The Texas State AA Conference in Fort Worth, TX

We're so happy that all of you came. We hope that you will find that there is something that you can take back to your Home Group that will benefit them as a result of this conference. And I might say, when we're talking about the Home Group, we're going to hear something from Bill tonight about the Home Group and their traditions. We're going to find out a little bit about our responsibilities as a group. Not only our responsibility as an individual member of AA, but group responsibility we're going to find out a little bit more about tonight.

And that too can be a wonderful message that we can take back to our home group. As we all know, Bill wrote our 12 steps, our individual recovery program done 15, 16 years ago in Brooklyn. And he wrote them in quite a bit of confusion. And he completed them from beginning to end in about 30 minutes. And And I don't think to this day you can tell us honestly What led that kind of view?

It's true he had had a few years of experience in dealing with alcoholics. It's true he had talked to Eddy and about he had some experience from the Oxford group. But let's not forget this one thing. We are not always going to have Bill. Bill can't be like you and me and live a day at a time.

Bill's got to project 10, 15, 20 years out into the future. That's the way it must be with him. He's got to think of AA Unity in 1984. This thing must be held together, and it will be held together, but not until after. A lot of people have done an awful lot of work, along with a lot of praying.

1 of those 2 along will not get the job done, and nobody knows that better than our beloved Bill. Will everybody rise, please. Now that we're assembled here, in full strength, and in all the joy of this superb occasion, I first want to renew my thanks to all who have made it part to Jack and his commitment to each one of you to the untold miles of travel that you've all made to be proud, to inspire me, to fill me with the warmth of your hospitality, to be with each other. I'm grateful to the governor of this state, the mayor of this town, for their recognition that we are again not only a member, but citizens of the world. We once more belong, so these friends are set.

I'm deeply grateful to the coach town and the owners of it, who have found us, especially me, so superbly. Could you see that apartment, I mean, and you'd wonder how the hell anybody could stay sober in it. It had to buy. As for me, I come here in great gratitude, not only for the many tokens of your generosity and affection that I have received in the past, but for what you are making possible for my sponsor, Eddie, just as much a founder of AA as I or any of the scar without whom this thing couldn't have been. So again, I record my deep gratitude, And I can find no better words to say that.

That. I think I'm on the bill for tonight's show with a talk on the prediction. The 12 predictions of it. But you know drunk flight women, have the priority or at least sees the priority of changing their mind or make any such thing. Equipment, something very effective.

I think the tradition 1 to 12 was being a little too grim. My story a little. As a matter of fact, speaking of traditions, when they were first written back there in 1945 or 6, you saw tentative guides to help us to hang together and function. Nobody pays any attention except a few beginners who wrote me what the hell they owe about us. Nobody pays it to flight it to take.

But little by little, as these traditions, got around, and we had our club club out squabble, our group reps, this difficulty in that, it was found that the traditions indeed did reflect experience and were guiding principles. So they took all a little more, and a little more, and a little more. So that today the average AA coming in the door learns at once what they're about. What kind of an outfit he really has landed in. By what principles his group, and as a whole, are governed.

But as I say to Dickens with all that, I just like to spin some yarn, and there will be a series of yarn would cluster around the preparation of the good old book, Alcoholics Knowledge. Some people reading the book now, they say well this is the AA Bible. When I hear that, it always makes me shudder. Because the guys who put it together were the damn bit biblical. I think sometimes, you know, the drugs have an idea that these old timers went around with this almost visible helos and long gowns and they were full of sweetness and light.

Oh boy, how inspired they were. Oh, yes. But wait, Blair. I pulled the book, yeah, and really started in the living room of, doctor Nanny Smith. As you know, I landed there in the summer of 35.

A little group caught hold. I asked Smithy briefly with it, and he went on and found the 1st AA group in the world. And as with all new groups, it was nearly all failure. But now and then, somebody saw the light, and there was progress. And first, I got back to New York, a little more experience.

The group started there. And by the time we got around in 1937, the thing had leaked a little over into Cleveland and it began to move south from New York. But it was still we thought in those years of flying blind. A flickering candle indeed. And this might at any moment be snot out.

So on this late fall afternoon in 1937, Smithy and I were talking together in his living room and sitting there by the gas guac. And we began to count notes. How many people had State Drive in Athens, in New York? Maybe a few of these please. How many has stayed dry, and for how long?

And when we added up that scope, oh, it was a handful. I don't know. 35, 40 maybe. But enough time had elapsed on enough really fatal cases of alcoholism. It's not that when we grasp the import of these small statistics, Bob and I thought for the first time that this thing was going to succeed.

That God in his providence and mercy has thrown a new life into the dark cave where we and our kind had been and were still by the millions dwelt. I never can forget the election and ecstasy that sees this fall. And then we fell happily talking and reflecting. We reflected that, well, a couple of score of them, but that did take him 3 long years. There's been a momentum out of failure, but a long time it's been taken just to sober up this handful.

How could this handful tell this message to all those who still didn't know. Not all the drunkards in the world could come to Akron or to New York. How could we transfer our message to them? By what means? Maybe we thought we should go to the old timers in each group, but then meant nearly everybody.

Find the sum of money, somebody else's money of course, and say to them, well now take a sabbatical year off your job if you have any, and you go to Keokuk and to Omaha and to Chicago and to San Francisco to Los Angeles and wherever it may be, and you give this thing a year and get a group started. It is already got evidence by then, while we were just about to be moved out of the city hospital in Akron to make room for people with broken legs and ailing liver. Just the hospitals were not too happy with us. We tried to run their business perhaps too much and besides drunk, we're asked to be noisy in the night and there were other inconveniences which were all permitted. So it was obvious that, Doctor.

Beam's such a lovely creature, we would have to have a great chain of hospitals. And as that dream burst upon me, it sounded good because you see I've been down in Wall Street in the promotion business. And I remember the great sums of money that were made as soon as people got this chain idea, you know, the chain drugstores, the chain grocery stores, the chain dry, dry goods store. Why not chain drug chains and let us make the dough? Dog.

So we needed some missionary stuff to guide. We needed a chain of drum tanks because that got very clear, awful clear to me that Bob is a conservative type of Yankee. I don't think he was quite so bad for those items, but I was very insistent. It would take a pile of dough to finance all this, but after all, with this brand new light shining in our dark world, we just squirt it in the eyes of rich guys and made up with the gall. Besides, we reflected, we'd have to get some kind of literature.

Up to this moment, not a syllable of this program, so far as I know, was in writing. And it was a kind of a word-of-mouth deal. You, with variations according to each man or woman's fancy. Well, in a general way, we said, well, the food has got you down, boys. You got an allergy and an obsession, and you're hopeless, if you are.

You better get on it with yourself. Take stock, or you ought to toss it out with somebody, kind of a confession, you know. And you ought to make restitution for the harm that you did, you ought to make mens, and all that kind of business. Why do you play the best you cook according to your life, if any? Come out with the sum of the word-of-mouth program after that's done.

But as I say, variations on that were already appearing. How could we unify this thing? Could we, out of our experience, get certain principles, describe certain methods that have done the trick for us. Yes, obviously, at this moment with the propagation, it had to have a literature so its message could not be garbled either by the drunks or by the general public. So Bob and I reflected that late afternoon in 1937, mechanized, changed the drunk tax, Well, even by then, he and I have begun to learn that we were not the government of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He, I guess more than I, already realized that the conscience of the Group, the opinion of the Group, when it was an formed opinion and then the group's interest could be better than our own. We better consult folks. Well there was dear old, dear old non Alice P. Henry Williams there in Ackerman. They'd let us meet in their house after he got out of the Smith Power and got into theirs, and he was great friends.

It's all we call meeting of the Akron group, that is to say those who have been sober any great length of time, I think for this particular meeting we scraped up about 8 teams. I'm happy, Bob and I told them that we were in within sight of success, that we thought this thing might go on and on and on. That new light indeed was shining in our dark world. But how could this light be reflected and transmitted without being distorted and gut? And at this point, they turned the meeting over to me, And being a salesman, I set right to work on them drunk tanks.

And such as this for the missionaries, I was pretty poor then. And we touched on the box. That's it. And root conscience consisted of 18 men, good and true. And the good and true man, you could see right away were damned skeptical about it all.

Almost with one voice they hoarse, let's keep it simple. This is going to bring money out of this thing. This is going to create a professional flash. We'll all be ruined. Well, I countered that's a very good argument.

Lots of what you say, but even within a gunshot of this very hot, alcoholics are dying like flies. And if this thing doesn't move any faster than it has in the next in the last 3 years, it might be another 10 before it gets to the outskirts accurate. How in God's name are we gonna carry this message to others? We've got to take some kind of chance. We can't keep it so simple as it comes with energy and gets complicated.

We can't keep it so simple it won't propagate itself. And we gotta have a lot of money to do these things. So exerting myself to the utmost, which was considerable in those days, we finally got a vote in that little meeting, and it was a mighty close vote by just the majority of maybe 2 or 3. The meeting said with Summer Lutgers, well, Bill, if we need a lot of dough, you gotta go back to New York where there's plenty of it, and you'll raise it. Well, boy, that was the word I've been waiting for.

So I came back to the great city, and I began to approach the people of means, and describe this tremendous thing that had happened. And it didn't seem so tremendous as the people in meetings at all. It said what, 35 or 40 trunks? Sober it up. They have sobered them up before now, you know.

And besides, mister Wilson, don't you think it's kind of sweeping up the shavings? I mean, I mean, wasn't there something for the Red Cross be better? In other words, with all of my most highly solicitation, I got one hell of a freeze from the gentleman of oil. Well, I began to get blue. And when I began to get blue, my stomach kicked off as well as other things.

And I was laying in bed one night with an imaginary ultrar attack. Used to have them all the time. I had one at the time to throw stuff for it. And I said, my god. We're starving to death near Clinton Street.

By this time, the house was full of drugs. They were agents out of house and home. In those days, we never believed in charging anything for anybody for anything. So Lois was earning the money, I would be in the missionary and the drunkard reading the meal. This can't go on.

We gotta have them drunk tanks, we gotta have them missionaries, and how we gotta have them missionary, and we gotta have a look. That's for sure. Well, the next morning I crawled into my clothes and I saw them in front of him. He's a doctor and he is about the last person who's suffering, one that just was way, way down. The only one save of course dear Lord.

Well, I set on board and see Leni. So I went up to see my brother-in-law, Lenard. He pried out a little time between the patients coming in up there, and I started my awful bellyache about these rich guys who wouldn't give us any golf for this great and glorious enterprise. So well on its way. And it seems to me that somehow he was tied up as a Rockefeller family and their church.

And if you want, we'll call up the Rockefeller offices and see if there is such a man, and if there is, is he alive, and will he see us? Would you like me to do that? Well, I hadn't tried the Rockefeller office, so I said, well sure, Give him a ring. On what slender threads our destiny some time has. Remember, my brother-in-law said I knew a girl, and I think she had enough.

So the call was made, instantly there came on to the other end of the wire, the voice, dear Willard Riches, one of the loveliest Christian gentlemen that I have ever known. And the moment he recognized my brother-in-law, he said, why Leonard, he said, where have you been all these years? Well my brother-in-law, unlike me, is a man of very few words, so he quickly said to Daryl up Willard that he had a brother-in-law who's apparently having some success sobering up drunk. Could, the 2 of us come over there and see it? Why?

Certainly, said Vera Willard, come right over. So we go over Rockcrawler Plaza, we go up that elevator, 54 flights, 56, I guess it is. And we walk clump into mister Rockefeller's personal offices at the team, mister Richards. And here's this lovely benign old gentleman who nevertheless had a kind of shrewd twinkle in his eyes. So I sat down and told him about our exciting discoveries.

This horrific cure for alcoholics that had just hit the world. How it worked, what we have done to us, and boy this was the first receptive man with money or access to money. Remember, we were in mister Rockefeller's personal office at this point. And by now too, we had learned that this was mister Rockefeller's closest personal friend, perhaps. So he said, why, yes.

He said, I'm much interested. Would you like to have lunch with me, mister Wilson? Well, now you know for a rising promoter, that sounds pretty good. Gonna have lunch with best friend of John D. Thanks for looking up, but my ulcer attack disappeared.

So I had lunch with the old gentleman and we drove this thing again and boy he's so warm and kind and friendly. Right? Close the lunch. He said, well, now mister Wilson or Bill, if I can call you that. Then wouldn't you like to have a larger meeting with some of my friends?

There's a blank aimer, I see in the advertising business, but he was on a committee that recommended mister Rockefeller, drop the, prohibition business. And Eric Leroy Chapman, he looked at mister Rockefeller's real estate, and Eric McScott, he's chairman of the board up to Riverside Church, and he says a number of people like that. I I believe they'd like to hear that. So so a meeting was arranged, and it fell upon a winter's night late 1937. And the meeting was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

We called in full taste a couple of drugs, macarons, met the included of course, adding the protection. I came in with the New York contingent 45. And to our astonishment, we were ushered into mister Rockefeller's personal boardroom right next to her office, right next to his office. And I thought to myself, well, now this is really getting hot. And indeed I felt very much warm when I was told by mister Richardson that I was sitting in a chair just vacated by mister Rockefeller.

I said, well, now we really are getting close to the bankroll. Old doc Dilworth was there that night too. And he testified what he has seen happen to these new friends of ours. And each drunk, thinking of nothing better to say, well, each of us told our stories of drinking and the recovery. And these folks listened.

They seemed very definitely impressed, so I could see that the moment for the big touch was coming. So I gingerly brought up the subject of the drop tag, the subsidized missionary, and this question of a book or literature. Well, God moves in mysterious way as wonders to perform, But it didn't look like a wonder to me when mister Scott, head of a large engineering firm and chairman of the Riverside Church, looked at us and said, but the gentleman that up to this point, this has been a work of goodwill only. No planning, no property, no paid people, just one carrying the good news to the next. Isn't that true?

And may it not be that that is where the great power of this society lies. Now if we subsidize it, might it not alter its whole whole chariotes? We want to do all we can, we're gathered for that, but would it be why? Well then the salesman all gave Mr. Scott the russ.

And we said, why mister Scott? There are only 40 of us. It's taken 3 years. Why millions Mr. Scott will rot before this thing ever gets sold unless we have money and lots of it.

And we made out our case at last with these gentlemen for the missionaries, the drunk tanks, and the law. So one of them volunteered to investigate us very carefully. And this poor old doctor Bob was harder up than I was and since the first group and the typical community situation was in Akron, we directed their attention out there. And Frank Hamish, still a trustee in the foundation, at his own expense, got on a train, went out to Akron, made all sorts of preliminary inquiries around town about doctor Bob. All the reports were good except that he was drunk, had recently got over.

He visited the little meeting out there. He went to the Smith's house, and he came back with what he thought was a very modest project. And he recommended to these friends of ours that, well, we should have at least just a total amount of money at first, say, $50,000, something like that. That would clear off Marty Don Smith's plate. It was, get us a little rehabilitation plate.

We could put doctor Smith in charge. We could subsidize a few of these people briefly until we got some more money, or we could, you know, it would start the chain of hospitals, and we'd have a few missionaries, and we could get busy on the book, all for mere $50,000. Well, considering the kind of money we were backed up against, that did sound a little small, but, you know, one thing leads to another, and it sounded real good. We were we were real glad. Mister Willard Richards in our original contact then took that support in the John Jay Junior as everybody called me.

I've I've since heard what went on in this. Mister Rockwell read the report. Called Willard Richardson back. And he said somehow I am strangely stirred by all this. This interests me immensely.

And then looking at his friend, Willard, he said, but isn't money going to spoil this thing? I'm terribly afraid that it was, and you aren't so strangely stirred by Then came another turning point in our destiny. When that man whose business is giving away money, said the Lord Richardson, Now he said I won't be the one to spoil this by with money. You think these 2 men who are heading it are a little strapped? I'll put $5,000 in the Riverside Church Treasury.

You folks can form yourselves into a committee and draw on it as you like, but please don't ask me for any more, but I wanna hear what goes on. Well, the 50,000 is then shrunk to 5. We raised the mortgage on Smithee's house for about 3 grand that left 2 and Smithee and I commenced chowing on that 2. Well, that was a long way from the Strings on the drunk tank, books, and submissions. What in thunder would we do?

Well, we had more meetings with our new found friends. Amos Richardson, Scott, Chipman, and those fellows who stuck with us to this day come out of now being gone. And in spite of Mr. Rockefeller's advice, we again convinced these folks that this space needed a lot of money. What could you do without it?

So one of them proposed, well why don't we form a foundation something like the Rockefeller Foundation? Well I said I hope it'll be like that with respect to money. And then one of them got a free lawyer from Elihu Root's firm who was interested in this thing, and we are asked him to draw an agreement of trust, a charter, or something to be called the Alcoholic Foundation. Why we picked that one, I don't know. I don't Alcoholic Foundation, not the Alcoholic Foundation, you know.

And the lawyer was very much confused because in the meeting in which we formed the Foundation, we made it very plain that we drunk did not wish to be in the majority. We felt that there should be nonalcoholics on the board and they ought to be in a majority of 1. Well, indeed, said the lawyer, what is the difference between an alcoholic and a non alcoholic? And one of our smart drugs says, well, that's the same. A non alcoholic is a guy who can drink, and an alcoholic is a guy who can drink.

As a lawyer, how do we state that legally? I wouldn't know. So in length, we have a foundation and a board which I think then was of about 7 consisting of 4 of these new brands including my brother-in-law, mister Richards, and Chipman Aimee, and some of us drunk. But I think Smithee went on the board, but I kind of coyly stayed off thinking it, well, it would be more convenient later on. So we have this wonderful new foundation.

These friends, unlike mister Rockefeller, were told that we needed a lot of dough. And so our salesman around New York started to solicit solicit the money, again, from the very race. And we had a list of them, and we had credentials and letters from friends of mister John z Rockefeller. How could you miss, I asked you, sir? The foundation has been formed in the spring of 1938, and all summer we solicited the Red Cross.

Well, they were either in Florida, or they preferred the Red Cross, or some of them thought the drugs were disgusting. And we didn't get one damn spent in the whole summer of 1938. Praise god. Well, meantime, we began to hold trustee meetings, and they were commiseration sessions on getting no dull. What was the mortgage and what was Smithy and me eating away at it?

The $5 had about gone up the flu. And we were all slowly broke again. Smriti couldn't get his practice back either because he was a surgeon, and nobody liked to be carved up by an alcoholic surgeon even if he was for years. So things were tough all around. No fool.

Well, what would we do? So one day, probably in August 1938, I produced at a foundation meeting A couple of chapters of a proposed book in Roth and in mimeograph. As a matter of fact, we've been using chapters of this proposed book along with some recommendations of a couple doctors down at John Hopkins to try to put the bite on the wrench, and we still have these 2 book chapters kicking around. So Frank Amos said, well, now I know the religious editor down there in Congress. Old friend of mine, Dean Axley, said, why don't you take these 2 book chapters, your story and the introduction to the book down there and show them to Gene, see what he thinks about.

So I took the chapters down. To my great surprise, Dean, who has since become a great friend of ours, looked at chapters and said, why? He said, mister Welch Meade. He said, could you write a whole book like this? Oh, I said, oh, shit.

Well, there was more talk about it, though. I guess he went in and showed it to miss Canfield, the big boss. Now the meeting was handed. The upshot was that Harper's intimated that they would pay me as the budding author $1500 in advanced royalties, bringing enough money in to enable me to finish the book. Well, I felt awful good, you know, about that.

It made me feel like I was an author or a comer maybe. I felt real good about it. But after a while, not so good Because I began to reason and so did the other boy, well, if this guy Wilson eats up the 1500 bucks while he's doing this book. After the book gets out, it'll take a long time to catch up. And if this thing gets to publicity, what are we gonna do with the inquiries?

And after all, what's a lousy 10% royalty anyway? Well, the 1500 still look pretty big to me. Then we thought too. Now here's a fine publisher like Harvard, but if this book, if and when done, should prove to be the main text book for AA, why would we want our main means of propagation in the hands of somebody else? Shouldn't we control it?

Well, at that point the book project really began to get hot. It began to take off. Why, we said, what we ought to do is to form a book company, a publishing company, corporation. We could call it Let It Say Works Publishing Company, this being the first of a great many works, you see. And we could sell stock certificates to all the drugs, and get some money coming in with support the author and the guy who collected the money and the gal who would help me on the book while this was going on.

Well, we took this idea of the next trustees meeting and they all shook their heads and they went out and made some more inquiries and we had another trustees meeting. They'd gone to some publisher friends and published and says, well, these authors, they all got the crazy idea that they can publish their own books, but it ain't so. We don't believe in this. Well, then we had kind of an alcoholic rebellion. We said to our friend, well, after all, you didn't produce any dough.

We think we'll try this on separate foundation. So I had a guy helping me on this thing who had red hair, 10 times my energy, and some promoter he walks. Said, Bill, this is something. Come on with me. We walk into a stationary store.

We buy a pad of blank stock certificates. We ride across the top of them. Works Publishing Company, par value Come on with me. We walk into a stationary store. We buy a pad of blank stock certificates.

We write across the top of them. Works Publishing Company, par value, $25. So we take advantage of these stocks. Of course, we didn't bother to incorporate it. That didn't happen for several years.

We took this Spanish doctor to just to next AA meeting, why you shouldn't mix money with spirituality at home. And we said to the drunks, why look, this thing is gonna be a thing. Partners, he'll take a third of this thing for services rendered. I, the author, I'll take a third for services rendered. And you can have a third of these stocks.

It's it's part 25 if you'll just start paying up on your stock. If you only want one share, it's only $5 a month for 5 months. See? And the drunk Saul gave us this stalling look. What the hell?

You mean to say you're asking us to buy stock in a book that you ain't written yet? Why sure we said, if Harper's will put money in this thing, why shouldn't you? Harper said it's going to be a good book. But the drug still gave us the stony stick, not all salt. Well, we had to think up some more argument.

Oh, well, he said, well, we've been looking about the printing cost of the books, boys. We get a book here, you know, 400, 450 pages. It all sell for about 3.50. Now back in those days, we found on inquiries and printers that that 3.50 book could be printed for 35¢, making a 1000% profit. Of course, we didn't mention the other expenses, just the printing cost.

So, boy, just think of this. When these folks move out in carload lots, we're printing them for 35¢ and we're selling them direct mail. 3.50. How can you load? The drunk still gave us Don't need it there.

No. Stop. Well, we figured we had to have a better argument than that. Harper said it was a good book. If we could print them for 35¢ and sell them for 3.50, But how are we going to convince the drugs that we could move carloads lastly?

1,000,000 of dollars. So we get the idea. We'll go up to the Reader's Digest, and we got an appointment with mister Kenneth Hain, managing editor up there. Gee, I'll never forget the day we got off the train up to Pleasantville, went over to his office, ushered in. We excitedly told him the story of this wonderful budding society.

We dwelled upon the friendship of mister Rockefeller and Harry Emerson father. You know, we were traveling in good company with Spain. And, his society, by the way, was about to publish a textbook then in process of being written. And we were wondering, mister Paine, if this wouldn't be a matter of tremendous interest to the Reader's Digest, having in mind, of course, that the Reader's Digest had a circulation of 12,000,000 readers. And if we could only get a free ad of their common book in the Reader's Digest, we really would move some, you see.

Well, mister Payne said this sounds extremely interesting because I'm I I like this idea. Why? I think it will be an absolutely ideal ideal piece for the diocese. Well, how soon do you think this new book will be out, mister Wilton? Well, I said we got a couple of chapters written, and then, if we can get right at it, mister Paine, you know, probably, this being, let us say, October, we ought to get this done by April, next May.

That's why mister Payne said I I'm I'm sure that I just would like anything like this, mister Wilson. He said I'll take it up to the editorial bars. And he said, when the time is right and you've got all ready to shoot, come on up and we'll put a special feature writer on this thing and we'll tell all about your size. And then my promoter's friend said, but mister Payne, will you mention a new book in the piece? Oh, yes.

Yes. But the Payne mentioned the new book. That's all we need. Then we went back to drugs and said, now look, boy, there are positively millions of it. How can you make?

It? Harper says it's gonna be a good one. We buy them for 35¢ from the printer. We sell them for 3.50. The Reader's Digest is gonna give us a free ad and a piece, and, boy, they'll move out by the carload.

How can you miss? And after all, we only need 4 or $5,000. So then we began to sell shares of Worth publishing not yet incorporated, par value, $25, $5 a month to poor people. Some people could buy as many as one guy bought 10 shares. We sold a few shares of nonalcoholic.

And my promoter friend, who was to get a 3rd interest, was a very important man in this transaction because he went out and kept collecting the money from the drunk so that little Ruthie Hoch and I could keep working on the book and so Lois would have some groceries, although she was still working in that department store. So the preparation started. And the more chapters were done when we went into AA meetings in New York with these chapters in the run. Well, it wasn't like chicken in the rough. The boys didn't eat those chapters up at all.

I suddenly discovered that I was in a terrific whirlpool of argument. I was just the umpire, and finally had to stipulate, well, boy, and, over here, you got the holy rollers who say we need all the good old fashioned stuff in the book. And over here, you tell me we gotta have a psychological book, and that never cured anybody. And they didn't do much with drugs in the missions. So I guess you'll have to leave me just to be the umpire.

I'll scribble out some rocks here and show them to you, and let's get the comments in. So we fought, bled, and died our way through one chapter after another. We sent them out to Akron, and they were peddled around, and there were terrific hackles about what should go in this book and whatnot. Meanwhile, we set drunks writing their stories or having newspaper people that we had to write stories for them to go on the back of the book. We had an idea.

We'd have a text, you know, and then we'd have stories all about the drunks who were staying sober in the back. Move it up. So then came that night when we were up around that, chapter 5. As you know, I've gone all on about myself, which was natural after all. And then, we did a little introductory chapter, and we dealt with the agnostic, and we described alcoholism.

But, boy, we finally got up to the point where we really had to say what the book was all about and how this deal worked. Well, as I told you, this was a 6 step program then. On this particular evening, I was lying in bed in Clint Street wondering what the Deuceville's next chapter would be about. The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement, a concrete principle that these drugs can't wiggle out from. Can't be any wiggling out of this deal at all.

And this 6 step program has 2 big gaps in between. They'll be wiggling out. Moreover, if this book goes out to distant readers, they have got to have an absolute explicit program by which to go. Well, while I was thinking these thoughts while my imaginary alter was painting me and while I was mad at hell with these drugs because the money was coming in slow, some had the stock and weren't paying up. A couple of guys come in and they gave me a big argument, and we yelled and shouted.

And I finally went down and laid on the bed with my officer, and I said, poor man. Well, with a pad of paper by the bed, and I reached to dad, and I said, well, now you gotta break this program up into small pieces so they can't wiggle up. So I started right trying to bust it up in a little piece. And when I got the pieces set down on that piece of yellow paper, I put numbers on. It.

I was rather agreeably surprised when it came out at 12. I said, well, that's a good significant figure in Christianity and Mystic Lord. Then I noticed that instead of leaving the god I did to the land, I got it up front, but I didn't pay much attention to that. Looked pretty good. Well, next meeting comes along.

I've done all going on beyond the steps trying to amplify them in the right that chapter. And I took that chapter with the steps in the meeting and, boy, pandemonium broke loose. What do you mean by changing the program? What about this? What about that?

This thing is overloaded with God. We don't like this. You got these guys on their knees. Stand them up. This thing is, a lot of these doctors care to death as being God, but let's take God out of his power.

Such were the arguments we had. Well, out of that terrific hassle about the 12 steps, there did come a 10 strike. That argument caused the introduction of the phrase, which has been a lifesaver by 1,000. It was certainly none of my doing. I was on the pious side then, you see, still suffering from this big hot flashing line.

The idea of God as you understand him came out of that perfectly ferocious argument, and we put that into this. Well, little by little, the same ground down, and little by little, the drunk put in the money. And we kept an office open over in Newark, which was the office that was a fun business that I've tried to establish my friend in. The money ran low at times, though, and little Ruthie Hoch worked for no pay. We gave her plenty of stock in the works publishing, of course.

You know, all I had to do is tear it off the pad, 5 25. I have a week's salary here. So we got around to about January 1939. Somebody said, well, hey. We better test this thing out, and we better kinda make a pre publication copy of Paul Olithic or maybe a grand copy of this text and a few of these stories of this commandment.

Try it out, you know, on the preacher, on the doctor, Catholic committee on publication, psychiatrists, policemen, fish wise, housewives, drunk, everybody, just to see if we got anything that goes against the grain in any place, and also to find out if we can't get some better ideas here. So a considerable expense, we got this pre publication copy made, and we peddled it around, and the comment came back. Somehow it's very helpful. And when among other places to the Catholic committee on publications in New York, and at that time, we had only one Catholic member to take it there, and he just got out of the asylum and hadn't done anything to do with publish with preparing the book. And to our great surprise, is the promising people something later on.

Well, so the book had passed much. And the stories came in. Somehow we got them edited. Somehow we got the galley together. We got up to the printing contract.

Well, meanwhile, the drugs had been kinda slow on those subscription payments. The thing a little further on, payment. The thing a little further on, I was able to go up to Charlie's town where old doc Dilbert's held for. Charlie believed in us minded land. So we had put the slug on Charlie for $25100.

Charlie didn't want any stock. He wanted a promissory note. On the wolf not yet written. So we tapped Charlie for 25100, which we routed around through the alcoholic foundation so it could be tax exempt. You understand?

So also, we had blown in supporting 3 of us in an office to do this job in these 9 months, upwards of $6,000 and the monitor till was getting very low. Well, we still had to get it printed. So we go up to Cornwall Press, the largest printer in the world where we've made previous inquiry and we asked about printing and, oh, yes. They'd be very glad to do it. And, how many folks would we like?

Well, we said that's very hard to estimate. Of course, our membership is very small at the present time. We won't tell many of the membership, but after all, the Reader's Digest is going to print a plug about it. The 12,000,000 readers, this book should go out and carve out, mister president. And mister Printer was none other than Darryl, mister Blackwell, one of our great friends.

And mister Blackwell said, well, boys, how much of a down payment you wanna make? How many books would you like for this? Well, we said we'll be conservative. We would like to press 5,000 of just stock. And mister Blackwell said, well, what you're gonna use for money?

Well, we said, well, we won't need much. I imagine a few $100 on account. It'd be alright with you, mister Blackwell. After all, we're traveling very good company. You know, our friends, mister Rocksellers, and all that.

So Blackwell started printing the 5,000 books. The plates were made and the galleys were red. Jeez. All of a sudden, we thought in the reader's side. So we go up to the Raiders Digest.

We walk in on miss Kenneth Payne, and we said, mister Payne, we're already shoot. And mister Payne said, shoot. What? Oh, yes. He said, I remember you, mister Parkinson, mister Wilson.

You were the gentleman up here last fall. He said, I told you that I thought the Reader's Digest would be interested in this new work and in this book. He said right after you were here, I could submit our editorial board. And to my great surprise, they didn't like the idea at all, and I forgot to tell you. Boy, we had the drugs with 4,500 bucks in it.