Mayor Jane Byrne’s Secret Transition Report
Because Byrne had run as a reform candidate, after the primary election she quickly sought advice from a panel of knowledgeable experts pulled together for a transition team headed by a Northwestern University professor, Louis Masotti. Masotti had taken [...]
Mayor Byrne’s 90-Day Report Card
In the 1975 Democratic primary election for mayor, the Chicago Tribune had taken a pass on the endorsement of any of the candidates, saying it was a question of, “whether to stay aboard the rudderless galleon with rotting timbers [...]
The Machine Weakens after Daley’s Death
With the anti-Daley vote thus split, Daley was reelected in the Democratic primary election in February 1975 with 58 percent of the vote. Singer came in second with 29 percent, Newhouse with 8 percent, and Hanrahan 5 percent. In [...]
Jane Byrne vs. The Chicago Tribune
In June 1980, as Jane Byrne was starting her second year as Chicago’s first woman mayor, a strange media brouhaha briefly transfixed the city. She had become enraged at a Chicago Tribune story and in a fit of anger [...]
Bradford Then and Now
Hammacher-Schlemmer's 5th Avenue Store in Manhattan closes in 2023 Rod MacArthur had primarily bought Hammacher to expand its mail order catalog business. Founded in 1848, Hammacher remains America’s oldest-running catalog. Before long, he had added to Hammacher’s [...]
Hammacher Schlemmer
Hammacher Schlemmer catalog item As I began work for Bradford in 1979, Rod MacArthur was directly engaged in the management of the company, but he was increasingly spending his nine-to-five hours doing other [...]
Copyright and Trademark Mastery
Early Bradford Exchange logo The marketing of collector’s plates involved a good deal of intellectual property law. The plate designs were mostly protected by copyright laws that prevented the artistic work from being [...]
Hiring Lawyers
Wizard of Oz Collectors Plate I got extensive experience at Bradford in managing litigation outside the United States. Bradford’s collector’s plates were usually made from isolated kaolin clay deposits in China, Japan, and [...]
Rod MacArthur and The MacArthur Foundation
William T. Kirby When his father had died at the age of 81 in 1978, most of his wealth had been left to the Foundation in the form of his sole ownership of [...]
