Akron and New York · 1937–1938
Eighteen drunks in Akron voted, just barely, for missionaries, hospitals and a book. Only the book survived.
“Such was the verdict of that meeting, and a mighty close shave it was.”
Late in 1937, Bill W. and Dr. Bob sat in Dr. Bob’s living room in Akron and counted. There had been failures galore. But twenty or more of the worst cases had been sober a couple of years, and upwards of forty alcoholics were staying dry.
Bill had big plans for spreading the word. Members could be paid as missionaries. A chain of AA hospitals might pay for them. And a book could carry the message to places they would never reach, and keep it from being garbled as it spread. Dr. Bob liked the idea of a book. The rest made him uneasy, so he suggested trying it all out on the Akron members.
Eighteen of them gathered at the house of T. Henry Williams, an Oxford Group man who let the alcoholics meet in his home. They heard Bill out, then worked him over. Paid missionaries would kill their good will with other drunks. A hospital business would look like a racket. Publicity would swamp them. Some didn’t want even a book: the apostles, they said, had needed no printed matter.
A vote was taken. “By the barest majority,” Bill wrote, the meeting backed the whole works. (Lois W. remembered it backing only the book; Go deeper has both.) Nobody volunteered to help. If Bill needed money, he could go back to New York, where there was plenty, and raise it himself.
He couldn’t. The rich he asked preferred tuberculosis, cancer and the Red Cross. In December John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s advisers heard the plans and asked the same questions the Akron minority had. Rockefeller gave $5,000 to tide the two founders over, and no more. In May 1938 their friends set up the Alcoholic Foundation to raise money from others. Its treasury stayed empty.
It’s the fall of 1937, in the living room of T. Henry Williams in Akron, Ohio. Eighteen alcoholics sit and listen while Bill W. lays out his plans: paid missionaries, a chain of hospitals, and a book. Dr. Bob backs him, especially on the book.
Then the drunks work them over. Pay a man to carry the message, and the drunks will stop trusting him. Run a hospital, and everyone will call it a racket. The apostles, somebody says, didn’t need any printed matter.
A vote is taken. By the barest majority, Bill would remember, the meeting gives him the whole works, and nobody offers to help. If he wants money, he can raise it in New York.
He tries, and fails. Of the three plans, only the book will ever happen.
Three plans
Bill took three plans to Akron. The minority who voted against him turned out to be right about two of them.
Plans and objections from Bill W.’s account in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1957.
Plan 1
Members paid to carry the message to alcoholics who could never get to Akron or New York. The minority said paid workers would kill AA’s good will with alcoholics. Rockefeller’s advisers asked whether money would create a professional class.
Never tried. AA, the Eighth Tradition says, “should remain forever nonprofessional.”
Bill W., 1957; the Twelve Traditions
Plan 2
AA’s own hospitals, whose earnings might pay the missionaries. Frank Amos, investigating for Rockefeller, even looked at a large empty house in Akron that Dr. Bob might run. The minority said everybody would call it a racket.
Never built. Members worked inside other people’s hospitals instead.
The flower room, in I Just Work HereBill W., 1957
Plan 3
A book of experience that could reach places they would never visit, and keep the message from being garbled. Some in Akron said the apostles hadn’t needed any printed matter.
The only one that happened, in April 1939.
6 · Shoot what?Bill W., 1957
December 1937–1938
Frank Amos recommended $50,000. Rockefeller gave $5,000 and asked never to be asked for more. His reasons, Bill wrote, were “identical with those advanced by the Akron group’s minority.”
Dr. Bob’s mortgage paid off, and $30 a week each while it lasted
The basket, in Keep Coming BackBill W., 1957
Group conscience
Bill came to be thankful for the minority he outvoted. They were right about money and missionaries, and if they had won outright, he thought, AA might have got nowhere. He saw the group conscience already at work.
For a closer look
When the founders counted, and what the vote decided; AA’s first try at raising money; and the trouble with defining an alcoholic in law.
Bill dated the count to a November day in 1937. A hard core of what he called last-gasp cases, twenty or more, had been sober a couple of years. Upwards of forty, all told, were staying dry. Elsewhere in the same book he calls it some two-score.
Quoted in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Bill remembered that when they saw the total, they “wept for joy.” Lois W.’s memoir, Lois Remembers, published in 1979, puts the count in October, with 40 members averaging two years’ sobriety.
The accounts part on what the vote decided. In Bill’s history and in Good Oldtimers, a bare majority of the eighteen accepted the whole package. Lois remembered it otherwise: to Bill’s surprise and disappointment, the group “endorsed only the book project,” and some members didn’t approve even of that. Either way, the book was the only one of the three plans that came to anything.
Back in New York, Bill and a couple of salesmen from the group went down a list of wealthy prospects and got nowhere. Most seemed to think tuberculosis, cancer and the Red Cross were better charities than drunks who had brought their troubles on themselves. Bill called it AA’s first, and last, great crusade for money.
He complained about it to his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, who remembered an old acquaintance, Willard Richardson, who ran John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s private charities. That call led to Rockefeller’s board room.
The Alcoholic Foundation was to have alcoholic and nonalcoholic trustees, with the nonalcoholics always in the majority by one, so that donors would know who held the purse strings. A young lawyer, John Wood, asked them to define each.
An alcoholic, they said, was a sick person who couldn’t drink at all. A nonalcoholic was “a perfectly well man who could drink if he wanted to!” That made no legal sense, so Wood drew up a simple trust agreement instead, signed in May 1938.
The first board had five trustees: Willard Richardson, Frank Amos and Dr. Strong, with Dr. Bob and a New York member. The New York member soon got drunk and was replaced; getting drunk meant resigning. The Foundation is now AA’s General Service Board.