Nice catch. I know what you mean when you say the papers are fragile. I have a few and am reluctant to look at them very often, especially since the digital versions can be found if you need to read content. For those who don't know, the paper (and many from the era) was huge by modern standards, and alot was stuffed into those eight pages.
More to your post, the company gave out sample copies for years upon request, so yours is not a pre-production effort. I do not recall seeing one with the "Sample Copy" designation, but I am far from an expert or even staunch collector of periodicals, so take that for what it's worth.
Here you can see that TSN offered sample copies back in 1916:
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Now watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name? We'd like to feel you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.- Ulysses S. Grant, 18th US President.
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