Home / Archive / January 4, 1913
The first annual dinner, in the club’s own words
Privately printed, Bend, Oregon · January 4, 1913
In the story: 2. The Taboo, 1913.
An oath to wear the emblem every day. A creed to be brave, honest, kind and cheerful. A city imagined at a hundred thousand people.
The privately printed 1913 book preserves the address given at the club’s first annual dinner on January 4. It describes the Taboo, the club’s sole officer, and the printing cuts that members could use to put the emblem into everyday life.
Partway through, the founder stops explaining and reads the certificate of membership aloud — “this certificate of Membership, which is to be given tonight to six of the men at this table, will partly answer that question”. Its first two clauses are the whole of what a member actually agreed to, and the book sets the words “THE OATH OF THE EMBLEM CLUB” on their own line immediately after them. Everything else on the certificate, the founder says, “is the spirit of The Emblem Club as it lives in the hopes of its founder”.
The passage below is read from this project’s corrected transcription and not from a page image, because no scan of this book is on hand. A machine reading of a scan that existed in 2019 survives and supplies the printed page numbers, which is the only thing it is used for. The whole text is on the book page, and if anyone holds a copy this project would like to photograph it.
From the source
I agree to wear this emblem constantly, every day and upon every occasion, until Bend has a population of one hundred thousand.
I agree so to conduct my affairs that they shall never conflict with the best interests of Bend as a whole; and I promise to work together with the wearers of this emblem to build and sustain the reputation of Bend, its honor, dignity, cheerfulness, optimism, gaiety, activity, hospitality, and solid prosperity, and in so doing to traduce no other town or community.