1923: As chemical trade
commissioner to Germany for the U.S., Dr. Frederick B.
[right, 1923] wrote a report to Charles H. Herty titled “Swiss Coal-Tar Chemical
Industry—Prouction, Export and Import Statistics”
[left].
At that time, the U.S. was highly dependent upon a chemical industry that
relied on foreign sources for important raw materials, including potash for
fertilizer and sodium nitrate for fertilizers and explosives. In addition,
the coal-tar chemical industry, the basis of the synthetic organic chemical
industry at the time, was virtually nonexistent in the United States because
of a German monopoly. Coal-tar products included most textile and other
dyes, many important medicinals, powerful explosives, and chemical warfare
gases.
1939: The first public
meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in New Jersey took place at the South Orange
Community Center [right]. Gordon
MacD., a newcomer with only five months of sobriety, along with Herb D., had
arranged for the meeting space to accommodate the growing New Jersey Group,
which then had between twenty-five and thirty members attending its
meetings. The meeting was held on a Sunday evening at 5:30 p.m. and marked
the beginning of regular Sunday night meetings at the Community Center. This
group, the New Jersey Group, would eventually become the “mother group” for
all of New Jersey and later be known as the South Orange Sunday Night
Group.
1963: Alcoholism educator and
friend of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), Dr. Elvin Morton “Bunky”
Jellinek [left, c. 1955–1962],
better known as E. M. Jellinek, died of a heart attack at his desk at
Stanford University at the age of 72. Jellinek coined the phrase “disease
concept of alcoholism” and significantly advanced the movement towards the
medicalization of drunkenness and alcohol habituation. His initial study in
1946 was funded by Marty M.
[near right, 1955] and R. Brinkley S.
[far right, 1957].
According to a 1998 study by Mariana Valverde
[left], Jellinek’s research was based on a narrow, selective group of hand-picked
A.A. members who completed a self-reporting questionnaire. Valverde noted
that the study’s findings were relevant only to “the experience of white,
male, middle-class alcoholics in the 1940s.” She also argued that a
biostatistician of Jellinek’s stature would have been well aware of the
“unscientific status” of the “dubiously scientific data that had been
collected by A.A. members.”
1946: The A.A. Grapevine published a letter, titled “New Interest Created: Australian Branch Notes No. 1,” which was written by Rex A. to the publication in June, four months earlier. It read, in part
The Australian branch of Alcoholics Anonymous came into being in October, 1944. Its founders (all nonalcoholics) were the Reverend Father T. V. Dunlea*…, Dr. S. J. Minogue†…, and Mr. A. V. McKinnon+…
Now, in June, 1946, we have a convalescent home at Sutherland, capable of housing 20 or 30 patients, who are in need of mental and physical rehabilitation, and have taken over a residential in Sydney where members live, pay rent and go to work; this place can accommodate 20 or so people and in it we have our meeting room, where we congregate twice weekly.…
We estimate our membership at 150. It is too early to state how many have completely recovered, but probably no more than 12. Fifty-odd have shown very marked improvement, their relapses occurring less frequently as time goes on. The rest are just floundering around.
Our greatest difficulty has been to persuade many new members to carry out 12th Step work. No matter how much we talk, plead or point out the dreadful consequences of failure to help their fellow drunk, these lads and lasses just listen and continue to follow their policy of selfish and masterly inactivity. Then they crash. And we tell ’em why they crashed—failure to implement the 12, and particularly the 12th, Step. We help them to their feet again, get them jobs and away they go, keeping sober, buying themselves new suits and frocks, but utterly and completely ignoring the 12th and most of the other Steps, till they crash again and have to pawn their new suits and frocks to keep up their supplies of liquor. We don’t know what you Americans do with these lads and lassies, but we would like to, for they give us dreadful headaches.
Our greatest asset (apart from our founders) is one Frank Sturge Harty‡
[right]. He is a veteran of World War I, and now runs a radio session of the personal problems type. Frank is an untiring worker for A.A., both on the air and off it. Tall, dark and soldierly-looking, he is to be seen at almost every meeting and frequently visits our home at Sutherland. Although not himself an alcoholic, his life has been as varied and has had as many ups and downs as that of the average inebriate, which naturally helps him to understand us the better.
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