Magie’s board game was meant to be educational and a protest against men such as John D. Magie was a fan of Henry George, a 19th-century progressive economist, who argued that a single land tax would prevent the very wealthy from creating monopolies. What might come as a surprise to many of today’s players is the story behind that first game. Players move around a square board, buying property as they go, sometimes landing on a corner that reads “Go to Jail,” and earning $100 for each trip around, according to Pilon’s book, “The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game.” Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie got a patent for what was called The Landlord’s Game in 1904, and it sounds very much like Monopoly. Mary Pilon, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporter, discovered that it was a woman who was behind one of America’s most enduring pastimes. The Monopoly game has long been attributed to an unemployed man named Charles Darrow, who was said to have thought up the game in the early 1930s, sold it to the Parker Brothers in 1935, and made millions from his enormously successful creation.īut wait-there’s more to this story.
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