January 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Cautionary Tales returns with new episodes on January 10th.
Lizzie J. Magie (played by Helena Bonham Carter) should be celebrated as the inventor of what would become Monopoly. But, even though she had a patent, her role in creating the smash hit board game was cynically ignored.
Discrimination has marred the careers of many inventors and excluded others from the innovation economy entirely. Could crediting forgotten figures such as Lizzie Magie help change that?
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Happy New Year. Did you pull out a board
game over the holiday season? Did you play nicely? Or
did it quickly descend into acrimony, name calling, and accusations
of cheating. The game that seems to bring out the
(00:36):
killer instinct in even the kindest of Granny's is Monopoly.
The cutthroat activity sees players try to amass fortunes while
gleefully making opponents bankrupt. But it wasn't meant to be
like that. It may surprise you to know that the
inventor of the game imagined a far gentler, kinder pastime,
(01:01):
But as I learned researching the history of Monopoly, her
ideals and her name were squeezed out of the origin story.
So take a break from your own gaming to listen
again to a classic cautionary tale featuring the voice talent
of Helena Bonham Carter as the inimitable Lizzie McGhee. Whatever
(01:23):
you do, do not pass go. In September twenty nineteen,
the toy and game giant Hasbro struck a blow in
the battle of a women's rights. Although it's not quite
clear which side they were on, they published mus Monopoly,
(01:47):
putting a new spin on their classic board game. The
tagline for this new version was the first game where
women make more than men. They're not kidding. Female players
start the game with more Monopoly money than male players,
and they get two hundred and forty dollars each time
they pass go, rather than the traditional two hundred dollars
(02:08):
for the Why exactly is not clear, some sort of joke.
It wasn't even a consistent joke. Some of the chants
and community chest cards paid out more cash to mail players.
So what is the message? Women have been unfairly treated,
Women need help to win. We don't actually know what
(02:29):
feminism means. There is, however, one feature of the game
that's hard to criticize. Instead of buying properties from around
Atlantic City as in the classic game, players invest in
inventions that were developed by women, such as Marion Donovan,
the inventor of the leak proof diaper, Anna Connolly, the
(02:50):
inventor of the external fire escape, and Heady Lamar, the
film star who in the nineteen forties co invented frequency
hopping radio transmissions, a precursor to today's Wi Fi. In
mus Monopoly, each square represents one of these inventions. For example,
instead of buying the prestige property boardwalk you could invest
(03:13):
in chocolate chip cookies invented by Ruth Wakefield. And it's
hard to argue with the sentiments expressed in Hasbro's advertisement
for his Monopoly, which begins with the simple text women
hold just ten percent of all patented inventions. The mus
Monopoly game was widely derided as a confusing mass of
(03:36):
mixed messages, but the mus Monopoly advert asks a simple,
powerful question, isn't it time that the inventiveness of women
was finally acknowledged and rewarded? Well? Isn't it? I'm Tim
Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. You may be
(04:20):
familiar with the traditional story about the origins of Monopoly.
I remember reading it myself as a child, which isn't
surprising since the story itself was for decades included in
every game box. The story goes as follows. In nineteen
thirty three, the Bleakest Depths of the Great Depression, an
(04:42):
unemployed steam radiator repair man from Philadelphia named Charles Darrow
was struck with an idea to create a new board
game about property trading. It was an act of desperation
because Darrow had no money, and a family to feed.
But it was also an act of inspiration, since the
(05:06):
game sprang fully formed from the bread of its creator.
Darrow drew out the game board on a sheet of oilcloth.
The board featured the familiar street names of Atlantic City,
where Darrow once enjoyed taking his wife and children on vacation.
It was a nostalgic decision aimed at cheering up a
(05:26):
family that had fallen on hard times. The Darrows loved
the game, suspecting that he'd created something valuable. Charles Darrow
tried to interest the big board game distributors. Milton Bradley
turned him down, so did Parker Brothers. However, they later
(05:48):
reconsidered when they saw how popular Darrow's homemade sets were.
With the backing of Parker Brothers, Monopoly became a smash hit.
Charles Darrow's fortune was assured, as was his reputation as
the creator of one of the most successful games in
the world. But as the journal historian Mary Pilon says
(06:11):
in her book The Monopolists, the story wasn't exactly true.
That's putting it kindly, because, as Pilon's book makes perfectly clear,
the story I read in my game box isn't true
at all. The game of Monopoly did not come to
Charles Darrow in a flash of inspiration. It was taught
(06:34):
to him by his friends Charles and Olive Todd in
nineteen thirty two. The Todd's plane on a board with
go jail free parking and go to jail at the
four corners, with chance and community chest, with the electric
company and the waterworks, and street names from around Atlantic City.
(06:58):
When drawing up his monopoly board, Charles Todd even made
a mistake in the spelling of Marvin Gardens, swapping in
an eye to become Marvin Gardens. Charles Darrow's monopoly board
would later use not only the same squares in the
same configuration, with the same deed values, it would even
(07:19):
repeat the same spelling error. After several evenings, pleasantly whiled
away with the game.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Say Todd, would you mind lending me a copy of
the rules of that game?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Well, Darrow, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I've never written them down.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Why do you want them? I'd love to teach it
to others. I want to make sure I get it right.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Charles Todd was a little puzzled, but he obliged his
friend Soon after, to Todd's irritation, Darrow started avoiding him
it crossed the street when the Todds were coming the
other way. Then came the blockbuster success of Monopoly with
sparky graphics that Charles Darrow had begged free of charge
(08:05):
from another friend, the cartoonist Franklin Alexander. Journalists repeated the
rags to Rich his yarn that Darrow was spinning. Darrow's
former friends, Charles and Olive Todd, were outraged, but not
because they felt their idea had been stolen. They knew
all along that Monopoly had never belonged to them in
(08:28):
the first place. They had been taught the game by
their friends, the brothers Jesse and Eugene Rayford. Jesse and
Eugene had been the ones who named squares on the
board after areas in Atlantic City, but they hadn't invented
Monopoly either. The ha'd adapted a version they had been
taught by Ruth Hoskins, who was a trainee school teacher.
(08:52):
So did Ruth Hoskins invent the game? No, It was
circulating widely in the nineteen twenties. It was even popular
in economics departments. One influential player Scott Nearing was a
socialist economics professor at the Wharton School who used a
version of the game to teach the evils of corporate monopolies.
(09:14):
This game was called Monopoly, and the square board had
plenty of recognizable elements with forty spaces, including chants, jail,
go to jail, and numerous properties. But there were two
ways to play the game. It could be played competitively,
as players tried to monopolize groups of property and bankrupt
their opponents, or it could be played cooperatively, with resources
(09:39):
paid into the public purse, utilities supplying services for free,
and each player's resources growing over time. The cooperative game was,
of course, very dull, But monopoly wasn't invented at the
Wharton School. Professor Scott Nearing learned it in the utopian
(10:00):
community called Arden in Delaware. Arden had been founded in
nineteen hundred and organized according to the principles of the economist, journalist,
and social reformer Henry George. Henry George's most famous idea
was that all land and natural resources ultimately belonged to
society as a whole, so whoever owned them should be
(10:23):
paying a hefty tax, and it was Henry George's idea
of this single tax that the Arden version of Monopoly
was designed to explore this game. The progressive Heaven or
capitalist Hell version of Monopoly was called the Landlord's Game.
Did the radical folk of Arden invent the Landlord's Game? No,
(10:48):
It was dreamed up by a remarkable woman named Lizzie McGee.
And is Lizzie McGee celebrated on the US Monopoly board.
I think you can guess the answer to that question.
Cautionary tales will return in a moment. Unlike Charles Darrow,
(11:15):
the man who claimed to have invented Monopoly, Lizzie McGhee
was a true original.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I'm thankful that I was taught how to think and
not what to think.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
When McGhee created the original Monopoly style game, it was
the early nineteen hundreds. Here's how Mary Plon's History of
Monopoly describes McGee, a distinctive looking woman in her thirties,
with curly dark locks and bangs that framed her face.
Lizzie had inherited the bushy eyebrows of her father, the
(11:50):
descendant of Scottish immigrants. She had pale skin, a strong jawline,
and a strong work ethic. Quite as an unmarried woman,
unusual at her age. Working as a stenographer, she had
little prospect of acquiring material comforts, Yet she had saved
(12:11):
and bought herself a home and a substantial parcel of
land near Washington, d c. Lizzie's father had been a
journalist and campaigner, the editor of an abolitionist newspaper, and
a devoted supporter of Abraham Lincoln. She too was politically active.
Like the community at Arden, Lizzie McGee was a Georgist,
(12:32):
a committed follower of the ideas and ideals of Henry George.
She was friends with Henry George Junior, the son of
the great Man himself, and she was the secretary of
the Georgist organization, the Woman's Single Tax Club of Washington.
Henry George had died suddenly in eighteen ninety seven while
(12:54):
running to be the mayor of New York City. One
hundred thousand people lined up to pay their respects to
his funeral casket. His followers, including Lizzie McGhee, had felt
bereft and determined to carry on the fight for Georgist policies.
But what could McGee do a progressive and a capitalist world.
(13:17):
A woman in a man's world. She was desperate for
social change, but felt frustrated in what she could achieve.
Mary Polon's description of her conjures a powerhouse of creativity.
McGee wrote poems about unrequited love. She wrote essays on
Georgist taxation. She wrote stories too, including one.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The Theft of a Brain, about.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
A young woman whose brilliant idea is plagiarized. But none
of these creative projects really broke through. McGhee was frustrated.
How to get the message across? How to achieve lasting change?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of
our present land system, and when they grow up, the
evil will soon be remedied.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yes, how to reach the children? What better method than
through a board game? Lizzie McGee's The Landlord's Game would
evolve and become more popular than she could ever have imagined.
By the nineteen thirties, it existed in several popular versions,
all of which took the competitive rather than cooperative approach.
(14:29):
There was finance sold by the NAP Company, Inflation sold
by Rudy Copeland of Fort Worth, Texas, and easy money
sold by Milton Bradley. But Lizzie McGee herself had been
almost forgotten, and so had the subversively educational version of
her game. It turns out that when people play board games,
(14:51):
they'd rather try to crush their opponents than all accumulate
resources together without obstacle or incident. No single person created
Monopoly any more than a single person created chess or poker.
But if you wanted to pick out the one creative
soul who who deserved the most credit, there is no
question that it would be Lizzie McGee. So how come
(15:16):
it was Charles Darrow and not McGhee who became known
as the lone genius who invented Monopoly? Remember the advertisement
for mus Monopoly. Hasbro, the company that absorbed Parker Brothers,
began with a lament. Women hold just ten percent of
(15:37):
all patented inventions. This situation is finally improving. Women made
up less than ten percent of patent holders born in
the nineteen forties, but more than fifteen percent of patent
holders born in the nineteen seventies. As millennials take over
the process of patenting, who knows, we might get as
(15:57):
high as twenty percent before long. In fact, we're on
course to achieve gender parity in patents as early as
the year twenty one thirty five. Cheer up, So why
has progress been so slow? One of the scholars who's
been searching for answers is the economist Lisa Cook of
(16:19):
Michigan State University. Professor Kok studies why certain groups of
people seemed to be shut out from the innovation economy,
in particular African Americans and women. For many decades, women
had less than equal access to high quality education, especially
technical education. For example, in the early nineteen fifties, Eleanor
(16:43):
Ostrom wanted to study economics at UCLA, but she was
rejected because she didn't have the mathematical skills. She didn't
have the mathematical skills because as a schoolgirl, she had
been steered away from the subject because of her gender. Thankfully,
Eleanor Ostrom had the last laugh. In two thousand and nine,
she was the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial
(17:05):
Prize in economics. It was astonishingly late for the profession
to recognize the first female laureate, but as Linostroum was
quick to say, she wouldn't be the last. As a
result of both overt and subtle discrimination, women have been
underrepresented in technical subjects such as mathematics, economics, and engineering.
(17:28):
That is changing, but slowly. Between nineteen seventy and twenty fourteen,
the proportion of PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical
subjects that were rewarded to women more than quadruple. And
if a lack of educational opportunity is a problem, so
too is a lack of mentors. A huge study conducted
(17:51):
by a team of economists led by Raj Chetti of
Harvard found that young people were far more likely to
become inventors if they could see other inventors around them,
especially if their own parents were inventors. Gender matters here.
For example, female inventors seem to be far more inspiring
(18:12):
to girls than male inventors are, and since there are
fewer women inventors around to inspire girls, the problem is
a self perpetuating spiral. Indeed, Chetti and his colleagues estimate
that if young girls had the same exposure to female
inventors as young boys did to male inventors, they would
(18:33):
innovate more than two and a half times as much
as now, and the gender innovation gap would be less
than half as big. That's why them as monopoly set
and advertising campaign, with its celebration of women inventors, is
so important, But among the female inventors credited on the board,
(18:54):
Lizzie McGhee is conspicuous by her absence. It is an
astonishing missed opportunity. But it's also a mystery. How did
Lizzie McGee find herself so comprehensively the air brushed out
of history? And why don't the publishers of monopoly want
to acknowledge her more than a century later? Could it
(19:17):
be perhaps that they're a little ashamed? Cautionary tales will
be back in a moment. Lizzie McGee broke the mold
in so many ways. It wasn't just her politics, her
(19:39):
defiance of traditional values in refusing to marry when young,
her far reaching creativity as a poet, actor, novelist and essayist.
She actually had the determination to follow through on her
dreams despite all the obstacles. It's easy to assume that
Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers were able to lay claim
(19:59):
to Monopoly because Lizzie McGee didn't have a patent, but
she did. In fact, she had two. The earlier one
is for an improvement to a type rolla, But it's
the patent for the Landlord's Game that deserves to be remembered.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Letters Patent number seven hundred and forty eight thousand, six
hundred and twenty six dated January fifth, nineteen oh four.
My invention, which I have designated the Landlord's Game, relates
to game boards and more particularly to games of chance.
When a player stops upon a lot owned by any
(20:37):
of the players, he must pay rent to the owner.
The object of the game is to obtain as much
wealth or money as possible.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Even today, few patent holders are women. In McGee's time,
less than one in a hundred were. She was a
member of a small club of female inventors. So if
she had a patent, what went wrong. The economist Lisa
Cook knows that the innovation gap runs deeper than educational
(21:10):
opportunity or even the presence of mentors. There's also the
question of whose ideas get taken seriously. You can have
a good idea and you can even get it patented.
That that does not mean your idea will thrive if
your face doesn't fit. For example, Lisa Cook's own cousin,
(21:31):
the chemist Percy Julian, was repeatedly turned down for jobs
as an academic and as a corporate researcher because he
was black. Eventually, Julian became the first African American to
run a large corporate laboratory. At Gliddon, he developed techniques
for producing hormones such as estrogen and courtzone, and earned
(21:52):
several patents. In nineteen fifty, Percy Julian was named Chicagoan
of the Year by the Chicago Sometimes. It was the
same year that infuriated that a black man had moved
into a nice white part of Chicago, racists tried to
burn down his house. If you're suffering from discrimination, as
(22:16):
both women and African American inventors were throughout the twentieth century,
then Professor Cook's work makes it clear having a patent
might not be enough. A patent isn't much good if
nobody respects it. Consider the case of Garrett Morgan. He
was born in the eighteen seventies. He was a gifted inventor,
(22:38):
developing products as varied as a gas mask, a traffic light,
and hair straightening cream. But he was also African American,
which didn't fit America's idea of what an inventor should
look like. In one dramatic incident. In nineteen sixteen, Morgan
and his brother led a rescue of several victims of
(22:59):
an underground explosion near Lake Erie. The rescuers used Morgan's
invention of a firefighters smoke Hood. Officials awarded medals to
the eight members of the rescue party, but not to
the Morgan brothers themselves, and while a publicity about the
daring rescue helped boost sales of the smoke Hood, several
(23:19):
Southern cities canceled their orders when they discovered that Morgan
was black. Morgan often concealed his race, even using surrogates
to pretend to be him when he was trying to
sell his inventions. You can't blame him. Lizzie McGhee didn't
have to fear being firebombed like Percy Julian, or having
(23:41):
her wares boycotted like Garrett Morgan. But she did have
to fear being ignored. Her game wasn't selling and she
wasn't thriving. She was frustrated at having her freedoms and
opportunities constrained by her gender. A couple of years after
patenting the Landlord's Game, she took out a newspaper advertisement
(24:02):
offering herself for sale.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Young woman American slave.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This stunt, shocking then and shocking now, was a way
of satirizing the idea that marriage was the only option
for a woman.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes, and ambition.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
But while it made a splash, this outrageous stunt did
not seem to turn the tide, either for feminism or
for Lizzie McGee herself. A few years later, in her forties,
she did marry. Her game continued to languish. Like Garrett Morgan,
(24:44):
Lizzie McGee did not fit the stereotype of a creative genius.
By the time Monopoly had become a best seller more
than thirty years after McGee filed the patent for the
Landlord's Game, she was an unconventional old woman with unconventional
political ideals, still trying to get the world to pay
attention to the case for progressive single taxation. She was
(25:08):
no match for Charle Darrow, the smooth talking family man
peddling his version of the American dream. Darrow charmed the
Todds into giving him the monopoly rules in every detail,
charmed the artist Franklin Alexander into donating the designs that
gave Monopoly its clean, modern look, charmed Parker Brothers into
(25:30):
treating him as a creative genius, and charmed the press
into repeating his tale of creativity and adversity, carving this
fictional origin story in stone with the help of the
publicists at Parker Brothers. In nineteen thirty five, Charles Darrow
put that story in writing to the president of Parker Brothers.
(25:52):
It is hard to imagine that the company believed him.
They must have understood that he was lying to them.
One internal memo acknowledged that Darrow had appropriated the name Monopoly,
and added, frankly, and I think without prejudice that the
original trading game came out in nineteen oh two. Nevertheless,
(26:14):
Parker Brothers applied for a patent on Monopoly and managed
to secure it with remarkable speed. Then came the business
of acquiring the rights to rival games. Parker Brothers came
to an arrangement with Milton Bradley about their game Easy Money,
and paid a large sum for the rights to the
game finance. They sued the publisher of the game inflation,
(26:37):
yet somehow Parker Brothers ended up paying him at least
ten thousand dollars. Relative to the wages of the day,
that's half a million dollars, which does suggest that Parker
Brothers didn't really want to put their patent to the test.
Charles Darrow kept telling journalists the story of his moment
(26:57):
of inspiration, and people such as Charles and Olive Todd,
while irritated, didn't feel able to pursue the matter. After all,
while he knew Charles Darrow hadn't invented the game, they
knew they hadn't invented it either, So that just left
Lizzie McGhee in one corner, an elderly left wing feminist
(27:20):
desperate to teach the children of the world the merits
of the single tax system through her obscure board game.
In the other corner, a smooth talking Charles Darrow with
a tale to tug at heartstrings, and a host of
sharp suits from Parker Brothers. It was no contest. One
November day in nineteen thirty five, traveling from Salem, Massachusetts,
(27:44):
all the way to Arlington, Virginia, George Parker himself, the
seventy year old founder of Parker Brothers, paid a call
to the house of Lizzie McGee Phillips, mister Parker, do
come here.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
If we may move to matters of business, missus Phillips,
My colleagues of Parker Brothers have become aware of your
Landlord's game and we would like to publish it with.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
This is wonderful news, mister Parker. Alas the ideas this
game espouses will reach the widest possible audience.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
That is our hope. Although a Parker Brothers we talk
less about ideas and more about the joy of play.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And so Lizzie McGhee and George Parker agreed a deal
five hundred dollars for all rights or compared to today's wages.
Parker bought the rights to Lizzie McGee's creation for just
twenty five thousand dollars no royalties. But she thought she
was getting what she had dreamed about for thirty years,
(28:54):
a mass audience for the Landlord's game, which would teach
them a more cooperative, ethical way of running an economy.
She sold the game cheaply, even though she valued it Dearly.
Two days after the agreement, she even wrote letter addressed
to her creation.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It was not until the Great Game King George S.
Parker did us the honor of seeking you out and
offered you a brader opportunity than I could ever do.
That I would part with you. Farewell, my beloved brainchild.
Remember the world expects much from you.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
The Great Game King George Parker quietly published McGee's board
game in nineteen thirty nine, just as he promised, But
it didn't catch on, partly because he didn't promote it.
After all, that wasn't what George Parker was buying from
Lizzie McGhee, was it. He was buying a monopoly on Monopoly.
(29:55):
Charles Darrow became a millionaire, even though his only original
contribution to Monopoly appears to have been the bold concept
of claiming that the game was his idea. Still, I
have some sympathy for Darrow. He had been in a
difficult place. His son, Dickie, had been disabled by scarlet
(30:16):
fever and had severe learning difficulties. Few schools would take Dickie,
and the ones that would were expensive. Charles had no
job and no income. He really was desperate for money.
As a plausible charmer with a good story and somebody
else's idea, he managed to make his name and his fortune.
(30:38):
Lizzie McGee was desperate too. She was desperate for social
and political change. She was desperate for the freedoms and
opportunities that would have been hers without question, had she
been a man, And she was desperate for her game
to reach the audience it deserved. As her father once
said of her.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
She wants to fly, but hasn't got the wings.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The journalist Mary Plon found Lizzie McGee's entry in the
nineteen forty census, first census after selling her patent to
George Parker, and the last census before she died. She
could have given her occupation as teacher or stenographer, or
writer or housewife, but she didn't. She wrote instead.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Maker of games.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
It was, after all, just one year after Parker Brothers
had published The Landlord's Game. She also listed her income zero,
just like the makers of mus Monopoly. I'm all in
favor of celebrating female inventors. Maybe it will make a difference,
(31:53):
or maybe it will achieve no more social change than
Lizzie McGee did with her cooperative version of the Landlord's Game,
but it seems worth a try. So when there's a
new edition of mus Monopoly, I have a great idea
for someone they might want to include.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Be it known that I, Lizzie J McGee have invented
certain new and useful improvements in game boards. I'll do
one more letters Peytent number four hundred. No, I don't
(32:34):
have a good thing for numbers. Okay, letters peyton number
seven a week with the edible for though. No, sorry,
it's a Friday. Oh ding dong. Okay, you do the
special effects. That was my knee on the door. Gum
(33:07):
and Parker come inside. Okay, I'll just do it. I'll
just get on with him. Mister Parker, do come in?
I like that she really is expecting him. She's been
expecting him for her whole life. Do come in too much?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
The indispensable source for this episode is Mary Palon's book
The Monopolists, supplemented by Christopher Ketchum's article in Harper's titled
Monopoly is Theft. For links to academic work by Lisa Cook,
RAJ Chetti, and others, see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
(34:13):
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
It's produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise,
Julia Barton, edited the scripts. Starring in this series of
Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonham Carter and Jeffrey Wright, alongside
(34:35):
Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cobner, Holbrook Smith,
Greg Lockett, Massaia Munroe and Rufus Wright. The show would
not have been possible without the work of Mea LaBelle,
Jacob Weisberg, Kell Fame, John Schnaz, Carli mcgliori, Eric Sandler,
(34:57):
Emily Roster, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan and Maya Kanig. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Pushkin Happy New Year. Did you pull out a board
game over the holiday season? Did you play nicely? Or
did it quickly descend into acrimony, name calling, and accusations
of cheating. The game that seems to bring out the
(00:36):
killer instinct in even the kindest of Granny's is Monopoly.
The cutthroat activity sees players try to amass fortunes while
gleefully making opponents bankrupt. But it wasn't meant to be
like that. It may surprise you to know that the
inventor of the game imagined a far gentler, kinder pastime,
(01:01):
But as I learned researching the history of Monopoly, her
ideals and her name were squeezed out of the origin story.
So take a break from your own gaming to listen
again to a classic cautionary tale featuring the voice talent
of Helena Bonham Carter as the inimitable Lizzie McGhee. Whatever
(01:23):
you do, do not pass go. In September twenty nineteen,
the toy and game giant Hasbro struck a blow in
the battle of a women's rights. Although it's not quite
clear which side they were on, they published mus Monopoly,
(01:47):
putting a new spin on their classic board game. The
tagline for this new version was the first game where
women make more than men. They're not kidding. Female players
start the game with more Monopoly money than male players,
and they get two hundred and forty dollars each time
they pass go, rather than the traditional two hundred dollars
(02:08):
for the Why exactly is not clear, some sort of joke.
It wasn't even a consistent joke. Some of the chants
and community chest cards paid out more cash to mail players.
So what is the message? Women have been unfairly treated,
Women need help to win. We don't actually know what
(02:29):
feminism means. There is, however, one feature of the game
that's hard to criticize. Instead of buying properties from around
Atlantic City as in the classic game, players invest in
inventions that were developed by women, such as Marion Donovan,
the inventor of the leak proof diaper, Anna Connolly, the
(02:50):
inventor of the external fire escape, and Heady Lamar, the
film star who in the nineteen forties co invented frequency
hopping radio transmissions, a precursor to today's Wi Fi. In
mus Monopoly, each square represents one of these inventions. For example,
instead of buying the prestige property boardwalk you could invest
(03:13):
in chocolate chip cookies invented by Ruth Wakefield. And it's
hard to argue with the sentiments expressed in Hasbro's advertisement
for his Monopoly, which begins with the simple text women
hold just ten percent of all patented inventions. The mus
Monopoly game was widely derided as a confusing mass of
(03:36):
mixed messages, but the mus Monopoly advert asks a simple,
powerful question, isn't it time that the inventiveness of women
was finally acknowledged and rewarded? Well? Isn't it? I'm Tim
Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. You may be
(04:20):
familiar with the traditional story about the origins of Monopoly.
I remember reading it myself as a child, which isn't
surprising since the story itself was for decades included in
every game box. The story goes as follows. In nineteen
thirty three, the Bleakest Depths of the Great Depression, an
(04:42):
unemployed steam radiator repair man from Philadelphia named Charles Darrow
was struck with an idea to create a new board
game about property trading. It was an act of desperation
because Darrow had no money, and a family to feed.
But it was also an act of inspiration, since the
(05:06):
game sprang fully formed from the bread of its creator.
Darrow drew out the game board on a sheet of oilcloth.
The board featured the familiar street names of Atlantic City,
where Darrow once enjoyed taking his wife and children on vacation.
It was a nostalgic decision aimed at cheering up a
(05:26):
family that had fallen on hard times. The Darrows loved
the game, suspecting that he'd created something valuable. Charles Darrow
tried to interest the big board game distributors. Milton Bradley
turned him down, so did Parker Brothers. However, they later
(05:48):
reconsidered when they saw how popular Darrow's homemade sets were.
With the backing of Parker Brothers, Monopoly became a smash hit.
Charles Darrow's fortune was assured, as was his reputation as
the creator of one of the most successful games in
the world. But as the journal historian Mary Pilon says
(06:11):
in her book The Monopolists, the story wasn't exactly true.
That's putting it kindly, because, as Pilon's book makes perfectly clear,
the story I read in my game box isn't true
at all. The game of Monopoly did not come to
Charles Darrow in a flash of inspiration. It was taught
(06:34):
to him by his friends Charles and Olive Todd in
nineteen thirty two. The Todd's plane on a board with
go jail free parking and go to jail at the
four corners, with chance and community chest, with the electric
company and the waterworks, and street names from around Atlantic City.
(06:58):
When drawing up his monopoly board, Charles Todd even made
a mistake in the spelling of Marvin Gardens, swapping in
an eye to become Marvin Gardens. Charles Darrow's monopoly board
would later use not only the same squares in the
same configuration, with the same deed values, it would even
(07:19):
repeat the same spelling error. After several evenings, pleasantly whiled
away with the game.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Say Todd, would you mind lending me a copy of
the rules of that game?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Well, Darrow, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I've never written them down.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Why do you want them? I'd love to teach it
to others. I want to make sure I get it right.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Charles Todd was a little puzzled, but he obliged his
friend Soon after, to Todd's irritation, Darrow started avoiding him
it crossed the street when the Todds were coming the
other way. Then came the blockbuster success of Monopoly with
sparky graphics that Charles Darrow had begged free of charge
(08:05):
from another friend, the cartoonist Franklin Alexander. Journalists repeated the
rags to Rich his yarn that Darrow was spinning. Darrow's
former friends, Charles and Olive Todd, were outraged, but not
because they felt their idea had been stolen. They knew
all along that Monopoly had never belonged to them in
(08:28):
the first place. They had been taught the game by
their friends, the brothers Jesse and Eugene Rayford. Jesse and
Eugene had been the ones who named squares on the
board after areas in Atlantic City, but they hadn't invented
Monopoly either. The ha'd adapted a version they had been
taught by Ruth Hoskins, who was a trainee school teacher.
(08:52):
So did Ruth Hoskins invent the game? No, It was
circulating widely in the nineteen twenties. It was even popular
in economics departments. One influential player Scott Nearing was a
socialist economics professor at the Wharton School who used a
version of the game to teach the evils of corporate monopolies.
(09:14):
This game was called Monopoly, and the square board had
plenty of recognizable elements with forty spaces, including chants, jail,
go to jail, and numerous properties. But there were two
ways to play the game. It could be played competitively,
as players tried to monopolize groups of property and bankrupt
their opponents, or it could be played cooperatively, with resources
(09:39):
paid into the public purse, utilities supplying services for free,
and each player's resources growing over time. The cooperative game was,
of course, very dull, But monopoly wasn't invented at the
Wharton School. Professor Scott Nearing learned it in the utopian
(10:00):
community called Arden in Delaware. Arden had been founded in
nineteen hundred and organized according to the principles of the economist, journalist,
and social reformer Henry George. Henry George's most famous idea
was that all land and natural resources ultimately belonged to
society as a whole, so whoever owned them should be
(10:23):
paying a hefty tax, and it was Henry George's idea
of this single tax that the Arden version of Monopoly
was designed to explore this game. The progressive Heaven or
capitalist Hell version of Monopoly was called the Landlord's Game.
Did the radical folk of Arden invent the Landlord's Game? No,
(10:48):
It was dreamed up by a remarkable woman named Lizzie McGee.
And is Lizzie McGee celebrated on the US Monopoly board.
I think you can guess the answer to that question.
Cautionary tales will return in a moment. Unlike Charles Darrow,
(11:15):
the man who claimed to have invented Monopoly, Lizzie McGhee
was a true original.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I'm thankful that I was taught how to think and
not what to think.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
When McGhee created the original Monopoly style game, it was
the early nineteen hundreds. Here's how Mary Plon's History of
Monopoly describes McGee, a distinctive looking woman in her thirties,
with curly dark locks and bangs that framed her face.
Lizzie had inherited the bushy eyebrows of her father, the
(11:50):
descendant of Scottish immigrants. She had pale skin, a strong jawline,
and a strong work ethic. Quite as an unmarried woman,
unusual at her age. Working as a stenographer, she had
little prospect of acquiring material comforts, Yet she had saved
(12:11):
and bought herself a home and a substantial parcel of
land near Washington, d c. Lizzie's father had been a
journalist and campaigner, the editor of an abolitionist newspaper, and
a devoted supporter of Abraham Lincoln. She too was politically active.
Like the community at Arden, Lizzie McGee was a Georgist,
(12:32):
a committed follower of the ideas and ideals of Henry George.
She was friends with Henry George Junior, the son of
the great Man himself, and she was the secretary of
the Georgist organization, the Woman's Single Tax Club of Washington.
Henry George had died suddenly in eighteen ninety seven while
(12:54):
running to be the mayor of New York City. One
hundred thousand people lined up to pay their respects to
his funeral casket. His followers, including Lizzie McGhee, had felt
bereft and determined to carry on the fight for Georgist policies.
But what could McGee do a progressive and a capitalist world.
(13:17):
A woman in a man's world. She was desperate for
social change, but felt frustrated in what she could achieve.
Mary Polon's description of her conjures a powerhouse of creativity.
McGee wrote poems about unrequited love. She wrote essays on
Georgist taxation. She wrote stories too, including one.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The Theft of a Brain, about.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
A young woman whose brilliant idea is plagiarized. But none
of these creative projects really broke through. McGhee was frustrated.
How to get the message across? How to achieve lasting change?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of
our present land system, and when they grow up, the
evil will soon be remedied.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yes, how to reach the children? What better method than
through a board game? Lizzie McGee's The Landlord's Game would
evolve and become more popular than she could ever have imagined.
By the nineteen thirties, it existed in several popular versions,
all of which took the competitive rather than cooperative approach.
(14:29):
There was finance sold by the NAP Company, Inflation sold
by Rudy Copeland of Fort Worth, Texas, and easy money
sold by Milton Bradley. But Lizzie McGee herself had been
almost forgotten, and so had the subversively educational version of
her game. It turns out that when people play board games,
(14:51):
they'd rather try to crush their opponents than all accumulate
resources together without obstacle or incident. No single person created
Monopoly any more than a single person created chess or poker.
But if you wanted to pick out the one creative
soul who who deserved the most credit, there is no
question that it would be Lizzie McGee. So how come
(15:16):
it was Charles Darrow and not McGhee who became known
as the lone genius who invented Monopoly? Remember the advertisement
for mus Monopoly. Hasbro, the company that absorbed Parker Brothers,
began with a lament. Women hold just ten percent of
(15:37):
all patented inventions. This situation is finally improving. Women made
up less than ten percent of patent holders born in
the nineteen forties, but more than fifteen percent of patent
holders born in the nineteen seventies. As millennials take over
the process of patenting, who knows, we might get as
(15:57):
high as twenty percent before long. In fact, we're on
course to achieve gender parity in patents as early as
the year twenty one thirty five. Cheer up, So why
has progress been so slow? One of the scholars who's
been searching for answers is the economist Lisa Cook of
(16:19):
Michigan State University. Professor Kok studies why certain groups of
people seemed to be shut out from the innovation economy,
in particular African Americans and women. For many decades, women
had less than equal access to high quality education, especially
technical education. For example, in the early nineteen fifties, Eleanor
(16:43):
Ostrom wanted to study economics at UCLA, but she was
rejected because she didn't have the mathematical skills. She didn't
have the mathematical skills because as a schoolgirl, she had
been steered away from the subject because of her gender. Thankfully,
Eleanor Ostrom had the last laugh. In two thousand and nine,
she was the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial
(17:05):
Prize in economics. It was astonishingly late for the profession
to recognize the first female laureate, but as Linostroum was
quick to say, she wouldn't be the last. As a
result of both overt and subtle discrimination, women have been
underrepresented in technical subjects such as mathematics, economics, and engineering.
(17:28):
That is changing, but slowly. Between nineteen seventy and twenty fourteen,
the proportion of PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical
subjects that were rewarded to women more than quadruple. And
if a lack of educational opportunity is a problem, so
too is a lack of mentors. A huge study conducted
(17:51):
by a team of economists led by Raj Chetti of
Harvard found that young people were far more likely to
become inventors if they could see other inventors around them,
especially if their own parents were inventors. Gender matters here.
For example, female inventors seem to be far more inspiring
(18:12):
to girls than male inventors are, and since there are
fewer women inventors around to inspire girls, the problem is
a self perpetuating spiral. Indeed, Chetti and his colleagues estimate
that if young girls had the same exposure to female
inventors as young boys did to male inventors, they would
(18:33):
innovate more than two and a half times as much
as now, and the gender innovation gap would be less
than half as big. That's why them as monopoly set
and advertising campaign, with its celebration of women inventors, is
so important, But among the female inventors credited on the board,
(18:54):
Lizzie McGhee is conspicuous by her absence. It is an
astonishing missed opportunity. But it's also a mystery. How did
Lizzie McGee find herself so comprehensively the air brushed out
of history? And why don't the publishers of monopoly want
to acknowledge her more than a century later? Could it
(19:17):
be perhaps that they're a little ashamed? Cautionary tales will
be back in a moment. Lizzie McGee broke the mold
in so many ways. It wasn't just her politics, her
(19:39):
defiance of traditional values in refusing to marry when young,
her far reaching creativity as a poet, actor, novelist and essayist.
She actually had the determination to follow through on her
dreams despite all the obstacles. It's easy to assume that
Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers were able to lay claim
(19:59):
to Monopoly because Lizzie McGee didn't have a patent, but
she did. In fact, she had two. The earlier one
is for an improvement to a type rolla, But it's
the patent for the Landlord's Game that deserves to be remembered.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Letters Patent number seven hundred and forty eight thousand, six
hundred and twenty six dated January fifth, nineteen oh four.
My invention, which I have designated the Landlord's Game, relates
to game boards and more particularly to games of chance.
When a player stops upon a lot owned by any
(20:37):
of the players, he must pay rent to the owner.
The object of the game is to obtain as much
wealth or money as possible.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Even today, few patent holders are women. In McGee's time,
less than one in a hundred were. She was a
member of a small club of female inventors. So if
she had a patent, what went wrong. The economist Lisa
Cook knows that the innovation gap runs deeper than educational
(21:10):
opportunity or even the presence of mentors. There's also the
question of whose ideas get taken seriously. You can have
a good idea and you can even get it patented.
That that does not mean your idea will thrive if
your face doesn't fit. For example, Lisa Cook's own cousin,
(21:31):
the chemist Percy Julian, was repeatedly turned down for jobs
as an academic and as a corporate researcher because he
was black. Eventually, Julian became the first African American to
run a large corporate laboratory. At Gliddon, he developed techniques
for producing hormones such as estrogen and courtzone, and earned
(21:52):
several patents. In nineteen fifty, Percy Julian was named Chicagoan
of the Year by the Chicago Sometimes. It was the
same year that infuriated that a black man had moved
into a nice white part of Chicago, racists tried to
burn down his house. If you're suffering from discrimination, as
(22:16):
both women and African American inventors were throughout the twentieth century,
then Professor Cook's work makes it clear having a patent
might not be enough. A patent isn't much good if
nobody respects it. Consider the case of Garrett Morgan. He
was born in the eighteen seventies. He was a gifted inventor,
(22:38):
developing products as varied as a gas mask, a traffic light,
and hair straightening cream. But he was also African American,
which didn't fit America's idea of what an inventor should
look like. In one dramatic incident. In nineteen sixteen, Morgan
and his brother led a rescue of several victims of
(22:59):
an underground explosion near Lake Erie. The rescuers used Morgan's
invention of a firefighters smoke Hood. Officials awarded medals to
the eight members of the rescue party, but not to
the Morgan brothers themselves, and while a publicity about the
daring rescue helped boost sales of the smoke Hood, several
(23:19):
Southern cities canceled their orders when they discovered that Morgan
was black. Morgan often concealed his race, even using surrogates
to pretend to be him when he was trying to
sell his inventions. You can't blame him. Lizzie McGhee didn't
have to fear being firebombed like Percy Julian, or having
(23:41):
her wares boycotted like Garrett Morgan. But she did have
to fear being ignored. Her game wasn't selling and she
wasn't thriving. She was frustrated at having her freedoms and
opportunities constrained by her gender. A couple of years after
patenting the Landlord's Game, she took out a newspaper advertisement
(24:02):
offering herself for sale.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Young woman American slave.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
This stunt, shocking then and shocking now, was a way
of satirizing the idea that marriage was the only option
for a woman.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes, and ambition.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
But while it made a splash, this outrageous stunt did
not seem to turn the tide, either for feminism or
for Lizzie McGee herself. A few years later, in her forties,
she did marry. Her game continued to languish. Like Garrett Morgan,
(24:44):
Lizzie McGee did not fit the stereotype of a creative genius.
By the time Monopoly had become a best seller more
than thirty years after McGee filed the patent for the
Landlord's Game, she was an unconventional old woman with unconventional
political ideals, still trying to get the world to pay
attention to the case for progressive single taxation. She was
(25:08):
no match for Charle Darrow, the smooth talking family man
peddling his version of the American dream. Darrow charmed the
Todds into giving him the monopoly rules in every detail,
charmed the artist Franklin Alexander into donating the designs that
gave Monopoly its clean, modern look, charmed Parker Brothers into
(25:30):
treating him as a creative genius, and charmed the press
into repeating his tale of creativity and adversity, carving this
fictional origin story in stone with the help of the
publicists at Parker Brothers. In nineteen thirty five, Charles Darrow
put that story in writing to the president of Parker Brothers.
(25:52):
It is hard to imagine that the company believed him.
They must have understood that he was lying to them.
One internal memo acknowledged that Darrow had appropriated the name Monopoly,
and added, frankly, and I think without prejudice that the
original trading game came out in nineteen oh two. Nevertheless,
(26:14):
Parker Brothers applied for a patent on Monopoly and managed
to secure it with remarkable speed. Then came the business
of acquiring the rights to rival games. Parker Brothers came
to an arrangement with Milton Bradley about their game Easy Money,
and paid a large sum for the rights to the
game finance. They sued the publisher of the game inflation,
(26:37):
yet somehow Parker Brothers ended up paying him at least
ten thousand dollars. Relative to the wages of the day,
that's half a million dollars, which does suggest that Parker
Brothers didn't really want to put their patent to the test.
Charles Darrow kept telling journalists the story of his moment
(26:57):
of inspiration, and people such as Charles and Olive Todd,
while irritated, didn't feel able to pursue the matter. After all,
while he knew Charles Darrow hadn't invented the game, they
knew they hadn't invented it either, So that just left
Lizzie McGhee in one corner, an elderly left wing feminist
(27:20):
desperate to teach the children of the world the merits
of the single tax system through her obscure board game.
In the other corner, a smooth talking Charles Darrow with
a tale to tug at heartstrings, and a host of
sharp suits from Parker Brothers. It was no contest. One
November day in nineteen thirty five, traveling from Salem, Massachusetts,
(27:44):
all the way to Arlington, Virginia, George Parker himself, the
seventy year old founder of Parker Brothers, paid a call
to the house of Lizzie McGee Phillips, mister Parker, do
come here.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
If we may move to matters of business, missus Phillips,
My colleagues of Parker Brothers have become aware of your
Landlord's game and we would like to publish it with.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
This is wonderful news, mister Parker. Alas the ideas this
game espouses will reach the widest possible audience.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
That is our hope. Although a Parker Brothers we talk
less about ideas and more about the joy of play.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And so Lizzie McGhee and George Parker agreed a deal
five hundred dollars for all rights or compared to today's wages.
Parker bought the rights to Lizzie McGee's creation for just
twenty five thousand dollars no royalties. But she thought she
was getting what she had dreamed about for thirty years,
(28:54):
a mass audience for the Landlord's game, which would teach
them a more cooperative, ethical way of running an economy.
She sold the game cheaply, even though she valued it Dearly.
Two days after the agreement, she even wrote letter addressed
to her creation.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It was not until the Great Game King George S.
Parker did us the honor of seeking you out and
offered you a brader opportunity than I could ever do.
That I would part with you. Farewell, my beloved brainchild.
Remember the world expects much from you.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
The Great Game King George Parker quietly published McGee's board
game in nineteen thirty nine, just as he promised, But
it didn't catch on, partly because he didn't promote it.
After all, that wasn't what George Parker was buying from
Lizzie McGhee, was it. He was buying a monopoly on Monopoly.
(29:55):
Charles Darrow became a millionaire, even though his only original
contribution to Monopoly appears to have been the bold concept
of claiming that the game was his idea. Still, I
have some sympathy for Darrow. He had been in a
difficult place. His son, Dickie, had been disabled by scarlet
(30:16):
fever and had severe learning difficulties. Few schools would take Dickie,
and the ones that would were expensive. Charles had no
job and no income. He really was desperate for money.
As a plausible charmer with a good story and somebody
else's idea, he managed to make his name and his fortune.
(30:38):
Lizzie McGee was desperate too. She was desperate for social
and political change. She was desperate for the freedoms and
opportunities that would have been hers without question, had she
been a man, And she was desperate for her game
to reach the audience it deserved. As her father once
said of her.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
She wants to fly, but hasn't got the wings.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
The journalist Mary Plon found Lizzie McGee's entry in the
nineteen forty census, first census after selling her patent to
George Parker, and the last census before she died. She
could have given her occupation as teacher or stenographer, or
writer or housewife, but she didn't. She wrote instead.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Maker of games.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
It was, after all, just one year after Parker Brothers
had published The Landlord's Game. She also listed her income zero,
just like the makers of mus Monopoly. I'm all in
favor of celebrating female inventors. Maybe it will make a difference,
(31:53):
or maybe it will achieve no more social change than
Lizzie McGee did with her cooperative version of the Landlord's Game,
but it seems worth a try. So when there's a
new edition of mus Monopoly, I have a great idea
for someone they might want to include.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Be it known that I, Lizzie J McGee have invented
certain new and useful improvements in game boards. I'll do
one more letters Peytent number four hundred. No, I don't
(32:34):
have a good thing for numbers. Okay, letters peyton number
seven a week with the edible for though. No, sorry,
it's a Friday. Oh ding dong. Okay, you do the
special effects. That was my knee on the door. Gum
(33:07):
and Parker come inside. Okay, I'll just do it. I'll
just get on with him. Mister Parker, do come in?
I like that she really is expecting him. She's been
expecting him for her whole life. Do come in too much?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
The indispensable source for this episode is Mary Palon's book
The Monopolists, supplemented by Christopher Ketchum's article in Harper's titled
Monopoly is Theft. For links to academic work by Lisa Cook,
RAJ Chetti, and others, see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
(34:13):
Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
It's produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise,
Julia Barton, edited the scripts. Starring in this series of
Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonham Carter and Jeffrey Wright, alongside
(34:35):
Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cobner, Holbrook Smith,
Greg Lockett, Massaia Munroe and Rufus Wright. The show would
not have been possible without the work of Mea LaBelle,
Jacob Weisberg, Kell Fame, John Schnaz, Carli mcgliori, Eric Sandler,
(34:57):
Emily Roster, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan and Maya Kanig. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Host
Tim Harford
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