob looked on his site. There's tens of thousands of us that's tens of thousands of us have since seen. And God willing, hundreds of thousands of us will still see. It is the sight of the alcoholic on that bed who does not know that he can get well.
So we made our parents before the man on the bed. We told him of the nature of his malady, medically speaking. We also told him the nature of his malady, spiritually speaking. And he repeated the very simple self-saying formula whose transport to Oslo I just described. Just like that. Nothing more. But the man on the bed shook his head and said, no, I'm too far gone. He said, you fellas know what you're talking about.
He said, you've been through the mellow I've heard. You're not to blame. You're as bad as I am. I don't dare go out again. I was dropped every time I went out of here on the way home. I'm afraid it's too late for the like of me. And he said, you know, I'm a man who has faith in God. But very obviously God doesn't have any faith in me. Well, he said, maybe we come back tomorrow. All we asked, he said, I'd like to talk with you tomorrow although I don't think it's much use.
Well, on the morrow we came again as we entered the room. The man's wife was sitting at the foot of his bed looking at him and saying why not? How you were changed. What has God in you? And he turned to us and he said, there they are. They are the people who understand. And then he went on to relate how during the night his hopelessness had changed to hope. How perhaps he too might be released from his troubles.
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And then as he resolved to practice our simple precepts and abandon himself to God something more than hope came which had now swelled into a mighty assurance. So the man on the bed sat up and he said please fetch me my clothes we're going to get up and go out of here. So A.A. No. 3 rose from his bed and he walked out of there and he hasn't had a drink to this day. So that was the first full film. So a tiny flame started to burn now bright deep shedding its light throughout the world reaching ever distant beachhead.
And the light was so bright that it was so bright that it was ever distant beachhead. Indeed we must explain what happened God want. Now then what are our lessons? What are the lessons of that? And where do we find ourselves today? And what might this future hold in store for us? So well do I remember the day in Smithy's living room when we knew that this day would work and we said to ourselves we must call a meeting here in Akron to see what we will do.
It has taken three years of hard work to produce four day recovery within gunshot of us men and women have died how shall we let them know? Well I being a businessman a promoter immediately began to think in terms of big money and big organizations and I said to myself well don't we need hospitals these hospitals don't like drugs we should have our own chain of hospitals so they can produce all the money we need look at the money these drying out joints make and then since it has taken such a long time to bring about these few recoveries shouldn't it be we should do something about it and become missionaries temporarily and go out to other cities and start these centers and then Smithy and I reflected well certainly we ought to make a record of this some kind of a pamphlet or a book in which we can set down our experience and how this thing has worked so far well I'll never forget that evening when faithful decisions were taken and C. Henry Williams living room C. Henry was so drunk but what a friend he was there must have been some eighteen on his present I went on enthusiastically about these great plans and I saw the pictures of my fellow at the bar and they began to say to me Joe if we bring money into this thing it's going to spoil if we hire people to do these things it's going to affect our lives and as for books well who's going to write books and what we quarrel about that well there was great force to what those people said and there is still great force to it they held up a warning paper well I said you're too little even you know I'm pushing the sails on you I began to argue and Smithy supported me he said but we have to do something we at least have to otherwise our message will get gobbled will get distorted haven't alcoholics at a great distance got a right to know what is happening here so the conclusion of the meeting was that if I thought we needed money I'd better go back to New York and raise it where there was supposed to be plenty I had some very big ideas full of enthusiasm I got home and immediately thought myself of the Rockefeller Foundation I figured there would be plenty of those but the Rockefeller Foundation wasn't interested they said there was a depression they felt a little fired up besides this new movement I described of 40 people didn't seem to have any special classification it wasn't exactly religious it wasn't exactly medical It really didn't fit in any category.
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Well, I felt terribly cast down. Made some other approaches for money, for hospitals and missionaries and books. Nothing happened. Until one day I happened to stand in the office of my brother-in-law, who's a doctor. He'd heard these complaints of mine before. He said, uh, why don't you step in and talk to Dr. Shirley Wynn? There's an office nearby, used to be the Commissioner of Health here in New York.
He would understand what you're talking about. So I talked to him. Found myself soon talking to Shirley Wynn. And he said, yes, Jim, he said, I have a feeling this has great promise. And like yourself, I feel that this needs a tremendous lot of money, or will and time. Now he said, how about the Rockefeller Foundation? And I said, no, no, he said, I've got a better one. He said, oh, it's a foundation, they really wouldn't understand this thing.
He said, the man who would really understand is John D. Rockefeller himself. Well, I said, doctor, that's fine, but what about an introduction? Maybe you could give me an introduction to the Prince of Wales. How shall we reach John D. Rockefeller? And just then, my brother-in-law spoke up and he said, when I was a young fellow going to school, I used to know a girl. And that girl had an uncle. And I think he was somehow connected with the Rockefeller charity.
I don't even know if he's alive. I don't know that he would even remember my name. But suppose I call up Mr. John D. Rockefeller's office and see if there is such a man around. So he made a simple call on the phone to Mr. John D.'s personal office. The voice of Mr. W.S. Richardson, one of the greatest friends this society will ever have, came on the wire. He said to my brother-in-law, where have you been?
I'm so glad to hear from you. Unlike me, my brother-in-law is a man of very few words. So he said quite abruptly, well, Mr. Richardson, I have a relative here who thinks he can do something for alcoholics. We'd like to tell you this story. May we come over? And said the old man, why surely, he said, walk right over. So we soon find ourselves going up 56 stories, walked into Mr. John D.'s private office, and there sat a dear old man, Richardson.
He listened attentively to the story, a man three years old. He said, yes, he said, I'm deeply interested. I have some friends around here who I think might be interested. Can't we have a meeting? Oh, what a sigh of relief I am raised. I said, my lord, now the big money is really inside. And the old man says to me, he said, I'll be glad to tell Junior about this, meeting Mr. John D. Junior. He said, won't you have lunch with me?
Well, I felt that from over, I was really doing very well. So I had lunch with him. In the fall of 1937, there was a little meeting. Some of the alcoholics from Akron came. I think it was one from Cleveland, some of the New Yorkers. Mr. Richardson and several of Mr. Rockefeller's friends and associates met in John D.'s personal boardroom. And I thought to myself, now, folks, our money troubles are over.
Well, each of us told our story. That's all there was to it. The same simple story. And then Mr. Scott, chairman of the Riverside Church, spoke up and he said, well, what is your need? And with becoming reluctant, I let him know that it's money. And he said, well, aren't you afraid that you will professionalize this thing? Isn't this purely a work of goodwill? We admitted that it was, but we said also we certainly have to have at least a book of some kind.
We have to have at least a little money. And the salesman present convinced these gentlemen that we ought to have some money. And one of them came out to Akron, where Smithy was a little harder up at the moment, and where the first group had started, and where there was a typical community situation. He came out to Akron and went over A.A.H. with a fine-tooth comb. Of course, we still didn't have the name A.A.H.
He came back and he made a report to Mr. Rockefeller that we ought to have $50,000 right at once, just as a start. Open a rest home in Akron. We'd put Smithy in as a doctor. That would be just a pilot plan, a model for the others. And naturally, there'd be plenty of money for book publishing, and we might probably get a few missionaries.
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Well, as I have often observed, A.A.H. had many, many founders. Time after time, the finger of providence has laid its hand on a person who has altered the whole course of this movement. And just now, the hand of providence was touching Mr. John D. Rockefeller. He looked at that report and he said to his friend Dick, Dick, aren't you afraid this money will spoil it? Aren't you afraid of professionalizing it?
He said, I'll put a little bit, a few dollars in the Riverside Church treasury that you can draw on to help these two men out. But he said, don't come back and ask me for any more. He said, we mustn't spoil this thing with money. Ah, on what a splendor thread our destinies have. Mr. Rockefeller has since said, has told me, that from the beginning, this work engaged his every interest. Nothing more affecting has ever cost his life.
And he, who has made a life work of giving away money, that he should say for once, this time, I won't give. Well, that obliges alcoholics to raise their own money to publish a book. Stories were written in Athens. A story or two from here. Stories in New York. Among our friends, shipping in small amounts. In subscription money, we finally got the job done. A periodical of national circulation published a piece and then came this month.
So, at the end of four years, when the book had just appeared, the book itself was bankrupt. Every one of us was broke. AA was very, very poor. And thank God that was so. We had a hard struggle through 1939. In that year, however, the plane dealer in this town caused AA, by its good tidings, to grow so fast here, they proved that we could become large. We could become strong. We could recover in numbers.
That was the great news that year. In 1940, Mr. Rockefeller, who we hadn't heard from since 37, suddenly said, I'd like to give a dinner to tell my friends about this Alcoholics Anonymous movement. Again, we thought, our money troubles are over. Mr. Richardson brought in all trustees, meaning the list of the guests. I made a quick calculation, and I said, gee, these guys will end up to about $2 billion, 21.
But again, Mr. Rockefeller gave them himself. And when the dinner was over, his son Nelson, speaking on his behalf, got up, and he said, my father, who was ill tonight, wants me to say that this is one of the most affecting things that ever cost my life. But fortunately, gentlemen, said Nelson Rockefeller, this is not an old movement that needs money. And the $2 billion got up and walked right out of the room.
Ah, so our destiny has been affected through medicine. Then the next year, you know, the Saturday Post published, and our great growth began. In the days since, we have had a joyful but strenuous experience of learning to live and work together, to relate ourselves wisely to money, questions of prestige, questions of power, to the world outside. Out of this experience, we have been evolving the tradition of alcohol economics.
Oh, what great changes since our first idea. Our very first tradition today says that common welfare comes first in all matters touching our unity. For without unity, there can be little or no recovery.
[00:55:02]
We say in AA, in the second edition, that no human being is to be an authority over us. Our only authority is to be found in a loving God expressing himself through our group heart. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. Our membership, what a tremendous thing about it. In the early days, we had membership rules which were legal. We feared all sorts of situations and people. We were constantly talking about the pure alcoholic, whatever that is.
But now it's all changed. The doors are wide open. We want to be all-inclusive, never exclusive. So today, a man or a woman suffering alcoholism is a member so long as they stay there. What a great reversal experience, as Buck was. Typically, and very much like Buck, as you have seen, we used to think that we ought to have a lot of money and that that should be somebody else's money. Today, we realize that as a society, our earning power is good.
Our expenses are perfect. Of course we'll pay our own bills. For once, we shall be givers to the community and not takers. There was a time when I used to toy with the idea of running alcoholics and artists from down in New York. It was a very pleasant thought until I learned better. But today, every AA group can manage its affairs as it likes, provided they don't seriously interfere with the general welfare of others.
Oh, how different that all is. Even our original foundation was chartered to educate and to research, to do all sorts of things, I remember, except lobby for prohibition. But now that's all changed. We know that this society of ours has but one single purpose, and that is to carry the message face-to-face to the other alcoholics. We cannot lend, finance, endorse other projects. We know we must stick to that sole aim for which God seems to have appointed us.
Oh, how times have changed. Now and then, too, we are confused about this matter of our services. People are saying, hey, it's getting to be organized. It's getting to be big business. Lots of quarreling about money. Yes, there is a lot of quarreling about money, but why should there be? Here in the city of Cleveland, maybe 4,000 alcoholics and their families living within 10 miles of this hall, the big business consists in passing a hat in the meeting places to pay the heat and light of the meeting.
The big expense which runs all the time is that of two workers in a little bit of an office. No. That is very important business, but it is not big business. Down in New York, here is a movement of 100,000 people. We have exactly five alcoholics employed down there. Not as missionaries either. Justice Sessaker is doing, if I might say, a wonderfully good job in helping to propagate this thing to guard its public relations, to issue its limits.
Out in the back room, we've got another dozen people who ship books, who keep track of the accounts, who type the letters. Is that big business for a fellowship of 100,000 people? No. Not big business, but very important business. We realize then that these services, organized as they are, do not represent an organization of the AA movement. They are merely a few chores which have to be done in order to keep our records straight with the world outside, to issue our literature, and to facilitate good 12-step work.
Services of that kind are mostly carried on for the benefit of the public. At that time, they're mostly carried on for the benefit of the million who still don't know. We think we owe them that much. So our services are organized to that extent.
[01:00:01]
But you and I know that Alcoholics Anonymous will never be organized. Now there's another tradition we have, which starts with controversy. In AA, you'll find lots of controversy. Sometimes, to put it mildly, we act like hell. We can be very cruel sometimes. We can be very thoughtful. Sometimes we gossip maliciously. Sometimes we quarrel violently over our small business affairs. Oh yes, this is no perfect society.
We have many sins. But from the very beginning, as though by some deep and sure instinct, this society has known that it could never quarrel over the issues of politics, sectarian religion, alcohol reform, and the like. I have never heard, in AA, a better religious or political argument. As we get larger and as forces which terrify this modern world come in upon us, we shall have to be ever more on the guard against these things.
But to these real threats, I am confident we shall never succumb. Then our matter of relating ourselves to the world outside. Oh, alcoholics are the greatest promoters in the world. And yet isn't it a remarkable fact that out of all of us salesmen, you can't find five people in the whole society of Alcoholics Anonymous We forget their names and pictures printed in the newspapers nowadays. We realize that we must place principles before personalities.
We see anonymity as a token of our group's humility, as the greatest protection that we have. I must confess that I myself, once upon a time, disagreed with every single one of these traditions to some extent or other. I have violated them, nearly all. At times, at other times I have been tempted to violate them, and then the group conference has spoken to me and said, and said, no Bill. The group would say, you can't do this thing to us.
What you propose is good, perhaps, but it is not good enough. Aren't you the fellow who has forever said, sometimes the good is the enemy of the best? I think one of the great things that's happened in the A.A. is our changed attitude towards problems. In the first place, though some might think this is a success story, it really isn't. We deeply realize that this is not our success, this is God's success.
We see a new use for trouble and problems. This whole meeting, to be sure, has been a time of great joy. All around us we have heard stories marvelous in their beauty. One success has followed upon another, economic and whatnot. But life in the A.A. isn't always like that. At the table last night, where I'm happy to sit, I guess we do by lots for places to sit. It's up to the sort of good I'm there.
A man sat there, and in no self pity at all, told how his wife was suffering that strange, dire disease, multiple sclerosis, a creeping paralysis. And how, in our simple principles, she had found a new relief, and how now she was getting somewhat on her feet. Another told how when his son was killed in an accident, he had gone at once to an A.A. meeting, feeling that that's where he belonged.
[01:05:05]
And in the midst of our joy, this assembly has had one great sorrow. One of our members, a great worker in Iowa, made the journey here to see Alcoholics Anonymous, Caldade. And the day that we confirmed the condition, he passed on of a heart attack here in Cleveland, North Carolina. And coming out of the condition meeting, I met his widow. There she was, at an A.A. meeting. And she looked at me, and she smiled just a little, and she said, you know, I think he'd want that one.
You know, we are coming to regard trouble in a very different light. When it comes, we say to ourselves, how can we accept this? How can we deal with this? For if God gives us the grace to demonstrate, then this trouble may be a lesson for us. I'm sure all of us are deeply affected by this lay, this drape there. In America, some of us think lays are rather silly. But this one wasn't. It is a token of their participation in what is perhaps a very historic moment.
Sent from an island in the distant Pacific, a token of affection, of appreciation, sent by those who will never come to any A.A. convention, or even any A.A. meeting off their island. For that lay was sent to us by the alcoholic leper from a colony near Hawaii. Ah yes, God has been great and good to us. May we always be worthy of his trust. And someday the need for our society may pass. And when it has met that need, and if we are worthy of it, I hope God may look down upon us and say, well done, good and faithful servant.
Perhaps there is no better way at this time of the party for me to conclude than to read to you the last brief paragraph written in Alcoholics Anonymous twelve years ago. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and to yourself. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny.
May God bless you and keep you. Until then. Thank you.