Bill W. speaking in Forth Worth, TX

Oh, no. Bill wrote our 12 steps. Our individual recovery program some 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 I don't think that this day, you can tell us honestly what led that interview. It's true he had had a few years of experience in dealing with our colleagues. It's true he had talked to Eddy and about he had some experience one thing. We are not always going to have Bill. Bill can't be like you and me and live it 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.

Rain. 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 in all the joy of this super vacation, I first want to renew my thanks to all who have made it possible. And Jack and his commitment to each one of you and 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 and B members, but citizens of the world. We once more belong, so these trends are set. I'm deeply grateful to this hotel and the owners of it who have owners of it, who have powered us, especially me so superbly. Could you see that apartment I'm in, you'd wonder how the hell anybody could stay sober in it in any time. As for me, I come here in great gratitude not only for the many tokens of your generosity and reflections that I have received and had, but for what you are making possible for my sponsor, Eddie, just as much a founder of AA as I or any of the SCOR without whom this bank couldn't have been.

So again, I record my deep gratitude and I can find no better words to say that. I think I'm on the bill for tonight's show with a talk on the tradition. Twelve traditions of AA. But, you know, drugs like women have the prerogative or at least sees the prerogative of changing their mind or make any such thing. That's it.

It's a band for something very effective. I take the traditions 1 to 12 was being a little too grim. My worry a little. As a matter of fact, speaking of traditions, when they were first written back there in 1945 or 6, a sort of tentative guide to help us to hang together and function. Nobody paid any attention except a few beginners who wrote me what the hell they all bought.

Nobody paid the slightest. But little by little as these traditions got around and we had our clubhouse squabbled, our group ribs, 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 learned at once what they're about.

What kind of an outfit he really has landed in. By what principles his group and they as a whole are governed. But as I say the decade with all that, I just like to spin some yarns And they will be a series of yarns which 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 weren't a damn bit biblical.

I think sometimes you know the drugs have an idea that these old timers went around with the almost visible halos and long gowns and they were full of sweetness and light. Oh, boy. How inspired they were. Oh, yes. But wait a minute.

I closed the book here and really started in the living room of, doctor Andy Smith. As you know, I landed there in the summer of 35. A little group caught hold. I have Smithy briefly with it and he went on to 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. Hamburg, I got back to New York, a little more experienced, the group started there. And by the time we got around in 1937, the thing had leaked a little over into Cleveland and then began to move south in New York. But it was still we thought in those years of flying blind. A flickering candle indeed.

This might at any moment be snuffed 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 log. And we began to count notes. How many people had stayed dry in accident, in New York? Maybe a few in Sweden.

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. Know that when we grasp the import of these small statistics, Bob and I saw for the first time that this thing was going to succeed.

That God and his providence and mercy had thrown a new life into the dark caves where we and our kind had been and were still by dominion to us. Americans forget the election and ecstasy that sees us both. And then we fell happily talking and reflecting. We reflected that, well, a couple of score of them, but it did take him 3 long years. There has been a momentum out of failure, but a long time it's been taken just to sober up the handful.

How could this handful carry this message to all those who spilled it enough? Not all the drunks in the world could come to Akron or to New York. How could we transmit our message to them? By what it means? Go there.

Maybe we thought we should go to the old timers in each group, which 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 and Omaha and Chicago and to San Francisco and to Los Angeles, wherever it may be, and you give this thing a year and get a goof start. It had already got evidence by then, for we were just about to be moved out of the city hospital in Akron to make room for people with broken legs and ailing livers, just the hospitals were not too happy with us. We tried to run their business perhaps too much and besides, trunks were absolutely noisy in the night and there were other inconveniences which were all meant. So it was obvious that, you know, after being 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 drunk tanks and let us make the dough? So we needed some missionaries, Doctor. John. We needed a chain of drum tanks that got very clear, often clear to me, Bob is the conservative side 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 laid up with it all. Besides, we reflected, we'd have to get some kind of literature. Up to this moment, not a syllable. This program, so far as I know, was in writing. And it was a kind of a word-of-mouth deal.

You were with variations according to each man's or woman's fancy. Well, in a general way, we said, well, the fools have 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, make stock, you ought to talk this out to somebody, kind of a confession, you know. And you ought to make restitution for the harm.

As you said, you ought to make men's and all that kind of business. Well, you pray the best you could according to your life, if any. And that was the sum of the word-of-mouth program after that time. But as I say, variations on that were already appearing. How could we unify this?

Could we, out of our experience, trick for us? Yet obviously, if this movement was to propagate, 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, missionaries, chain of drop tanks, Hannibal. Well, even by then, he and I had 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 informed opinion and in the group's interest, could be better than our own.

We better consult folks. Well, there was 0, they're all nonalcoholic. His wife, T. Henry Woods, they're in Akron. They'd let us meet in their house after it got out of the Smiths' pile and got into theirs, and he was a great friend of ours.

So we called meeting of the Akron group, that is to say those who had been sober any great length of time, I think for this particular meeting, we spaced up about 18. And that evening, Bob and I told them that we were in with insight of success, that we thought this thing might go on and on and on. That a new light indeed was shining in our dark world. But how could this light be reflected and transmitted without being distorted and durable? 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 subsidies for the missionaries. I was pretty poor then. And we touched on the book. And root conscience consisted of 18 men, good and true. And the good and true men you could see right away were damned skeptical about it all.

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

Lots of what you say. But even within gun shot, this very out alcoholic to die like flies. And if this thing doesn't move any faster than it has in the next in the last 3 years, It may be another 10 before it gets to the outskirts accurate. How in God's name are we gonna carry this message to us? We've got to take some kind of chances.

We can't keep it so simple as it becomes an anarchy and get complicated. Have a lot of money to do these things. 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 some reluctance, well, Bill, if we need a lot of dough, you better go back to New York where there's plenty of it and you raise it.

Well, boy, that was the word I've been waiting for. So I scram back to the great city and I began to some people of means and describe this tremendous thing that had happened. And it didn't seem so tremendous to the people who mean It's always been. 35 or 40 front. So 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 liquidization, I got one hell of a freeze from the gentleman of Wells. 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 ulcer attack. Used to have them all the time. I had one at a 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 eating a salad house and home. In those days, we never believed in charging anything for anybody for anything. So Lois was earning the money.

I was being a missionary and the drugstore eating meals. That can't go on. We got have them drum 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 thought of my brother-in-law. He's a doctor and he is about the last person to talk to me, the one that just was way back. Anyway, the only one save, of course, dear Lois. Well, I said I'm going to stay Lenard. So I went up to see my brother-in-law, Leonard.

He pried out a little time between patients coming in up there, and I started my awful bellyache about these rich guys who wouldn't give us any dull for this great and glorious enterprise. So well on its way. And it seems to me that somehow you were tied up as a Rockefeller family in their chair. 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 it? Would you like me to do that?

Well, I hadn't tried the Rockefeller off, so I said, well, sure. Get more rain. On what slender dreads our destiny sometimes has. Remember, my brother-in-law said I knew a girl and I think she had an uncle. So the call was made.

Instantly, there came on to the other end of the wire, 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 dear old uncle, well, that he had a brother-in-law who was apparently having some success overing up could, the 2 of us come over there and see it?

Why? Certainly. That they're willing to come right over. So we go over Rockefeller Plaza. We go up that elevator, 54 flights, 56, I guess it is, and we want clump in the Mr.

Rockefeller's personal offices as to see Mr. Richards. And here here's this lovely, benign old gentleman who never the last had a kind of shrewd twinkle in his eyes. So I sat down and told him about our exciting discussion. The terrific chore 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.

I'm much interested. Would you like to have lunch with me? I said, well, now you know for a rising promoter, that sounded pretty good. Gonna have lunch with best friend of John Dean. Things were looking up.

My ulcer attack disappeared. So I had lunch with the old gentleman and leave over the thing again, and, boy, he's so warm and kind and friendly. Right at the close of lunch, he said, well, now, miss Wilson or Bill, if I can call you that, said, wouldn't you to have a larger meeting with some of my friends? There's Frank Amos. He's in the advertising business, but he was on a committee that advertising business, but he was on a committee that recommended Mr.

Rockefeller drop the prohibition business. And there's Leroy Chapman. He looked at him at throughout the call, his real estate. And there's Scott. He's Chairman of the Board of the Riverside Church.

And he said a number of people like that. I believe they'd like to hear this story. So a meeting with the rains, and it fell upon a winter's night, night late 1937. And the meeting was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. We called in postpaid a couple of the drawings from Akron, met the included, of course, adding the procession.

I came in with the New York contingent, 4 or 5. And to our astonishment, we were ushered into mister Rockefeller's personal boardroom right next to our 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.

Silberth was there that night too, and he tried to find 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, 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 drug tanks, the subsidized missionaries, and this question of a book or literature. Well, God moves in mysterious way and wonders to perform, but it didn't look like a wonder to me when mister Scott, head of a large engineering firm, chairman of the Riverside Church, looked it up and said, but gentlemen, that up to this point, this has been the work of goodwill only. No plans, no properties, 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 character? We want to do all we can. We're gathered for that, But what if he wants? Well, then the salesman all gave mister Scott the rubs. And we said, what?

Mister Scott, there are only 40 of us. It's taken 3 years. Why millions, mister Scott, will rot before this thing ever gets stolen unless we have money and lots of it. And we made out our case at last with these gentlemen for the missionaries to run the tank, the boat. So one of them volunteered higher up than IWISE and since the first group and the typical community situation was inaccurate, we directed their attention out there.

And Frank Hamish, still a trustee in the foundation, at his own expense, got on a frame, went out to Akron, made all sorts of preliminary inquiries around town about Doctor. Bob. All the reports were good except to the was drunk and 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 dollars 1,000 something like that. That would clear off Marty Donner Smith's place. It would get us a little rehabilitation place. 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 it would start the chain of hospitals. We'd have a few missionaries. We could get busy on the book, or a 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. It sounded real good. We were we were real glad.

Mr. Willard Richardson, our original contact, and so fast forward in John Jay Junior, as everybody called him. And I have since heard what went on in there. Mr. Rockefeller read the report called Willie Richardson Bank, And he said, somehow I am strangely stirred by all this.

This interests me a minute. 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 yet I'm so strangely stirred by it. Then came another turning point in our destiny.

When that man whose business is giving away money, said to Willard Richardson, Now he said, I won't be the one to spoil this by with money. You say 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 as you like. But please don't ask me for any more, but I want to hear what goes on.

Well, the 50,000 has entered from to 5. We raised the market on Smithee's house for about 3 grand that last 2, and Smithee and I commenced chowing on that 2. Well, that was a long way from the string of doctor. Thanks, folks, and the fishermen. What in thunder would we do?

Well, we had more meetings with our newfound friends. Amos, Richard, Scott, Chipman and those fellows who stuck with us to this this day, some other now being gone. And in spite of Mr. Rockefeller's advice, we again again convinced these folks that this thing needed a lot of money. What could you do without 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 Healy Hill Road's firm who was interested in the thing, and we are asking to draw an agreement of trust, a charter for something to be called the alcoholic foundation. Why we pick that one, I don't know. I don't know whether the foundation was alcoholic. It was the Alcoholic Foundation, not the Alcoholic Foundation.

No. And the lawyer was very much much confused because in the meeting in which we formed the foundation, we made it very plain that we drunks 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 1. Well, indeed, says the lawyer, what is the difference between an alcoholic and a nonalcoholic? And one of our smart drugs says, well, that's a sin.

A non alcoholic is a guy who can drink, and an alcoholic is a guy who can't drink. Well, said the lawyer, how do we state that legally? I wouldn't know. So at length, we have a foundation and a board, which I think then was of about 7, consisting of 4 of these new friends, including my brother-in-law, mister Richards, and Chipman Amos, and some of us drunk. I think Smithy went on the board, but I kind of coily stayed off thinking it, well, it would be more convenient later on.

So we had 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 it, solicit the money, again, from the very rich. And we had a list of them, and we had credentials and letters from friends of mister John d Rothfeld. How could you miss I asked you, sir? The foundation has been formed in the spring of 1938, and all summer, we solicited the race.

Well, they were either in Florida or they preferred the Red Cross or some other thought the drugs were disgusting. And we didn't get one damn cent in the whole summer of 1938 praise God. Foundation meeting. A couple of chapters of a proposed book in Roth and then 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 Johns Hopkins to try to put the bite on the ranch.

And we still had these 2 book chapters kicking around them. So Frank Amos said, well, now I know the religious editor down there in Congress. Old friend of mine, Gene Axeman. He 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, Jean, who has become a great friend of ours, looked at the chapters and said, why? He said, mister Wilson. He said, would you write a whole book like this? Or I said, well, it was more talk about it.

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 advance 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 boys. Well, if this guy Wilson eats up the 1500 bucks while he's doing this, bro. After the book gets out, it'll take a long time to catch up.

And if this thing gets gets a publicity, what are we gonna do with the inquiries? And after all, what's allowed the 10% royalty anyway? Well, the 1500 still look pretty big to me. Then we talked too. Now here's a fine publisher like Harvard's, but if this book, if and when done, should prove to be the main textbook for AA, why would we want our main means of propagation in the hands of somebody else?

Shouldn't we control this? Well, at that point, the book project really began to get positive, 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.

And we could sell stock certificates to all the drunks, get some money coming in which 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. They went out and made some more inquiries and we had another trustees meeting. They've gone to some publisher friends and the publisher says, well, these authors, they all got a crazy idea that they can publish their own books, but it ain't so. We don't believe it.

Well, and 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 from already what. Said, Bill, it's December.

Come on with me. We walk into a stationary store. We buy a pad of blank stock certificate. We ride across the top of them. Worst publishing company, par value, $25.

So we take a path of these stocks with them because we didn't bother to incorporate it. That had happened for several years. We took this advantage of Justice's next AA meeting, why you shouldn't make money with spirituality at all. And we said to the drugs, why look? This is saying it's gonna be essential.

Parker, you'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 stock certificates 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 drunks all gave us this stalling love. 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 are we said, if Harper will put money in this thing, why shouldn't you? Harper said it's gonna be a good book.

But the drop still gave us the stony stick also. Well, we had to think up some more. So we said, well, we've been looking about the printing cost of the books, boys. We get a book here, you know, 400, 450 pages 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 printing costs. So, boy, just think of it. When these books move out in carload lot, we're putting them for 35¢ and we're selling them direct mail. 3 for it. How can you load?

The drop still gave us the stony stick. No, sir. 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 drug that we could move high lots of millions of dollars?

So we get the idea. We'll walk to the reader's digest. And we got an appointment with mister Kenneth Payne, managing editor up there. Gee, I never forget the day we got off and train 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 Fossek. You know, we were traveling in good company with Spain. And the 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 has circulation of 12,000,000 readers.

And if we could only get a free ad of their coming book and the Reader's Digest, we really would move some, you see. Well, mister Paine said this sounds extremely interesting. I'm I I like this idea. Why? I think it will be an absolutely ideal ideal peace for the digest.

Well, how soon do you think this new book will be out, mister Wells? Well, I said we got a couple of chapters written and said if we can get right at it, miss Payne, 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 the digest would like something like this, mister Wilson. He said, I'll take it up to the editorial bar. And he said, when the time is right and you get 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 side.

And then my promoters and friend said, but mister Payne, will you mention the new book in the piece? Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Mister Paine mentioned the new book.

That's all we need. Then we went back to drugs and said, now look, boy. There are positively many of this. There. How can you miss?

5% is gonna be a good point. 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 in a piece, and boy, they'll move out by the carnival. How can you miss?

And after all, we only need 4 or 5,000 bucks. So then we began selling shares. We're publishing not yet incorporated. Far 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 Mount Alcoholic. And my promoter friend, who was to get a third interest, was a very important man in this transaction because he still working in that department store. So the preparation started. As the more chapters were done and we went into AA meetings in New York with these chapters in the rub.

Well, it wasn't like chicken and the rub. The boys didn't eat those chapters 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, over here, you got the holy rollers and 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 mission. 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. 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 they were terrific hassles about what should go in this book and whatnot. Meanwhile, we set drugs writing their stories or have a newspaper people that we had to write stories for them to go in the back of the book. We had an night, we'd have a text, you know, and then we'd have stories all about the drugs 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 to bed in Clinton Street wondering what to do this next chapter would be about.

And the idea came to me while we need a definite statement, a concrete principle that these drugs can't wiggle out. 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 ulcer was painting me, and while I was mad at how was 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 ulcer, and I said, poor man. Well, it was a pad of paper for the bed, and I reached for that. 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 little pieces. And when I got the pieces set down on that piece of paper, I put numbers on it and was rather agreeably surprised when it came out at 12. I said, well, that's a good significant figure in Christianity and Mystic Lore. Now I noticed that instead of leaving the god idea to the last, I've got it up front, but I didn't pay much attention to that. Looked pretty good.

Well, next meeting coming along. I've done on going on beyond the steps trying to amplify them in the right bad 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 drugs are scared to death try.

That argument caused the introduction of the phrase which has been a lifesaver by 1000. It was certainly none of my doing. I was on the pious side then, you see, still suffering from this big hot flash of life. 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. Little by little, the drums put in the money, and we kept an office open over in Newark, which was the office that was a funk business that I tried to establish my friend then. The money ran low at time zone. Little Ruthie Hoch worked for an old pay. We gave her plenty of stock in the works publishing, of course.

You'll be able to have to do is tear it off the pad, 525. We have a week's salary here. So we got around about January 1939. Somebody said, well, and we better test this thing out, and we better kinda make a pre publication copy of monolithic or mimeographed copy of this text and a few of these stories that it's doctor, Catholic committee on publication, psychiatrists, policemen, fishwives, housewives, drugs, 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 at considerable expense, we got this pre publication comment came back. Some of it very helpful. And when, among other places, to the Catholic 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 publishing with preparing the book. And to our great surprise is the promising people something later on.

Well, so the book had passed months and the stories came in and somehow we got them edited. Somehow we got the galley together. We got up to the printing contract. Well, meanwhile, the drunks have been kind of slow on those subscription payments. The thing a little further on, I was able to go up to Charlie's town where old doc Silvers held for us.

Charlie believes in us mightily. A laying. So we had put the slug on Charlie for $25100. Charlie didn't want any stock. He wanted a promissory note on the book not yet written.

So we tapped Charlie for 2,005 100, which we rooted around through the Alcoholic Foundation so it could be tax exempt. You understand? So how tall we had blown in supporting 3 of us in an office to do this job in these 9 months, upwards of $6,000 and month of the 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 made a 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 sell money the membership, but after all, the Reader's Digest is going to prison.

A clog about it. The 12,000,000 readers, this book should go out and carload mister president. And mister printer was none other than Darryl mister Blackwell, one of our great friends. And mister Blackwell said, well, boy, how much of a down payment you wanna make? How many books would you like?

I said, well, we said we'll be conservative. We'll we'll let you print 5,000 of them just to stop. 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 would be alright with you, mister Blackpool.

I told you after all, we're traveling very good company. You know, we're friends with mister Rockefeller and all that. So Blackpool started printing the 5000 book. The plates remain and the galleys were red. Gee, all of a sudden, we thought in the Reader's Digest.

So we go up to the Reader's Digest. We walk in on Kenneth Payne, and we said, mister Payne, we're all ready to shoot. And mister Payne said shoot 1. Oh, yes. He said, I remember you, mister and 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. But he said, right after you were here, I consulted 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 drops with $4,500 in it.

Charlie Towne's hook for $3,000 left in the bank. What in the doose would we do? Well, this fellow, Morgan Ryan, the good looking Irishman that had taken the Irishman that had taken the book, or the Catholic Committee on Publication has been in earlier time a good ad man. He said, I know Gabriel Heater. And Gabriel Heater is putting on these 3 minute, hard plug programs on the radio.

He says, if I don't get an interview with Gabriel Heath, maybe he'll interview me on the radio about all this. So our spirits rose once again. And then all of a sudden, we had a big chill. We thought, well, supposedly this Irishman got got drunk before Peter interviewed. So he went over to see Heder and lo and behold, Heder was interviewed.

And then we got still more scared. So we rented a room in the downtown athletic club, and we put Ryan in there with the day and night guard for 10 days. Meanwhile, boy, our spirits rose again. We could see those books just going out in the car. Then my promoter friend said, well, look.

We should see, you know, a follow-up on a big thing like this theater interview. That will be heard heard all over the country, national network. And I said, I think, folks, that the big market for this book are the doctors, the physicians. And he said, I suggest that we pitch the last $500 we got in the treasury on a postal card shop going to every position east of the Rocky Mountains. And on the postal code, we will say, hear all about alcoholic phenomenon on Gabriel here's program.

Stand 350 with the book at the now. I'm a short tour for alcohol. So we spent the last $500. The postal car and shower went out. They managed to keep Ryan sober, although he since hadn't made it.

All the drunks had their ears glued to the radio. The group market and Alcoholics Anonymous was already saturated because you see we had 49 stockholders and they all got a book free. And then we had 28 guys with storage and they all got a free book. So we'd run out the AA market. But we can see it moving up in parallels to these doctors and their patients.