I. A Word, Brother

If you are reading these lines you are kin, and so allow me to set out what we believe and what we have agreed to among ourselves. The trade is older than the Local and the Local is older than most of us, and we mean to hand it forward in good order, with the brush still warm and the gold still bright.

II. Jurisdiction — What Belongs to the Brush

To the brush hand belongs all hand-lettered storefront and bulletin work, all gold leaf on glass with size laid by quill, all window splash in tempera or showcard color, all door & tailgate lettering on the trucks of the working men of this county, all banners on cotton duck, all pictorial work that is figural, all memorial and chancel lettering by request of the parish.

Brother Cornelius "Connie" Vance [#018], Vance Bros. Showcards, our president, asked that the parish work be named here in full because it has held many a shop through a slow winter, and is by nature a brush job from first stroke to last.

III. Jurisdiction — What, Regrettably, Does Not

Under the Accord of 1967 with Local 311 of the Pictorial Airbrush Artists (Slagville, on the far side of the Hounsacker), the following work passes to that local on first refusal: showcards over eighteen inches that require vignette shading; theatrical backdrops with atmospheric perspective deeper than six feet; fairground rides whose woodgrain is rendered in spray; automobile body striping where requested in metallic candy. We do not love the accord. We signed it because the work was leaving us anyway and we would rather see it done by a brother local than by a man who learned his trade from a magazine.

IV. Fair Pricing — Schedule A

A brother who quotes below Schedule A without a written letter to the secretary, Brother Otto Kreitzer [#057], Kreitzer Pictorial, takes bread from the mouths of his own people; we have all done it, once, when young, and we have all been spoken to about it afterward, kindly, at the coffee urn.

V. The Mahl-Stick

If a stranger asks you what the long stick is — and they do ask, the children especially — tell them it is called a mahl-stick, that it has a chamois knob, that it rests gently on a dry edge of the work to bear the weight of the hand so the wrist is free for the curve of a letter. Tell them the brush is a quill if it is set in feather, a lettering pencil if it is set in ferrule, and a fitch if it is hog. Take your time. They are listening.

VI. The Oath of the Brotherhood

— recited at every initiation by Brother Linus "Lin" Dornan [#199], Dornan & Beck Window Lettering, our sergeant-at-arms, with the lights low and the kitchen door propped open for the steam.

VII. Sick & Death Benefit

Five dollars the week for sickness, payable by Brother Russell Hess [#142], Hess Foundry-Side Signs, our treasurer-at-arms, on his Thursday rounds. Forty dollars and a hand-lettered remembrance card on the death of a brother, lettered (we have agreed) by Brother Henry Engle [#089], Engle & Sons Letterworks, who has the steadiest Roman of any of us and a great gentleness with names.