Buy real estate and lead others to bankruptcy: This is the essence of the world famous board game that became known as “Monopoly”. But the proposal of his inventor was actually the opposite.
She dreamed of a world where justice prevailed and where wealth and land were distributed equitably. Elizabeth Magie Phillips He lived in the United States in the late nineteenth century – and his dream has not yet materialized.
The game that created continues to be played in a very different way from the one that Magie had in mind. For you, the name of the game should not even be a “monopoly”, but “The Landlord’s Game” (“The Lordship Game”).
Everyone plays, everyone wins
“The version of the monopoly created by Magie had Two sets of rules: one on how to eliminate monopolies and one that demonstrated how harmful monopolies are. The latter are the rules we play today, ”explains Mary Pilon, author of The Monopolists. But today, the focus is not on – as Magie perhaps wanted – to realize that the monopolistic system is harmful.
The “idealistic” set of rules was based on Single Tax Theorydefended by American economist Henry George (1837-1897), who proposed to tax the land and redistribute the revenue. In Magie’s “landlord game”, all players had to pay taxes on their properties. So whenever someone made profits, income was redistributed, ensuring benefits for everyone at the end.
However, this set of rules never prevailed. Instead, we have today the competitive model: wins those who accumulate more properties and money, while those who go bankrupt… loses.
In 1904, Magie registered a patent for the “Pernance Game.” The game became popular among east -coast students and became known as a monopoly.
A blatant copy: it was all a lie
In the 1930s, a group of quakers “Protestant religious,” he played with unemployed seller Charles Darrow, who was impressed by the board game, copied him, claimed to be his creator-despite Magie’s patent-and sold the rights to Parker Brothers gaming manufacturer.
According to the company, More than 275 million copies were sold worldwide until 2010. Magie’s anticapitalist game turned an unemployed seller into a millionaire – while the inventor herself was empty -handed.
This whole story only came to light thanks to journalist Mary Pilon. In 2009, while working in an article for the game, it was surprised that it did not find any primary source about its creation.
“Darrow’s patent was too professional and artistic to an unemployed seller,” Pilon told DW. “And no one could tell me the right dates. It was in 1924, 1931 or 1934?”
The only living person who knew the true history of the monopoly at that time was the economy teacher Ralph Anspach, inventor of an anti-monopoly game. In the 1970s, Anspach got involved in a court dispute with Parker Brothers about his game and discovered, by chance, that he was Elizabeth Magie-not Charles Darrow-the true creator of the iconic game.
“I waited 40 years since someone asked me,” Anspach said when Pilon contacted him. Quickly, the journalist realized that everything she had read on the internet about the origin of the monopoly was wrong. His article eventually turned into a book project, the result of five years of investigation.
The Magie
Elizabeth Magie Phillips was born in 1866 in Macomb, Illinois, in a family with political tradition. His father had campaigned in his newspaper for the abolition of slavery, which was ratified a year before Magie’s birth.
Magie was also politically active decades before women were entitled to vote in the United States. When he moved to Washington DC with his family around 1890, he associated himself with the Woman’s Single Tax Club (Single Tax Club), aligning himself with Henry George’s ideas.
He worked as a stenograph in the post office of Washington DC and wore brown and curly hair in a short cut. Had a variety of interests and professions: He published rehearsals, poems and short stories, took the stage in the theater and, at the age of 26, patented a device that invented to facilitate the slip of role in writing machines.
At one point his father gave him a copy of Henry George’s progress and poverty. In the work, George wrote: “What destroyed all civilizations before us was the unequal distribution of wealth and power.” The idea inspired Magie.
A period of great social inequality
Washington From the late nineteenth century it was marked by industrialization, inequalities and revolutions. According to the censuses, in just twenty years, the city grew from 178,000 to almost 280,000 inhabitants in 1900. While industrial tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan accumulated wealth, the working class lived in precarious conditions.
Magie opposed this reality: in one of his poems, he described Washington’s industrialization as A “dark and dark place” where “everyone is selfish.”
In an article published in 1902 in the single tax review, he described his original game: “This is a practical demonstration of the current land appropriation system, with all its […] consequences. It could be very well called ‘the game of life’for it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the goal is the same as humanity in general: the accumulation of wealth. ”
It was already elderly when I learned: the game had become a worldwide success
Ironically, Charles Darrow and the Parker brothers have accumulated a fortune thanks to the game – despite the overall economic crisis of the time. Magie, who was already elderly, just learned of the success of her press game.
“Lizzie got furious,” says Pilon. And he reacted: he took the original game board and his patent – whereby he had only received a few hundred dollars – and sought the newspapers and the magazines.
The game manufacturer then proposed him a deal that Ralph Anspach would later describe as a form of “Masking” the situationaccording to Pilon: Parker Brothers offered Magie the launch of two of its games as compensation. “But there is no evidence that this has happened,” says Pilon: “To this day, Parker Brothers has not yet recognized that Lizzie was the inventor of the monopoly.”
What would Magie think of today’s times? According to the latest Oxfam data, the richest 1% of the world’s population have more wealth than the poorest 95% together.
“Lizzie would certainly look at the present with great criticism, especially for social inequality“Pilon. Elizabeth Magie died in 1948 at the age of 81 in Staunton, Virginia. He lived enough to see the success of his creation, but not to receive the recognition he deserved.
