So there must be an invoice or a receipt from that agency for that work sitting somewhere in the sealed Alcoholics Anonymous archives, and perhaps also a receipt for the postage stamps.
Can we see those invoices and receipts? No. Why not?
That sounds suspiciously like a bogus story to explain the disappearance of $500.
"We were so hard-working that we sent a postcard to every doctor east of the Mississippi! That's where the money went."
Yeh, right.
("Is that why you had to work all night, Dear? Gee, and I thought it was because you were thirteenth-stepping that pretty girl from the meeting. How silly of me...")

But it just gets better and better: Nan Robertson wrote in her book, Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous, that

      Bill Wilson and his friends speculated how they would handle the flood of inquiries. At a cost of $500, they had typed and mailed out 20,000 cards to notify people in the medical profession about the broadcast. They waited three days, to give enough time for the cards to pile up in the Alcoholic Foundation's post-office box. Then they took empty suitcases down to the post office to carry home all the replies.
      "When they unlocked the box," said Lois, "they couldn't believe their eyes — only twelve cards. Five hundred bucks had gone down the drain."
Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous, Nan Robertson, 1998, page 75.

Oh, they typed the cards? That created a real bottle-neck. They couldn't have had twenty or thirty alcoholics just sitting around hand-writing the addresses on the postcards day and night until the job was done. They had to have somebody typing the cards. How many typewriters did they have? How many people in A.A., besides Ruth Hock, even knew how to type? How long would it take one typewriter to type 20,000 post cards? If poor over-worked Ruth Hock had to type the addresses on all 20,000 of the cards herself, it would have taken a long, long time. (Remember that she would have had a clanky mechanical non-electric typewriter, perhaps a huge, heavy old Underwood. They are much slower than an electric.) If they went and rented a few more typewriters, then they also needed to find and hire some more typists to go with them — several of them, because they would have needed typists working around the clock to get all of the postcards addressed and mailed well before the radio broadcast. Their tiny "cubicle of an office", as Bill Wilson called it, didn't have room for more than 2 or 3 typists, because they probably only had one desk in there.

How could they solve all of those problems? The only reasonable answer, if they really did that mailing, is that they must have had a printer print up 20,000 postcards with the message on them, and then they hired some service to address the cards for them. Who? Where is the receipt? Why wasn't that large expense listed individually, like the much smaller items numbered 5, 6, and 10 through 13, rather than just being lumped with other stuff like the radio broadcast which did not really cost anything?

The "W. von Arx" item is very odd. It is large, ($635 in 1939 is $7499 in today's dollars,) and it is completely unexplained. The balance sheet says that Wallace von Arx was still owed $190 more, for "advances payable", but the Receipts and Disbursements page doesn't show him as having paid anything in. (??!!) Apparently, we are supposed to believe that he was a sponsor or supporter who advanced a total of $825 in cash, which is $9743.25 in today's dollars, but his contributions were not recorded anywhere in the accounting?! Those guys sure had some funny methods of keeping books. Anyway, no matter how we look at it, there is something very wrong here, something wrong to the tune of $9743 in today's dollars. If Mr. von Arx paid that money in, then it went somewhere that the books don't show. Where? Into whose pocket? Was there really a "Mr. von Arx"? [Yes, see the letters.] Was this large payment to "Mr. von Arx" just one of Bill Wilson's alter-egos making a withdrawal? Or did Mr. von Arx really advance $825 in cash, and Bill figured that it was about time that he got paid again, so he pocketed the money instead of putting it into the kitty and recording the transaction? [Probably the latter.]

And while we are looking at that balance sheet, note that below the name "Wallace von Arx" there is an F. E. Miller who also advanced $200. (That's $2362 in Y2K dollars.) But his money is also not shown as receipts on the Receipts and Disbursements page either. Where did that money go? This "financial report" has as many holes in it as a piece of Swiss cheese.

The furniture expenditure is excessive, and unbelievable. Bill Wilson described the office as "our little cubicle of an office at 17 William Street, Newark". Well, $2834 (in year 2000 dollars) for a used desk, a used table, a few old chairs, and maybe an old filing cabinet to go into that "little cubicle" is obviously grossly inflated, obviously untrue. Somebody is padding the expense account... Still, I'll credit this money to Hank, not Bill. One biographer of Bill Wilson says that Henry Parkhurst got this money; that 'Hank' had scrounged up some old furniture from his other business and sold it to Works Publishing. The story is that, after Hank relapsed, he came around drunk, demanding payment for the furniture a second time, and Bill Wilson gave him $200 for it in a combination deal that also required that Hank sign over his 200 shares of "Works Publishing" (really, the "100 Men Corporation") stock. (So Hank really got $200 for his shares of stock...)¹

The "Wm. Cochran" item is highly deceptive, an outright lie. The text of the report explains that William Cochran was paid back $400 of his original $1000 investment, but that Mr. Cochran generously donated that refund to The Alcoholic Foundation. Well, the moneys of The Alcoholic Foundation and "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation") were all mixed together here, so the money should never have really left the company at all. It should have just moved from the left-hand pocket to the right-hand pocket. Notice that the General Expenses item was simply split evenly between the two companies. But that $400 was not applied to The Alcoholic Foundation's half of the general office expenses, which is what should have been done with it. So where did the money go? How about, "Bill Wilson's pocket"?

And speaking of general office expenses, both The Alcoholic Foundation and "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation") managed to rack up the equivalent of $9668 each, (in year 2000 dollars,) in postage stamps and bubble gum expenditures? Huh? For 15 months of operation?

Specifically, the report lists "postage, stationery, telephone, office supplies, car expense, proofreading, book returns, box rentals, printing, commissions, incorporation expense." The accountant just split all such expenses between "Works Publishing" and The Alcoholic Foundation, which is grossly inappropriate. Was The Alcoholic Foundation printing and requiring proof-reading? No, "Works Publishing" (really, the "100 Men Corporation") was printing the book. Were they both incorporated in the same legal procedure? Not likely. Did The Alcoholic Foundation pay commissions? For what? It didn't sell books, or anything else, "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation") did. It looks like the excessively large "office expenses" of Works Publishing were being masked by assigning half of them to The Alcoholic Foundation even though they didn't share a lot of those expenses. But the Alcoholic Foundation didn't reimburse "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation") for those expenses... It would have been illegal for the for-profit corporation "Works Publishing" (really, the "100 Men Corporation") to be paying all of the office expenses of the non-profit corporation The Alcoholic Foundation. That is the felony called "raiding the assets of a corporation" — cheating the stockholders of "Works Publishing" or the "100 Men Corporation".

In any case, those numbers look padded. $19,300 (in year 2000 dollars) in small miscellaneous office expenses for an impoverished little three-person office that was supposedly operating on a shoe-string budget for only fifteen months? Remember that those office expenses did not include the high-priced items like rent or salaries. This was just pencils, paper, stamps, the telephone, car expenses, etc., and maybe the cost of incorporation. (The corporation named "Works Publishing" was not incorporated until 1940. The "100 Men Corporation" was never incorporated.) For a large part of the fifteen months in question, this was mostly just two or three people sitting in the office, writing, editing, and typing a book. And for part of that time, they were totally broke, and the business was shut down, and spending nothing. Read the quotes further down this page...

When we add up the "Bill Got" column, the sum is $8394.62. That is money that Mr. Wilson might have stuffed into his pockets. Multiply that by 11.8148 to translate it into year 2000 dollars, and that is $99,180.76. Not a bad haul for a down-and-out alcoholic. Maybe that explains how he could drive a Lincoln while he was "unemployed and dead broke."

Now, in truth, I suspect that he got less than that, probably only half or two-thirds of that, filched here and there, which is more in line with what the anonymous author figured out by his own methods of calculation. But that is still a lot of money. And Henry Parkhurst might have gotten part of the missing money. Bill Wilson and Henry Parkhurst also had another business, Honor Dealers, which was a gasoline-buying cooperative, which was going broke. Some of the missing moneys might have been sunk into that financial black hole.

There is still one more large dangling item here: the text of the financial report says that the new financial managers, Herbert Taylor, President, and Horace Crystal, Vice-President, who took over after Bill bankrupted the business, had to sell more stock and also borrow $1000 to cover expenses, just to stay in business until they could sell a bunch of books. (That's how there could be $828 left in the bank account after Bill said that all of the money was spent.) But that money does not appear anywhere in the Receipts and Disbursements page. So that new money was covering invisible expenses, which were not listed above, like Bill Wilson's hand... Or, if the new money really did go to pay for a bunch of the expenses listed above, like the printer's invoices — so that they could get the books from the printer — then it was only because somebody had already taken an equal amount of the old money that was supposed to pay for those same expenses...

William G. Wilson in 1949

(Bufe seems to have overlooked the detail that Wilson and Parkhurst sold stock in The One Hundred Men Corporation, not Works Publishing. But The One Hundred Men Corporation was never incorporated — it just sort of quietly vanished — so the comments about violations of securities laws still hold true.)

On top of all of this, Bill Wilson stole the copyright of the Big Book when he filed for the copyright, claiming sole authorship of the book, when the book really had at least 50 authors, thus breaking his promise to all of the co-authors that the book would belong to the group. And then Bill blackmailed AAWS into giving him and Dr. Bob royalties for life in trade for that copyright, thus breaking his promise that the profits would go to "The Alcoholic Foundation".

Note that Bill Wilson was not supposed to be getting any royalties, and neither was Dr. Bob. The original deal was that Bill was to be paid $1000 cash to write the opening chapters of the Big Book, just as contract labor, with no royalties to accrue. See the prospectus. (Bill actually got $1558 for the work, and then he seems to have stolen a lot of other money to go with it.) All profits from sales of the book were supposed to go to the stockholders of the One Hundred Men Corporation. But since Bill and Henry Parkhurst each owned 1/3 of the stock in the One Hundred Men Corporation, they were still in a position to benefit handsomely if the book sold a large number of copies. Still, no royalties were supposed to be paid to any of the 32 authors. The royalties were supposed to go to The Alcoholic Foundation. That was the original deal. But Bill changed the deal after he had stolen the copyright and could blackmail the fellowship into giving him more money.

'Supporting Bill Wilson' became the biggest "office expense" of the A.A. headquarters.

Only Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith got any royalties for the Big Book. No other author, not Henry Parkhurst or anyone else, got anything at all. Henry Parkhurst wrote two chapters of the Big Book, "To Employers" and "The Unbeliever", plus the detailed outline for the whole book, while Dr. Bob wrote just one chapter, his own short autobiography, but Henry still got no royalties, not a penny. But he did own 200 shares of "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation"), which was one-third of the whole company, shares which would eventually be worth many millions of dollars, when the book sold in large numbers for many years...

Police detectives and investigators have sayings like "Follow the money" and "Who profits?". The French say, "Qui en profite du crime en est coupable," which means, "Whoever profits from the crime is guilty of it."

Henry "Hank" Parkhurst

One biography of Bill Wilson suggested that Henry Parkhurst was responsible for all of the "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation") money disappearing. If that is so, how is it that Bill Wilson ended up getting all of the money? There was no doubt in Henrietta Seiberling's mind: Henrietta Seiberling wrote that Bill Wilson took the money. Doctor Bob's daughter Sue Smith said the same thing too — that Bill took the money, and all of the credit for writing the book, for himself. And, on top of that, Henry Parkhurst ended up getting only $200 for his shares of "Works Publishing" (or the "100 Men Corporation"), because Bill Wilson conned him out of those shares when Henry was drunk and begging for money. How could Bill Wilson do that to his friend? What happened to "unconditional love"? Or any kind of love? How could Bill Wilson take everything away from his old friend "Hank", strip him down to nothing, and leave him to die drunk and broke? — Which is what happened to Hank. (Then, to add insult to injury, Bill Wilson collected royalties on Henry Parkhurst's work, like the To Employers chapter, for the rest of his (Bill's) life.)

William Griffith Wilson

Mind you, Henry "Hank" Parkhurst was an old friend. He was the first alcoholic that Bill Wilson recruited in New York City, so he was New York's A.A. Number Two, or Number One, depending on whether you count Bill Wilson. His original date of sobriety was either October or November 1935, so he had been dry in A.A. for four years. Bill and Hank were such close friends that Bill and Lois had moved in with Hank Parkhurst on April 26, 1939, after the bank foreclosed on the 182 Clinton Street house that Lois Wilson's parents used to own. Hank was the friend they turned to when they were homeless.

Did Bill Wilson try to help his old friend Hank when Hank was in trouble? Did Bill try to sober him up, and get him back on track, like they show A.A. members doing for each other in the movies? No, Bill Wilson just took all of Hank's Hundred Men Corporation (or Works Publishing or whatever they called it) publishing company stock away from him for a pittance, and left Hank to die drunk and penniless. Which Henry Parkhurst did. And then Bill complained about how much it bothered him that Hank had relapsed and was gone — that "it was hard to take".

How about how hard it was for Hank to take?
Why is it always all about how Bill Wilson feels?

Bill Wilson really was a piece of work..
What a prima donna Bill was.

On another web site, we find a page about Henry Parkhurst and the birth of the Big Book. The story there white-washes Bill's behavior in this way:

But Hank became very hostile toward Bill. Problems developed between them over the way Hank was setting up Works Publishing Co., as a for profit corporation, with himself as President. As a result of the feedback from group members, Bill listed himself as the sole author of the Big Book as a means of counter-balancing this.

There were other problems over money, and over Ruth Hock. Hank wanted to divorce his wife, Kathleen, and marry Ruth, and when Ruth decided to go with Bill when he moved the A.A. office out of Honor Dealers, Hank was furious. Bill paid him $200 for the office furniture (which he claimed he still owned, but which had been purchased from him earlier), in exchange for Hank turning over his stock in Works Publishing, as all the others had done. Hank then went to Cleveland to try to start problems for Bill there.
http://www.aabibliography.com/aapioneers/hankp.html
or
http://silkworth.net/aabiography/hankp.html

What a cover-up. Somebody is really spouting the standard party line. These are the facts:

1. It was Bill Wilson who wanted the book-publishing company to be a for-profit company. He had talked constantly about how their unnamed "group of anonymous alcoholics" had to make some money somehow, by having paid alcoholism-recovery missionaries or something, because Bill was broke. It was Bill who had sold the other alcoholics on the idea of making money off of a book, and then using that money, he said, to finance an Alcoholic Foundation. The other alcoholics were very cool to the idea at first, but Bill eventually convinced them. The other A.A. members elected Hank as President of the corporation, a fact which obviously really irritated Bill.

   Bill Wilson himself wrote about his promotional schemes:
   

   Dr. Bob very much liked the idea of a book. But when it came to paid missionaries and profit-making hospitals he was frankly dubious. Promoter that I was, I shared few of his fears. I felt that we would have to have money and maybe a lot of it.
   Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 145.

2. Undoubtedly, there was friction between Henry Parkhurst and Bill Wilson. Both seem to have had dominant alpha-male personalities. But to say that Hank was guilty of autocratic empire-building sounds too much like psychological projection. It was Bill Wilson who ended up being the Czar and High Priest of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was Bill Wilson who ended up being a dangerous psychopath who sentenced people to an alcoholic death for daring to disagree with his religious proclamations.

3. To say that Bill listed himself as the sole author of the Big Book to protect the book from Henry Parkhurst is a laugh. That's like saying that Bill Wilson had to steal all of the money to keep Henry Parkhurst from stealing it. What evidence is there that Bill was urged to take sole ownership of the copyright by "group members"? Show me the documentation. And if Bill was being so honest, why did he use a phony company name on the copyright form?

   Original Big Book copyright certificate, front side. Original Big Book copyright certificate, back side.

   The real evidence is that Bill promised everyone that the book would be owned by the whole group — Bill had to promise that to everybody, repeatedly, to get them to agree to do the book and to write their stories — and then Bill broke that promise. Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows, says that some of the members were very upset by Bill's betrayal, and one of them, the author of "ACE FULL...SEVEN ELEVEN", demanded that his story be removed from the book when he learned of Bill's chicanery.

4. If Bill had to steal all of the money to keep Hank from getting it, why didn't Bill give it all back after Hank left A.A.? Follow the money. Who profits? Hank died broke; Bill died rich. Bill gave all of the royalties money to himself and Dr. Bob, and then, after the death of Dr. Bob, just to himself. Bill didn't really have to keep all of the money for himself just to keep Hank from getting it, did he? Especially not after Hank had died.

   And remember that Bill Wilson wasn't even supposed to be getting paid any royalties at all. The deal was that he was contract labor, to be paid a flat rate of $1000, for writing the opening chapters of the Big Book. Bill wasn't supposed to get a lifetime income out of it, but that's what he ended up taking for himself.

5. It says that "Hank then went to Cleveland to try to start problems for Bill there." What does that mean? That Hank went to Cleveland and told Clarence Snyder the truth about what Bill Wilson was doing? Probably.

6. Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows, wrote in a sworn, notarized statement, that Bill Wilson refused to give Henry Parkhurst credit for writing the To Employers chapter, and also stole the copyright, illegally and fraudulently claiming to be the sole author of the book, when he had, in fact, written very little of it by himself. She also said that Bill took the money that had been raised for printing the Big Book.

7. Henrietta Seiberling wrote that Bill Wilson took the money, and tried to take the book.

8. Several of the early A.A. members, including Clarence Snyder, complained about Bill Wilson's financial dishonesty. Bill's henchmen in New York rationalized and covered up his behavior. In a letter to Clarence Snyder from The Alcoholic Foundation, July 7, 1944, the Alcoholic Foundation trustees argued:

   The original agreement stipulated that the 35 cent royalty which would have been paid by a commercial publisher to Wilson be granted [to] The Alcoholic Foundation. This however was changed by Wilson and Parkhurst who in 1940 donated their contingent two thirds interest in Works Publishing to The Alcoholic Foundation. As Mr. Parkhurst had entirely withdrawn as manager of the book enterprise both he and Mr. Wilson thought The Foundation should control the book. Feeling grateful for the part Dr. Smith had taken they stipulated that the royalty payable to The Foundation be turned over to Dr. Smith and his wife Anne, for their lifetime.
   A letter to Clarence Snyder from The Alcoholic Foundation, July 7, 1944, page 2.

   That is just plain old wrong. Bill Wilson was never entitled to any 35 cent royalty. He was not the sole author of the book, or even the principal author. He did not write the book, or even half of the book. That same letter says that more than 50 A.A. members worked on it. Bill Wilson was just hired contract labor, entitled to no royalties. The original agreement said that the authors' royalties would go to the Alcoholic Foundation, and that the publishing company's profits would of course go to the stockholders. Bill couldn't just arbitrarily change that agreement after the fact — not legally — especially not after a lot of company stock had been sold under the original agreement.

   And it didn't matter how "grateful" Mr. Parkhurst and Mr. Wilson felt towards Dr. Smith — they did not have the legal right to give the stockholder's money to Dr. Smith for life. Wilson and Parkhurst didn't own any royalties that they could give to Doctor Bob.

   Furthermore, Henry Parkhurst didn't agree to any of that. He was gone, relapsed, busy dying drunk. Bill Wilson was just putting words into Hank's mouth. (Bill Wilson was once again using the propaganda trick of Hiding Behind Others.)

   The money to Dr. Bob looks suspiciously like a big pay-off for complicity in Bill's crimes. Dr. Bob told the Akron members not to make a fuss about Bill's financial dishonesty — "for the good of the Fellowship" — and then Bill Wilson gave Dr. Bob an income for life. None of the other book co-authors got a penny.

   Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows, wrote:

   Rather than argue with, and possibly embarrass Bill Wilson, my father chose not to expose Bill for his devious ways for the good of the Fellowship.
         One of the authors of a personal story that appeared in the original manuscript (ACE FULL...SEVEN ELEVEN) from Akron asked that his story be removed from the book prior to publication after finding out about Bill's personal financial aspirations from the sale of the book. It was revealed that Bill and Ruth Hock already publicly distributed the multilith manuscript and sold it for $3.50. A part of the approximately 400 copies were not sold. Neither my father's copy nor any of the other copies I have ever seen or heard of had been stamped "Loan Copy," or bore any such similar statement. The relating report in AA Comes of Age (page 165) is fraudulent and dead wrong. Many of the Ohio members were also upset but were told by my father that for the good of the Fellowship not to further hinder publication of the book.
   A notarized statement from Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows

   So after Doctor Bob told the other members not to make a fuss about Bill Wilson's financial dishonesty, Bill cut Doctor Bob in on the stolen money.

   Notice that Sue Smith Windows just declared that Bill Wilson published a multilith (like mimeograph) edition of the Big Book that contained neither a copyright notice nor any statement that it was just a pre-publication "loaner copy". That invalidated the copyright on the Big Book right there. The copyright was forever lost, invalidated, forfeit, and gone. The Big Book went into the public domain right then and there.

9. If the fight between Henry Parkhurst and Bill Wilson had occurred in a vacuum, with no surrounding circumstances, it might be possible to believe that Bill was honest and noble and Hank was dishonest and underhanded. However, this story did not occur in a vacuum.
   • We have all of the rest of the history of A.A., and the literature of A.A., to go with it.
   • And we have all of the surrounding documentation that refutes Bill's claims, and refutes the A.A. members' apologies for Bill.
   • We have the statements of Doctor Bob's daughter, Sue Smith Windows.
   • We have the statements of Henrietta Seiberling and Clarence Snyder.
   • We have the illegal sale of stock in, and the strange disappearance of, the One Hundred Men Corporation.
   • We have the disappearance of the Big Book publishing fund.
   • We have Bill Wilson taking the copyright of the Big Book for himself, illegally and fraudulently claiming that he was the sole author on the copyright application form.
   • We have Bill Wilson paying himself three times for the same work — writing the opening chapters of the Big Book:
     1. First, Bill was paid $1558 when he was supposed to get $1000 for writing those chapters.
     2. Next, Bill helped himself to the Big Book publishing fund.
     3. And then Bill used the stolen copyright to force the Alcoholic Foundation to pay him royalties for life.
   • We have plenty of evidence of Bill's brain-damaged delusions of grandeur, his arrogant, domineering and manipulative personality, his callous treatment of other people, including his wife Lois, his religious bigotry, his love of Buchmanism and the fascist Oxford Groups, his habitual lying and deceit, his hypocritical philandering, and his eventual self-promotion to the status of High Priest of a religious cult.
   There is very little reason for us to believe that Bill Wilson told the truth about any of the Big Book project.

Works Publishing Stock Certificate. Note that the people who signed it were Ruth Hock, Secretary/Treasurer, and Herbert Taylor, President. That was the new staff who assumed control of the publishing business after Bill Wilson ran the business into the ground. This stock certificate was issued on the 20th of July, 1940, which was after Henry Parkhurst had gone, and after Bill Wilson had been removed from management of the business venture because of the disappearance of the publishing fund. And it was also after Bill Wilson had stolen the copyright of the Big Book and registered it in the name of "Works Publishing", which prompted the more honest A.A. members to incorporate a new company called "Works Publishing, Inc.".

A final take on the stock issue: When the publishing venture proved profitable, Bill and "the trustees" asked that the stockholders sell their shares back to Works Publishing for whatever people had paid for them; that is, at no profit. The rationale behind this was that the Alcoholic Foundation wanted to keep all of the stock of the publishing venture "in the family." Meaning: those people who had supported this venture from the very beginning, and trusted this bunch of newly-sober losers, and had given them that last full measure of devotion — all of the money in their wallets — well, those people were not really "family" any more. They didn't rate being allowed to own stock in the publishing company any more, now that the company was actually profitable.

They sure rated in the beginning, when the venture was desperate for cash. They sure rated in the beginning when it was an extremely risky venture, likely to go broke. They sure rated after Bill took and spent all of the money, and the company had to sell more stock to stay in business. But when the book started to sell, and the venture proved profitable, and there was money to be shared, those courageous, generous, early supporters were no longer quite "part of the family", and they were no longer welcome at the table.

Nice, huh?

In the beginning, to get people to buy the stock, the prospectus had bandied about large numbers for the returns that the investors would enjoy for each $25 share purchased:

So the potential investors were even teased with the possibility of making $900 from a $25 investment. But when push came to shove, the investors were cheated. They got no share of the profits, none at all.

That is also a kind of stock fraud. How it works is, you sell a bunch of stock shares or stock subscriptions to people, and go into business with the money. If the venture proves profitable, you refuse to share the profits with the stockholders — you cancel the stock issue, and just buy their shares back for whatever they paid for them. On the other hand, if the business venture fails, and goes broke, well then, of course, you never even think about buying back the stock and giving people their money back. You let them take the loss.

It's a "Heads I win, Tails you lose" kind of deal. You make someone else take all of the risk of loss, but they have no chance of sharing in the profits if the venture is a winner.

That kind of stock fraud is also against the law. Again, William G. Wilson was supposedly a "stock broker" and a "securities analyst". He must have known all about that stuff. It was his job to know. That's why the SEC licenses stock brokers — so that brokers have to know what they are doing.

So Bill had to know that such behavior was felony stock fraud, but he did it anyway, and got away with it.

And note that Bill Wilson was again hiding behind other people, masking his true intentions by using The Alcoholic Foundation as a screen. His declarations that The Alcoholic Foundation should own all of the stock of "Works Publishing" sounds innocent enough on the surface, even unselfish and generous, since Bill was even donating "his own stock" (his allotment of stock in the now-defunct and nonexistent "One Hundred Men Corporation", remember?), but it was just another scheme for Bill Wilson to get his hand into the cookie jar yet again (since he was now barred from ever running Works Publishing Inc.):

• All of the Works Publishing stock went to The Alcoholic Foundation, so The Alcoholic Foundation got all of the profits from the book sales,
• and then most of the book profits went from The Alcoholic Foundation to Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith; ultimately, mostly to Bill Wilson. "Supporting Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith" was the biggest "office expense" of The Alcoholic Foundation. By 1944, Bill was getting $320 per month, which is $3789 per month in Y2K dollars. Not bad for going to a few meetings and promoting A.A. with a few speeches. And the numbers kept going up. Now they are millions per year.
• Bill Wilson could blackmail The Alcoholic Foundation into giving him the money, because he had filed for the copyright of the Big Book in his own name, so he owned the copyright, and The Alcoholic Foundation just had to have that copyright to be able to continue publishing the book. And Sue Smith Windows says that her father, Doctor Bob, told the other members not to make a big fuss about Bill's dishonesty because it would hurt the fellowship. That was very understanding of Dr. Bob. Was it just a coincidence that Bill then cut Dr. Bob in on the stolen royalties? (And only Dr. Bob?)

The people who gave up their Works Publishing stock didn't know what the real arrangement would end up being — they were just asked to forego their profits in order to "help The Alcoholic Foundation."

The official A.A. history book PASS IT ON tells this story:

      Now that the book was beginning to sell, some of the subscribers began to demand a share of the profits. There were 49 subscribers. Bill and Hank each held a third of the stock, and Ruth had also received shares, in lieu of pay. Early in 1940, Bill and the trustees decided that the book should belong to A.A., not to the individuals who had subscribed for shares. By issuing some preferred shares, and obtaining a loan from the Rockefellers, they were able to call in all outstanding shares at par value of $25 per share. Most of the stockholders were delighted to come out even; some even donated all or part of the money to the Alcoholic Foundation.
      But Hank resisted all their pleas to turn over his one-third ownership (200 shares) in Works Publishing to the foundation. "One day, completely broke and very shakey, he turned up at the Vesey Street office," said Bill. "He pointed out that most of our office furniture still belonged to him, particularly the huge desk and overstuffed chair."
      That gave Bill an idea. He proposed that the foundation buy the furniture for $200 if Hank would then turn in his Works Publishing stock. After some prodding, Hank finally consented, and signed the necessary papers.
      But he resented Bill's persuading him to turn over his shares. To make matters worse, it was not long after this incident that Bill was granted a royalty on the book, similar to one that had already been voted for Dr. Bob. While this royalty was at first very modest, it eventually became substantial and provided both Bill and Lois a lifetime income.
      Hank's son said that Hank always felt that he had been treated badly. He thought Bill made a deal with the foundation that excluded Hank from any future share in the book's profits. What clouds the entire issue is the fact that Hank's drinking had put a wall between Hank and many of the members who eventually supported royalty payments for Bill.
'PASS IT ON', The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. staff, 1984, pages 235-236.

So Hank didn't get paid for his work because he went out and got drunk? That wasn't in the contract.

Note that "Early in 1940, Bill and the trustees decided that the book should belong to A.A., not to the individuals who had subscribed for shares."
Bill and "the trustees" had no right to make any such decision. They didn't own the book; the stockholders did. The book and the publishing company already belonged to the stockholders, including Henry Parkhurst. The Alcoholic Foundation had already promised the profits to the stock subscribers, to get them to buy the stock in the first place. Changing the deal later and giving the profits to someone else, like Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob, was fraud — cheating the stockholders out of the money that was owed to them.

It is easy to understand how Henry Parkhurst felt that it looked bad that shortly after he was cheated out of any and all dividends and royalties from the book, Bill Wilson was given an income for life.

It's easy to see how Henrietta Seiberling could write that she was fed up with Bill Wilson and his schemes.

By the way, what did Ruth Hock finally get for her "stock certificates"? (They would be worth millions now.) We know that Bill Wilson conned Henry Parkhurst out of his share of the stock, giving Henry $200 for some furniture and the stock certificates¹, but what payment did Ruth Hock get for her shares, finally? Was she asked to just hand over her pay for all of that work, "for the good of the fellowship", and get nothing in return? Apparently so. There is no record of her ever getting paid real money.

So in the end, Bill Wilson got all of the book royalties, all of the money, all of the fame and glory, all of the women, and a big house in the country and a Cadillac car to drive around in. The other A.A. members got nothing.

A final note: Now, perhaps, we know a few of the real reasons why the trustees of AAWS (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.) and the GSO (General Services Organization) keep so many of the historical documents and records of A.A. locked up and hidden, and unavailable to any historian, scholar, curious member, or bothersome critic... The real history of A.A. is pretty sordid... And the real story of Bill Wilson is simply outrageous.

It is no wonder that the Hazelden "autobiography" of Bill Wilson says:

There will be future historical revelations about Bill's character and behavior in recovery that will be interpreted, by some, as direct attacks on the very foundation of AA.
Bill W., My First 40 Years, "William G. Wilson" (posthumously ghost-written by Hazelden staff), Hazelden, 2000, page 170.

But we still haven't seen those revelations, after all these years. What could they still be hiding in those sealed archives, that we haven't already figured out?

Now, finally, is this really the kind of organization that we want judges, parole officers, "therapists" and "counselors" to force people to join?

See Henrietta Seiberling's opinion of Bill Wilson.

Also see GSC51 (pdf) == AA GS Conference report from 1950, where Bill Wilson helped himself to even more money. See a discussion of this document here.