A house named for the people who will answer for it.

Williams & Sons Steel takes a family name because steel work is personal when a span fails and public when a city stands. The company is being established now, in the open, as a mill-and-merchant house for African growth — not as a backdated legend.

The founding work is unglamorous: specify honestly, refuse mixed lots, build the quality file, find the partners who can cut and coat on this side of the ocean, and take inquiries through writing so that promises can be kept.

Sons, here, is a charge. The steel we put under African housing and harvests should still be doing its job when the next household of this name is asked what the last one built.