Whenever two or more people join in a relationship, there is, it seems, a powerful yearning to draft some statement of shared beliefs. Service organizations would be lost without them. In years past, some keenly self-aware individuals espoused personal credos. These days, the efforts of certain self-help gurus notwithstanding, the personal credo is out of fashion, though curious examples still turn up now and then. I will not wear a mask.
Declarations of principle are, more commonly, expressions of shared ideals.
Business organizations, too, have corporate creeds, often called mission statements or vision statements. Few rise to the elegance of the inscription on the New York City Post Office. Such was not always the case. The 1920s, a decade remembered today for flappers, bathtub gin, and a spectacular stock market crash, was also a golden age of business credos. Every trade and professional organization proudly displayed a statement of guiding principles, a code of ethics, a set of civic responsibilities.