Discover a pivotal moment in Alcoholics Anonymous history with this 1951 Third Legacy talk delivered by AA co-founder Bill W.

This historical recording is one of the foundational Third Legacy talks delivered around the country by Bill during 1951 to convince the membership of AA to adopt the General Services Conference. The Chicago talk is a special case because Chicago's Central Services Office became a model for AA Central Services as a whole.

From the Text:

"And right here in this town (Chicago), you people pioneered something that might be called central service for this area, which I know and which you know has had a profound effect upon your ability to carry the message to others and a deep effect indeed on your fundamental unity. It was you people who first conceived and put into practice the idea of central service for an area. As your groups here multiplied, as you swarmed out through this city in hordes almost, it was seen that certain chores had to be performed for the area which couldn't be performed by any individual who happened to feel like doing them, couldn't be performed by any particular group in the neighborhood. It had to be centrally done."

"You had to have a little head and tail to your public relations. You had to have a place in Chicago where AA could be found on the telephone, where people could be located, where people clamoring for recovery could be interviewed, where wives and employers could be talked to. You needed, in other words, an office of service, of mediation, of information, of public relations. So very early, even before the need was clearly there, the foresighted originators of this group instituted something called Central Service."

"That Central Service is not big business for the thousands of members now in this locality. A small office, two, three, four help. It isn't big business, but it is very important business. It has a profound relation to the world outside, to your relations with each other, to your public relations, and especially to that alcoholic just coming in the door. Your relations with medicine, with religion, with the hospitals all cluster about that small but vital center of service. Is that not so?"

Also from the Text:

"Well, quite early in AA, in 1938 to be exact, the need for a book was seen, which evolved into something called the book Alcoholics Anonymous, published in April 1939. That book is not the 12th Step itself. It is a service, an arm of service that has enabled this movement to unify. To have a common standard of recovery, something you can get your teeth in, a harbinger of good news to the alcoholic at a distance. Our messenger, that book, a service."

"Well, quite obviously the book couldn't be published at a dozen places. It had to head up somewhere. And one of the first functions of the Alcoholic Foundation, that committee of old friends and a few drunks incorporated down there in New York. One of its first functions was to take over the ownership and publication of that book, which since that day they have held in trust for you."

"Then when Jack Alexander came along to write that first piece, Jack is a swell writer, a great guy, but he had to have help. The piece just didn't happen because he happened to be talking to some drunk in a streetcar. We spent a whole month going around the country with Jack, showing him the business, inoculating him with our doctrine. A good piece was the result. And because we had a good piece, we probably gained 10,000 members then and later. That was a public relations job. Somebody had to do it. Everybody couldn't do it. It couldn't be done in a dozen places. It had to be done in one place. The foundation and the office there did the job. And since I hang around those parts a good deal, I had something to do with it myself."