The Deluge

When the Saturday Evening Post told America about A.A. in March 1941, the mail arrived like weather. Pleas for help, first in hundreds, then thousands, hit the little New York office — each one a drunk, or a drunk's wife, asking what to do tonight. The members did what members do: rounded up every A.A. woman and A.A. wife who could type and turned the floor above the Twenty-Fourth Street clubhouse into an emergency headquarters. It was not enough. The volunteers were tempted toward form letters, and the office refused, for a reason Bill W. set down (A.A. Comes of Age): "A warm personal communication must be sent to every prospect and his family." A dying man does not answer a circular. But the flood outlasted every free evening the members had, and Bill recorded the surrender: the correspondence had grown so great that "we saw we would have to have permanent paid help. Volunteers could not handle the situation." The groups were asked for a dollar per member per year, and, Bill wrote, "we were able to add two regular paid workers to the staff." Look hard at what was bought: typing. Two office workers, hired by A.A.'s own office, to answer mail. Basic labor, paid an honest wage — so the message inside the letters could stay free. It still works that way.