The game of _Monopoly_ has been played by millions for over a century: my own kids learned a bit about adding and subtracting large numbers in their heads from it, while I learned how to only let the game go on until all the properties were sold, so as to prevent in-game death by slow paper-cut or have to endure the tears of the losers. I knew it was a game that harkened back to the early twentieth century Robber Barons, but didn’t know until recently that it was invented by a feminist inventor to preach about the ills of unfettered capitalism.
But so it was. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie (second image) was an inventor with unusual views for her time. Born in 1866 to abolitionist parents, she worked in her youth for a pittance as a stenographer. She earned a patent in her 20s for a device she developed to fit more type onto pages in typewriters. She also resented the pathetic wages that working women made, and protested the situation by taking out a newspaper ad offering herself for sale as a “young woman American slave”, looking for a husband to support her, since that was the only way she could think to get by financially.
And she also invented the _Landlord’s Game_ in 1904. On the first picture you see a 1906 version of it. The point of it was to buy up properties and monopolize the board. And for Lizzie, this was a Bad Thing. “In a short time, I hope a very short time, men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller, maybe, have more than they know what to do with,” Magie told reporters in 1906. Lizzie was disgusted by the monopolies of the oil, rail, and steel businesses and thought wealth should be distributed more equitably.
Lizzie’s game became popular, and although she got a patent for it and eventually earned $500 from sales, the _Landlord’s Game_ was mimicked and imitated by others. The copy-cats included one Charles Darrow, who sold the rights of his version of the game — the _Monopoly_ of fame — to Parker Brothers. To date, they have sold 275 million copies on their variation of Lizzie Magie’s game.
Sources: https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/living/feat-monopoly-80th-anniversary#:~:text=Parker%20Brothers%20bought%20her%20patent,in%201935%2C%20closing%20the%20loop., https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/monopoly-was-designed-teach-99-about-income-inequality-180953630/#:~:text=In%20the%201930s%2C%20at%20the,oilcloth%20as%20a%20playing%20surface., And Wikipedia, Elizabeth Magie entry
