Do you remember playing the game Monopoly when you were a kid?
There’s a wonderful story about Monopoly.
It begins with a man named Charles Darrow, who was unemployed, and struggling during the Great Depression.
Then he dreamed up the idea for the game Monopoly in 1935 – and became a millionaire.
It’s one of those wonderful rags-to-riches stories that people embrace.
There’s only one problem.
It’s not true.
The story of the game that would become Monopoly actually began more than 30 years earlier, with a woman named Elizabeth Magie.
Elizabeth, or Lizzie, as she was known, lived an unusual life.
Born in Illinois in 1866, she grew up being influenced by her father who was a newspaper publisher and abolitionist.
She moved to the Washington D.C. area in the early 1880s, and supported herself working as a stenographer and typist.
She was also an artist who enjoyed drawing, writing stories, and performing on stage.
And her creativity saw her inventing things, too.
When she was just 26 years old, she received a patent for an invention that improved the typewriting process by allowing paper to go through the rollers more easily. This was at a time when less than 1 percent of patent applications were made by women.
A decade later, she found herself receiving another patent – this time for a board game she had created.
It was called ‘The Landlord’s Game’ and it was designed not just to entertain, but to educate.
Lizzie was inspired by the anti-monopolist theories of the economist Henry George and his single ‘land value tax’ that shifted the tax burden to wealthy landlords.
She designed her game to illustrate the advantages the landlord had, and the problem with monopolies.
“It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” Lizzie said of her game in 1902.
Lizzie created two sets of rules for her game: one with the goal to create monopolies and crush opponents, and another anti-monopolist version where all were rewarded when wealth was created.
Lizzie believed her game, with its dualistic approach, would demonstrate that the anti-monopoly approach was morally superior.
Her game included play money, and properties that could be bought and sold. Players would collect wages as they went around the board, trying to avoid going to jail or ending up broke.
Lizzie’s timing was ideal, as board games were becoming more popular among middle-class families.
She received a patent for The Landlord’s Game in 1904. She tried to sell the game to Parker Brothers, but they saw the game as too political, and declined. Versions of her game circulated among colleges and communities for decades, and she filed her second patent for the game in 1924.
Lizzie’s second patent for her game, 1924
The Landlord’s Game was particularly popular in the Northeast, and a favorite among left-wing intellectuals. It then spread to the Midwest, and was also widely-played by Quakers, including a group in Atlantic City, New Jersey who added their neighborhood locations, like Baltic Avenue and Boardwalk, to the game’s board.
It was an Atlantic City version of the game that Charles Todd and his wife, Olive, introduced to their friends Charles and Esther Darrow in 1932. The game wasn’t sold in a box, but passed from friend to friend.
It didn’t have an official name, but everybody called it ‘the monopoly game.’
Darrow quizzed Todd about the rules, and copied the Atlantic City board (down to the misspelling of ‘Marven’ Gardens).
He added color to the property spaces, as well as illustrations, like the railroad silhouettes and the red car on ‘Free Parking.’
In 1933, Darrow began producing homemade copies of this game and calling it ‘Monopoly.’ He sold Monopoly to a department store in Philadelphia, and also approached large game companies, including Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers.
Both companies rejected Monopoly in 1934.
Parker Brothers went so far as to identify ‘52 fundamental errors’ with the game.
But Darrow persisted.
Told his game took up too much shelf space, Darrow created a new ‘black box edition’ of Monopoly that featured a smaller package separate from the board.
He was able to sell this version of the game to other department stores in Philadelphia – and it became more popular.
Parker Brothers noticed, and apparently were able to overlook the game’s 52 fundamental errors, as they made a deal with Darrow to produce Monopoly in March 1935.
A Monopoly game signed by Charles Darrow, 1938
They helped Darrow file for a patent for Monopoly in August of 1935, which he received – despite Lizzie Magie already holding two patents for The Landlord’s Game.
To protect their investment, Parker Brothers also purchased a similar game (that was inspired by Lizzie’s game) called ‘The Fascinating Game of Finance’ for $10,000. They changed the rules to make it less similar to Monopoly.
And they made a deal with Lizzie Magie to purchase The Landlord’s Game and two other games she had created.
Lizzie had high hopes for the Landlord’s Game, evident from the letter she wrote to Foster Parker, the company’s treasurer:
“Some day I hope you will publish other games of mine, but I don’t think any one of them will be as much trouble to you or as important to me as this one,” she wrote. “I’m sure I wouldn’t make so much fuss over them.”
She reportedly received $500 – and no royalties.
When Lizzie Magie later realized that Parker Brothers weren’t interested in her games or her ideas, she told The Washington Post and The Evening Star that Darrow’s game was taken from her Landlord’s Game.
She even showed her game boards to the photographer to prove she was the game’s true creator.
But it didn’t matter.
Darrow’s story of Monopoly was the American Dream.
Parker Brothers and the PR machine grabbed on to the story of Darrow as the sole inventor of the game.
His rags-to-riches tale was more exciting than the story of a 70-year-old woman who wanted to share her views on tax reform.
“It’s a freak. Entirely unexpected and illogical.”
Charles Darrow
Lizzie’s Landlord Game game was forgotten – and perhaps even worse, Monopoly promoted the idea she had hoped to discourage.
In 1936, Parker Brothers sold a whopping 1.8 million copies of Monopoly.
Darrow and Parker Brothers made millions – and Monopoly went on to become one of the best-selling games of all time.
Monopoly has been sold in 114 countries and translated into 47 languages. It’s estimated that more than 250 million games have been sold, and that Monopoly has been played by billions of people around the world.
Lizzie Magie never had children, and neither her headstone or her obituary mentioned her role in the creation of Monopoly.
She died in relative obscurity in 1948.
The burial of Lizzie Magie in Arlington, Virginia
Was that story as sad to read as it was for me to write?
FUN FACT: Magie’s role as Monopoly’s inventor was uncovered in 1973 by an economics professor named Ralph Anspach, who had created an anti-monopoly game. He had a decade-long legal battle with Parker Brothers that ended at the Supreme Court. He uncovered Magie’s patents during his research and confirmed the game’s origins.
BONUS FUN FACT: Toy company Hasbro (who acquired Parker Brothers in 1991) introduced Ms. Monopoly in 2019, a ‘feminist’ version of the game where women players earn more than men. The game features inventions by women, yet somehow misses the opportunity to celebrate Lizzie Magie. And it sounds pretty cringe, too.
And one more because this story fascinated me: In the early 1900s, struggling to support herself on a $10 a week salary, Lizzie Magie protested that marriage was the only option available to women. She purchased an advertisement offering herself for sale as a ‘young woman American slave’ noting that she was ‘not beautiful, but very attractive’ and that she had ‘features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine.’
Her ad got attention and became the subject of news stories and gossip columns. Magie told reporters the goal was to make a statement about the dismal position for women.
“We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.”
Despite that, when she was 44, Magie married Albert Phillips, who was 10 years her senior.
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The Complicated Story Behind Monopoly