To the members: the reserve

Letter from the Council of Associates to each member, 16 March 1946. From the Archive.

Dear colleague,

At its meeting today the Council adopted, by thirty-three votes to two, an eighth Article, which reads: The house shall keep a reserve sufficient to service every piece it has made for twenty-five years without a further sale.

You will remember the winter of 1933, when the house came within a month of closing and the President paid the bench from her own account. Had the house closed, every piece it had made would have been left without anyone able to mend it, and Article IV, which binds us to keep the means to mend whatever we have made, would have been broken by the simple fact of our disappearance. The Council does not intend that to be possible again.

The reserve will be built from the surplus of each year until it meets the test, and the Treasurer will test it each December. Until it does, the Council will not raise wages or take on new benches, and asks your patience.

Yours, for the Council,
Ada Rosen, President