A Conference elected by the groups took over the Traditions from the founders, and soon showed it could say no, even to Bill.
“A simple show of hands … marked the exact moment when A.A. came of age.”
The first General Service Conference met in New York in April 1951, at the Commodore Hotel. Its theme was “Not to Govern, but to Serve”: Bill W.’s choice, in Pass It On’s account, though a later history credits Bernard Smith. There were 35 delegates from the United States and Canada by Pass It On’s count (37 in the later history), about a third of them oldtimers. Most had won two-thirds of their area’s vote; in Boston, where nobody could, the names went into a hat and the delegate was drawn out. The trustees laid their own problems before the delegates, whose advice was “sometimes contrary to our own views,” Bill wrote, but “frequently right.” The Conference was on trial for five years.
Meanwhile Bill wrote the book this piece has drawn on most, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, published in 1953: an essay on each Step and each Tradition, with the stories behind them. He wrote the Traditions essays first. That job, he told Jack Alexander, the Saturday Evening Post reporter, was “more in the nature of objective reporting,” and the one on the Steps “definitely subjective.”
The trial ended at St. Louis, at AA’s twentieth-anniversary convention. At four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, July 3, 1955, before about 5,000 people in the Kiel Auditorium, Bill offered a resolution that the Conference become “the permanent successor to the founders.” “Amid a roar of acclamation from the floor, the Convention carried that resolution,” he wrote. Bernard Smith, the trustees’ chairman, then put it to the delegates, who approved it unanimously; Bill remembered a show of hands, while the book’s record of the session has an “Aye.” From that moment the Conference had “custody of A.A.’s Twelve Traditions,” and the resolution said they would never be changed “except by first asking the consent of the registered A.A. groups of the world.” The Big Book’s second edition, out that year, added the Traditions.
The delegates took their theme at its word. Before St. Louis they had decided AA should not seek a charter from Congress, and after it they voted Bill himself down, year after year, on the makeup of the board.
It’s four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in July 1955, in the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. About five thousand people fill the hall, and the delegates sit on the stage.
Since 1951 a General Service Conference, delegates elected by the groups, has been on trial. A few of its delegates were picked by drawing names from a hat. It has already said no to a charter from Congress.
Now Bill W. offers a resolution: the Conference should take over from AA’s founders. The convention roars its approval, and the delegates vote it through. From now on, they keep the Twelve Traditions.
AA, Bill writes later, is safe at last. Even from him. And the delegates mean it. Year after year, they even vote Bill down.
The Conference at work
The first Conference’s theme was “Not to Govern, but to Serve.” Four decisions show what that meant, for AA’s name, its money and its founder.
From Bill W.’s history (1957) and Pass It On (1984). The year of the charter decision comes from a later, unpublished history.
1951
At its first session the Conference suggested renaming the Alcoholic Foundation. To the delegates, Bill wrote, “the word ‘Foundation’ had stood for charity, paternalism, and maybe big money.”
Renamed the General Service Board, 1954
Pass It On, chapter 21; Bill W., 1957
1951
A public-health award was offered to Bill, and he asked that it go to AA instead. The trustees took it for AA but not its $1,000 cash grant, if the delegates agreed. Polled by mail, they were “overwhelmingly in favor.”
Accepted for AA, without the money
Pass It On, chapter 21
1953
To protect AA’s name, Bernard Smith proposed an act of Congress that would, Bill wrote, “put us in the same class as the Red Cross.” The Conference’s committee answered: “We believe that ‘spiritual faith’ and a ‘way of life’ cannot be incorporated.”
Turned down
Bill W., 1957. The year is from Bob P.’s unpublished history of 1985, which records the 1953 Conference rejecting incorporation.
1956–1966
Bill wanted alcoholics, not nonalcoholics, to hold most of the trustees’ seats. “Year after year, the Conference turned Bill down.” The change passed in 1966.
Put off for ten years
The fight, in Number One ManPass It On, chapter 25
For a closer look
The film script that nearly took AA to court; how the Twelve and Twelve was written; and the Traditions Lois W. adapted for Al-Anon.
Years earlier the trustees had tried to protect AA’s name by incorporating it in every state and every foreign country, a job that “finally bogged down in a mass of technicalities, red tape, and charters.” Then a large film studio came up with a script called Mr. and Miss Anonymous. Headquarters thought it lopsided and in poor taste. The threat of an injunction got it revised; otherwise, Bill admitted, “we might have sued.”
Bernard Smith, a lawyer, then suggested a charter from Congress, and the office in New York liked the idea. The Conference did not. Its committee’s report, written by a delegate, Bob T., a lawyer from Mississippi, warned that asking for legal rights would invite “possible legal regulation,” and ended by recommending that AA “does not incorporate.” Bill called it the “final foundation” of Tradition Ten.
Bill’s history doesn’t date the decision. A later history, Bob P.’s unpublished manuscript of 1985, as posted online, records the Conference of 1953 rejecting “incorporation of A.A. per se,” in the committee’s own words.
Bill wrote the book section by section, with help from Betty L. and Tom P., circulating each for criticism. AA Comes of Age says he began in early 1952; Pass It On has him starting right after the first Conference, in 1951.
Jack Alexander liked the Traditions essays, though he thought the Washingtonians got too little room (The Washingtonians tells their story). Reading the Steps, he told Bill to cut back on his dashes and his exclamation points.
The book came out in two editions, $2.25 for the groups and $2.75 in bookstores through Harper & Brothers, with AA keeping the copyright. In October 1953 Bill wrote, “We have shipped more than 25,000 to date.”
Lois W. adapted AA’s Traditions for the family groups, with Bill’s help, and the Al-Anon groups accepted them in September 1952. She kept them in AA’s order and, as she put it, “as much like A.A.’s as possible.”
Al-Anon had little experience of its own yet, she wrote, but AA’s had proved itself. The Traditions went to many AA groups too, for their approval, and AA’s response was warmer than Al-Anon’s own.
Al-Anon’s Eleventh Tradition named only press, radio and films until 1961, when it added television. AA’s short form, as the Big Book prints it, still reads “at the level of press, radio and films.”