History of Monopoly

By: Mr. Friendt

January 2017

History
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie, a
stenographer, wanted a platform
to express her progressive
political views in the early 1900s.
Lizzie was a descendant of
Scottish immigrants, unmarried,
a hard worker, head of her own
household, and a property owner
[from her own savings and
earnings] in Washington D.C.
On January 5, 1904, Magie
patented The Landlords Game.
It is a practical demonstration of
the present system of land grabbing
with all its usual outcomes and
consequences. It might well have
been called the Game of Life, as it
contains all the elements of success
and failure in the real world, and the
object is the same as the human
race in general seems to have, i.e.
the accumulation of wealth.

Concepts
Money, deeds, & property could
be bought and sold.
Players borrowed money, either
from the bank or each other, and
had to pay taxes.
Circular Path as gamers move
their way around the board, they
perform labor and earn wages;
every time a player passes
Mother Earth sign, receive $100.
Competition is a natural human
instinct. Originally, there were 2
sets of rules: an antimonopolistic set in which all
were rewarded when wealth was
created, and a monopolistic set
in which the goal was to create
monopolies and crush
opponents.

Characters:
J.P. Morgan

Characters:
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Reading Railroad
(1896)
Pennsylvania
Railroad (1894)
B. & O. Railroad
(1871)
Short Line (1907)

Charles Darrow
Charles Darrow, who was
unemployed and needed work to
support his family, had been playing
The Landlords Game for years with
Charles and Olive Todd. As there
were no written rules but rather just
passed on from friend to friend,
Darrow asked Todd to write down
some formal rules.
In 1935, Darrow patented
differences to The Landlords Game
and called it Monopoly. Differences
included:
Chance and Community Chest Cards
black locomotives on railroad spaces
a faucet on Water Works and light
bulb on Electric Company
question marks on Chance spaces
red arrow Go replaces Mother Earth
sign

Ownership of the Game

Darrow later sold
the rights to Parker
Brothers and
became the 1st
millionaire game
designer.
Parker Brothers
paid Lizzie Magie
$500 and no
royalties.

Landlords Game

Monopoly

For You To Consider

1) Who was the true founder of
Monopoly board game? Did Parker
Brothers do business with the correct
entrepreneur / political activist?
2) Magies vision was an embrace of
the dualism and contained a
contradiction within itself, a tension
trying to be resolved between
opposing philosophies. However, and
of course unbeknownst to Lizzie at
the time, it was the monopolistic
rules that would later capture the
publics imagination. Assess Mary
Pylons statement about Magies
rules. Why are the monopolistic rules
more popular in America than the
anti-monopolistic ones?
3) Why is the board game Monopoly a
good metaphor for the Gilded Age?