The Night They Told Him No

It is 1937. Bill is broke, Lois is working at the department store, and their house on Clinton Street is full of drunks who are not paying board. Charlie Towns — who owns the hospital where Bill got sober — calls him in and makes him an offer: "I'll give you an office, a decent drawing account, and a very healthy slice of the profits. What I propose is perfectly ethical." Then the closer: "You can become a lay therapist, and more successful than anybody in the business." Bill never pretended he was above it: "There was nothing wrong whatever with becoming a lay therapist." He thought of Lois. He thought of his creditors. On the subway home a verse arrived like guidance — "The laborer is worthy of his hire" — and his mind was made up. Then he told the group. They sat there. Then one of them found his footing: "You tell us that Charlie's proposal is ethical. Sure, it's ethical. But what we've got won't run on ethics only; it has to be better." And finally: "This is a matter of life and death, Bill, and nothing but the very best will do." Someone reminded him of his own line — "sometimes the good is the enemy of the best." Bill wrote afterward that the members deciding together had outranked his own guidance: "Thus spoke the group conscience. The group was right and I was wrong; the voice on the subway was not the voice of God." The office was never rented. Tradition 8 is not an idea somebody had. It is the scar from that living room.