Unique Chicago History - Chicago Daily News Specimen Stock Certificate in Chicago, Illinois For Sale

Melville Stone founded the Chicago Daily News in xxxx, and Victor Lawson retained Stone as chief editor when Lawson bought the paper one year later. By the late xxxx's, the Daily News was the city's most prominent newspaper and one of the most prominent in the world. The Chicago Tribune finally overtook the lead in daily circulation by xxxx.
After Lawson died in xxxx, the newspaper remained important locally and employed over 2,000 people at its 26-story headquarters at 400 West Madison, a building which still exists today as Riverside Plaza. Around the end of World War 2, the newspaper ranked among the top 15 publishing companies in the United States.
After serving as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War and as an artillery officer in France during World War 1, Frank Knox became publisher and part-owner of the Daily News at the beginning of Great Depression in xxxx after gaining about one dozen years experience in the publishing industry after WW1 with other companies.
Knox has a strong friendship with John O'Keefe, who worked as assistant to the vice chairman of Commonwealth Edison Co. before he went to work for Knox in xxxx.
Knox, a staunch Republican, ran for Vice President (with running mate Alf Landon for President) in the xxxx presidential election, but they lost soundly to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who offered Know the job of Secretary of the Navy to Knox in xxxx around the time when Adolph Hitler began saber-rattling in Europe. Immediately Knox hired O'Keefe to be his Special Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Knox was highest ranking Navy Officer during the Japanese surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in xxxx.
My six Chicago Daily News, Inc. stock certificates are all Specimens, which means they are prototype models of different iterations of certificates to be chosen for print by the Company. For example, some Specimens pertain to Common shares and some to Preferred shares. Some Specimens pertain to 100 share lots and some to less than 100 shares and some are silent as to number of shares because they are meant to be open-ended. They are different colors for differentiation.
Each Specimen contains a banner which reads The Chicago Daily News, Inc. running horizontally just above center page. Each Specimen contains a red serial number ending with four zeroes to denote that the Specimen is not to be issued. In fact, the word SPECIMEN appears in red two times on each document. Each Specimen contains a NON-embossed Corporate seal in lower left corner and a signature box on both the left and right edges for the stock registrar and stock transfer agent respectively. Each Specimen contains a prominently sized under-print with either the words COMMON or PREFERRED and is machine-signed at the bottom by both John O'Keefe and company president Frank Knox. None of the Specimens contain a date, but the Knox-O'Keefe tandem worked together at the Chicago Daily News between xxxx and xxxx.
At top center, each Specimen bears the same vignette of an attractive young, brunette woman wearing a toga and sitting on an ornately-designed marble bench next to a large globe resting on a stack of three thick books. The woman's toga is very low cut, she wears a leafy crown on her hair, wears sandals below the shawl that covers her legs and vertically balances a thin board with one hand as she glances downward.
Knight-Ridder purchased the Chicago Daily News after Frank Knox died in April xxxx at age 69 after a series of mild heart attacks. (Knox was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.)
In xxxx, Field Enterprises (owner of the Sun Times) purchased the Daily News from Knight-Ridder and absorbed all its employees into Sun Times headquarters on North Wabash Avenue, which is the site of Trump Plaza today. Despite the popularity of Daily News lead columnist Mike Royko, who rose to both local and national prominence, the Field years heralded a gradual decline of the newspaper until its demise on Saturday March 4, xxxx, when its final headline was "So Long, Chicago".
Each Chicago Daily News, Inc. Specimen stock certificate measures 7 3/4 X 11 5/8 inches.and is in Mint condition. Each contains six small hole perforations (four near the bottom and two near the left margin). Besides the six that I have, I doubt that many more of these AUTHENTIC Specimens exist bearing the dual Knox-O'Keefe signatures.