Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

alcoholic for another.

A few months after the break with the Oxford Group, January

1938, I was brought into the New York fellowship from Washington

by Fitz Mayo, whom I had known since boyhood. I was enticed to

New York by the existence of this new group and a small job that

Hank Parkhurst gave me in a little business he and Bill had gone

into on the side. [Honor Dealers] When I arrived in New York I

found myself thrust into this new group of three or four

actively dry alcoholics, who at that time had no group name, or

real creed or formula.

Within the next two or three months, things really started

popping. Hank, with his promotional ideas, started to push Bill

into writing a formula, the trio finally decided a book should

be written on our activities and this was in June 1938. Bill was

naturally given the job of writing the book for he was the only

one who had made any real conclusive study of our problem. From

what I can remember, Bill's only special preparation for this

was confined to the reading of four very well known books, the

influence of which can clearly be seen in the AA Book. Bill

probably got most of his ideas from one of these books, namely

James' "Varieties of Religious Experience." I have always felt

this was because Bill himself had undergone such a violent

spiritual experience. He also gained a fine basic insight of

spirituality through Emmet Fox's "Sermon on the Mount," and a

good portion of the psychological approach of AA from Dick

Peabody's "Common Sense of Drinking."

It is my opinion that a great deal of Bill's traditions came

from the fourth book. Lewis Browne's "This Believing World."

From this book, I believe Bill attained a remarkable perception

of possible future pitfalls for groups of our kind for it

clearly shows that the major failures of religions and cults in

the past have been due to one of three things: Too much

organization, too much politics, and too much money or power.

Bill started his actual writing of our book in the later part of

June 1938 in Hank Parkhurst's office in Newark, with Hank's

secretary, Ruth Hock, taking dictation. About a month later Bill

had completed two chapters. Each had been brought up at the

Clinton Street Tuesday night meetings. Bill would read what had

been written to the group as a whole and then pull apart and

suggestions added by all those present. When these two chapters

were rewritten, we were all very elated because we felt we were

well on our way to saving all drunks everywhere.

With these two chapters in hand, and without any introduction of

any kind, Bill went to see the editors of Harper's Publishing

Company. Harpers immediately caught fire and offered Bill, on

the strength of this one visit, a $1,500 advance payment to

finish the book, plus regular author's royalties. Bill said

later that he almost succumbed to this offer because that was

big money in those days and we were all broke. When Bill

returned and reported this offer, Hank said, "If it's worth that

much for just two chapters from an unknown author, it's worth

easily a million to us," and the trio immediately determined

that Bill would finish writing the book and our Group would do

the publishing.

In August, promotion minded Hank formed our first corporation

for handling this book, to be named "100 Men Corporation" and he

provided that two-thirds of the corporation would belong to him

and Bill, the other third to be sold on shares at $25 par to

friends and members. He announced that this third should easily

bring us in $10,000, which was to see us through publication.

Our idea at this time was that the book alone would save the

drunks in the majority of cases, by self-education. Then it was

decided that there would be some that the book alone would not

do the job for, so another corporation was founded at the same

time called, "The Alcoholic Foundation." The Foundation's

function would be the disbursement of funds and the

establishment of alcoholic "farms" all over the country. The

money for this, of course, we would get after the sale of the

first million books. Then we were faced with the problem of who

was to go on this new foundation. At this time, August 1938, we

had only four men dry over a year in New York. These were Bill,

Hank, Fitz and Paul Rudell, so to these four Dr. Bob Smith of

Akron was added.

During this time of promotion, corporations and other such

activities, Bill continued his writing of the book, averaging

about a chapter a week. These were made up in triplicates, one

copy going to Akron, one to the Clinton Street meetings and the

third reserved as an office copy. These chapters, as completed,

would be ranked and mauled over in the two group meetings,

changes were noted in the margins and returned weekly to the

Newark office. About the middle of October 1938 the manuscript

of the book was finished and the personal stories that appear in

the AA book, in its present form, were contributed by individual

members from Akron and New York. As previously mentioned, the

name of the book at this time was "100 Men" and the new

corporation had finally raised, through forty-nine members in

New York and Akron, about $3,000.

We then submitted the book to Dr. Yussel, well-known critic of

New York University, this was about the 1st of November and he

was paid $300 to edit the book. Practically nothing was done to

the personal stories of the individual members and there was

less than 20% deletion from the original manuscript. When Yussel

returned the book we found our "100 Men Corporation" broke, the

$3,000 gone. The only concrete assets we had besides the

manuscript were some blank copper plates to be used in printing.

We also found our name "100 Men" inadequate for we had forgotten

the ladies and we already had one girl, Florence Rankin, on the

ball. In one or our discussion meetings at Clinton Street other

names were brought up for consideration.

Most prominent of these were "This Way Out," "Exit," "The End of

the Road" and several others. Finally we hit on our present

name. Nobody is too sure exactly where it came from but it is my

opinion that it was suggested by one of our newer members, Joe

Worden, who had at one time been considered quite a magazine

promotion genius, and who had been given credit for starting the

New Yorker magazine. Hank and Bill finally decided on the name

"Alcoholics Anonymous" in the latter part of November 1938.

About this time we almost had a disaster in our still wobbly

group but it later turned out to be a Godsend. Bill and Hank had

distributed quite a few copies of the original manuscript to

doctors, psychiatrists and ministers to get a last minute

reaction. One of these went to Dr. Howard, Chief psychiatrist

for the State of New Jersey. He became greatly interested and

enthusiastic, but was highly critical of several things in the

book, for after reading it he told us there was entirely too

much "Oxfordism" and that

it was too demanding. This is where the disaster nearly overtook

us, for it nearly threw Bill into a terrific mental uproar to

have his "baby" pulled apart by an outside "screwball"

psychiatrist, who in our opinion knew nothing about alcoholism.

After days of wrangling between Bill, Hank, Fitz and myself,

Bill was finally convinced that all positive and "must"

statements should be eliminated and in their place to use the

word "suggest" and the expression "we found we had to."

Another thing changed in this last rewriting was qualifying the

word "God" with the phrase "as we understand Him." (This was one

of my few contributions to the book.) In the final finishing the

fellowship angle was enlarged and emphasized. After many

arguments and uproars, the manuscript was finally finished,

complete, in December 1938. We now had one real problem - no

money.

It was about this time that the "100 Men Corporation" was closed

out and a new one started named "Works Publishing Company." This

name derived from a common expression, used in the group, "It

works!!" Those that had stock or

interest in the old corporation maintained the same priority in

the new one. (Editor's Note: Three years later the original

stock subscribers returned all their shares and interest in

"Works Publishing Company" to "The Alcoholic Foundation." Today

no individual has any financial interest in either the Alcoholic

Foundation or in Alcoholics Anonymous.)

Then a new wrinkle was devised by our master-minds, we would

make a couple of hundred multilith copies of the finished

manuscript and these we would use as a promotion for more stock

selling and at the same time to get possible

endorsement of well-known people, particularly, in the fields of

religion and medicine. These copies were distributed to the

Works Publishing Company shareholders and possible prospective

stockholders. With these multilith copies we sent out a

prospectus for our corporation and a note saying that the copy

could be purchased for $3.50 and a copy of the book, if when

printed, would be sent gratis to each purchaser. From this

venture, we did not get one new stockholder. However, the copies

did get into all sections of the country.

One created quite an amusing incident for it got into the hands

of a patient in a psychopathic hospital in California. This man

immediately caught fire and religion all in one fell swoop. He

wrote and told us about the wonderful release he had from

alcohol through our new Alcoholics Anonymous multilith. Of

course all of us in New York became highly excited and wires

bounced back and forth between us and our new convert regarding

this miracle that happened 3,000 miles away. This man wrote the

last personal history in the book while he was still in

California called the "Lone Endeavor". Our New York Groups were

so impressed by his recovery that we passed the hat and sent for

him to come East as an example. This he did, but when the boys

met him at the bus station the delusion faded, for he arrived

stone drunk and as far as I know, never came out of it.

The major result of the multilith was our first important

endorsement outside of our group and friends. It came from Dr.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the Riverside Baptist Church in

New York and a nationally-known speaker and writer.

So here we were again, broke, only more so!

Bill came to our rescue, as usual, by floating a $2,500 loan

from Dr. Towne, who already had a good slice in the original

corporation. With the blank copper plates and Dr. Towne's loan,

Hank prevailed on the Cornwall Press, in February 1939, to make

8,000 copies for our first edition. The book was purposely made

to look bulky for two reasons -- to give it an air of

intellectual authority and to make it look like a lot for the

money. The dust jacket, with its familiar red, black, yellow and

white, was designed by one of our artist members, Ray Campbell,

whose story in the book is called "An Artists Concept". Although

Cornwall did print these 5,000 books in April 1939, they still

felt that we were quite short in our down payment and insisted

that the books be kept in a bonded warehouse and withdrawn only

on the payment of $2.00 per copy. Our method of distributing the

books was to get possibly ten copies out at a time, and the

members would individually buttonhole libraries, doctors and

others for sales. Funds received from these purchasers were in

turn used to buy additional copies, which in their turn were

sold in the same way. About the only bookstores we could

interest at the start was Brentano's in New York, who did gamble

on a half a dozen copies. Five of the very first books were

presented to Dr. Fishbein, editor of the American Medical

Journal to whom Dr. Towne had lauded AA. Dr. Fishbein had

promised to give us a real buildup in the Journal but when his

review appeared, it merely said that AA was nothing new and had

no real significance to the medical profession. So another

balloon busted.

In June, Bill and Hank decided to try another promotion stunt -

this was to put a 2" x 3" advertisement in the New York Times

Book Review. This cost us $250 and I have often wondered where

the money came from. We thought we had the real answer to

publicity this time, and we all sat back and started guessing

and betting among ourselves on the number of requests we would

get for our million-dollar book. The estimates ranged from 2,000

to 20,000 copies, but we were due for another disappointment, as

only two copies of the book were sold in spite of our seven-day

free trial offer.

It was about this time that we got our first really active girl

member, Marty Mann, who took the AA program while under

restraint at Blythwood Sanitarium. Marty's efforts on behalf of

women alcoholics in the early days were of inestimable value and

today she is one of the most indefatigable workers on behalf of

AA in the country.

It was also in June of this year that we made our first contact

with the Rockerfeller Foundation. This was arranged by Bert

Taylor, one of the older members, who had known the family for

years in a business way. Dr. Richardson, who had long been

spiritual advisor for the Rockerfeller family, became very

interested and friendly, and Bill and Hank made frequent visits

to him, with Hank on one side asking for financial help and Bill

on the other insisting on moral support only.

Our first national publicity was arranged through one of our new

members, Morgan Ryan in August 1939. This was a spot on the "We

The People" radio program, which was then very popular. Again we

were disappointed, for this publicity brought us only a dozen

inquiries and one book sale. This was despite the fact that we

sent out 10,000 post cards to doctors and ministers in the New

York area announcing the broadcast. It was also in August that a

real calamity befell Bill, for he and Lois were evicted from

their home on Clinton Street. This had once been Lois' girlhood

home and was AA's first home. Little did Bill and Lois know that

for the next two years they would be homeless, dependent on the

hospitality of other AA's.

About this time, too, another AA Group was launched in

Cleveland, Ohio. The founder was Clarence Snyder who had

received his AA Indoctrination with Dr. Bob in Akron. Clarence

and his wife, Dorothy, obtained our first newspaper publicity,

which was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in September 1939. As a

result of this publicity the Cleveland Group, within thirty

days, became temporarily the largest group in the country.

Our first medical endorsement also came in September from Dr.

Richard Smith, Superintendent of Rockland State Hospital in New

York. His praise was the result of our work with alcoholics in

the hospital there over a period of

approximately six months. The first national magazine to give us

a break was Liberty, in October 1939, with a two-page article

labeled "Alcoholics and God". This article brought in about a

thousand inquiries and sold possibly one hundred books. My guess

would be that as a summary for the year 1939, we had three

active groups with a total membership of less than 200 and a

gross book sale for eight months of less than 500. By the end of

1939 also, AA was beginning to get some real recognition. At the

end of December that year John D. Rockerfeller, Jr. issued

invitations to some 200 of his closest associates and friends to

a dinner to be held February 8th 1940 at the Union League Club

in New York. The invitations stated that the purpose of the

dinner was to have these people meet a group of people on whom

Rockerfeller had become interested, no name announced. The

dinner and the publicity were arranged by Rockerfeller's

personal publicity man, Ivy Lee. Sixty actually attended this

dinner, some of the more prominent being Dr. Fosdick, Owen

Young, Wendell Wilkie, Sorenson of the Ford interests and Dr.

Foster Kennedy, President of the Psychiatric Association. Before

this dinner we felt it would solve all our problems, especially

the financial ones, for Ivy Lee himself estimated the personal

wealth of those present to be well over two billion dollars.

Fate was against us again despite glowing talks by Dr. Fosdick,

Kennedy, Nelson Rockerfeller and Bill, the total contributions

to Alcoholics Anonymous were less than $1,500, $1,000 of which

came from the Rockerfeller Foundation. (All of these

contributions were later returned in full.)

Still we learned later that we had gained a great deal more than

money from this dinner, for thereafter the Rockerfellers allowed

their name to be publicly used in connection with AA. It has

always been my contention that this was the real turning point

in the history of AA.

During the next six months practically the whole country was

spotted with AA groups. Between February and June 1940 Fitz and

myself started groups in Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore.

About the same time Earl Treat migrated from the Akron Group to

start one in Chicago, and Arch Trowbridge also went from Akron

to Detroit. It was also during these months that Larry Jewell

left Cleveland and organized a group in Houston, Texas. Kay

Miller, a non-alcoholic but the wife of one of the early Akron

members moved into Los Angeles and started their group. In the

Fall of 1940 a Jewish member named Meyerson, a traveling

salesman, started AA groups in Atlanta, Georgia and

Jacksonville, Florida.

The next outstanding event in Alcoholics Anonymous growth was

the publication of the Saturday Evening Post article. This was

mostly arranged through the efforts of two well-known

Philadelphia physicians, Dr. C. Dudly Saul and Dr. A. Wiese

Hammer. They had gained the interest of Judge Curtis Bok, one of

the owners of the Saturday Evening Post and in the early days of

Philadelphia AA, Judge Bok had been a constant visitor to the

group. It was in a large part due to his interest that Jack

Alexander was assigned to do a feature article on Alcoholics

Anonymous in August 1940. We were later told that the editors

also thought Alexander would be a good man to possibly "expose"

this new "screwball" organization. However, Alexander did

promise that he would not write his article until he had visited

groups and seen AA in action. He traveled from New York and

Philadelphia as far West as St, Louis and attended AA meetings.

His experience with these groups made him so enthusiastic over

the AA setup that the article he wrote was responsible for the

largest sale of a single issue of the Post in its history. The

Alcoholic Foundation office in New York reports that over 10,000

inquiries were received from this one article. Even today people

coming into AA groups in various parts of the country tell us

that their first knowledge of Alcoholics Anonymous was the

Saturday Evening Post article by Jack Alexander.

It is my guess that in March 1941 there were less than 1,000

active AA members in the Country and the following year we added

at least seven or eight thousand members.

(Editors Note: From this point on there is little the writer can

add to add to the all over picture of AA's progress for this can

be seen more clearly through the eyes of the New York office and

the original group.)

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++++Message 1707. . . . . . . . . . . . SOBRIETY TIME

From: ralpw2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . 3/14/2004 5:53:00 AM

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RECENTLY ONE OUR MEMBERS IN AUSTRALIA DIED AFTER 52 YEARS OF

SOBRIETY. LAST YEAR HIS WIFE DIED AFTER 53 YEARS OF SOBRIETY. DOES

ANYONE KNOW OF ANY MARRIED COUPLE WHO HAD MORE THAN 105 YEARS OF

SOBRIETY BETWEEN THEM.

RALPH W.

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++++Message 1710. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Rowland Hazard

From: Roger Dowdy . . . . . . . . . . . . 3/13/2004 7:05:00 PM

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Several questions/myths regarding Rowland Hazard recently came up at our

District meeting. I'm hoping the more knowledgable folks in AAHistoryLovers

can help to clarify/dubunk them...

1. Did Rowland initially want to work with Freud and then Adler before going

to Jung?

2. Is it true Rowland got drunk on the return voyage after working with Dr.

Jung and he simply turned right around, making it a round trip? or was he

sober in the States for a short period of time prior to returning?

3. Also, what was the name of the ship?

Many thanks in advance,

Roger

_________________________________________________________________

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++++Message 1712. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Re: Rowland Hazard

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 3/15/2004 9:00:00 AM

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Hi Roger and Group,

Re Rowland Hazard, I may be the culprit responsible for suggesting that

Rowland wanted to see Freud before consulting Jung. In "New Wine," page 14,

I mentioned that a Howard T. in Detroit used to say that. It's mere

speculation, but it is reasonable to believe that Freud would have been

first choice with most Americans at that time. But 1931 was a bad year for

Freud as he suffered terribly from cancer and would have had trouble seeing

patients.

Rowland's son told me they traveled to Europe on the Isle de France, but

this is not for certain either.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

Mel Barger

[e-mail]

----- Original Message -----

From: "Roger Dowdy"

To:

Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 7:05 PM