May 28, 2021 • 35 mins
Lizzie J. Magie (played by Helena Bonham Carter) should be celebrated as the inventor of what would become Monopoly - but her role in creating the smash hit board game was cynically ignored, even though she had a patent.
Discrimination has marred the careers of many inventors and shut others out from the innovation economy entirely. Could crediting forgotten figures such as Lizzie Magie help address continuing disparities in the patenting of new inventions?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. In September twenty nineteen, the toy and game giant
Hasbro struck a blow in the battle over women's rights,
although it's not quite clear which side they were on.
They published mus Monopoly, putting a new spin on their
(00:37):
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 for the boys. Why exactly, It's
(01:00):
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 me ale players. So what
is the message? Women have been unfairly treated, women need
help to win. We don't actually know what feminism means.
There is, however, one feature of the game that's hard
(01:24):
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 leakproof diaper, Anna Connolly, the inventor of the
external fire Escape and Heady Lamar, the film star who
(01:44):
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 in chocolate
chip cookies, invented by Ruth Wakefield. And it's hard to
(02:07):
argue where the sentiments expressed. Hasbro's advertisement for MS Monopoly,
which begins with a simple text, women hold just ten
percent of all patented inventions. The mus Monopoly game was
widely derided as a confusing mass of mixed messages, but
the MUS Monopoly advert asks a simple, powerful question, isn't
(02:32):
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 familiar with the
(03:10):
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 unemployed steam radiator
(03:33):
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 game sprang fully formed
(03:57):
from the brow 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 wants
enjoyed taking his wife and children on vacation. It was
a nostalgic decision aimed at cheering up a family that
had fallen on hard times. The Darrows loved the game,
(04:22):
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 reconsidered when they
saw how popular Darrow's homemade sets were. With the backing
(04:42):
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 journalist and historian Mary Plan says in
her book The Monopolists, the story wasn't exactly true. That's
(05:07):
putting it kindly, because, as Pellon'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
to him by his friends Charles and Olive Todd in
(05:27):
nineteen thirty two. The Todd's playing on a board with
go Jail Free Parking and go to Jail at the
four corners, with chants and community chest, with the electric
company and the waterworks, and street names from around Atlantic City.
When drawing up his Monopoly board, Charles Todd even made
(05:50):
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
repeat the same spelling error. After several evenings pleasantly whiled
(06:14):
away with the game, say Todd, would you mind lending
me a copy of the rules of that game. Oh well, Darrow,
I don't know. I'd never written them down. Why do
you want them? I'd love to teach it to others.
I want to make sure I get it right. Charles
Todd was a little puzzled, but he obliged his friend.
(06:36):
Soon after, to Tod's irritation, Darrow started avoiding him. He
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 from another friend,
the cartoonist Franklin Alexander. Journalists repeated the rags to Rich
(07:00):
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 the first place.
They had been taught the game by their friends, the
(07:21):
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. They'd
adapted a version they'd been taught by Ruth Hoskins, who
was a trainee school teacher. So did Ruth Hoskins invent
(07:42):
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. This game was called monopoly,
(08:05):
and the square board had plenty of recognizable elements, with
forty paces, 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
(08:25):
played cooperatively, with resources 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
(08:48):
it in the utopian 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
(09:10):
whoever owned them should be 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
(09:33):
invent the Landlord's Game? No? It was dreamed up by
a remarkable woman named Lizzie McGhee. And is Lizzie McGhee
celebrated on the mus Monopoly board. I think you can
guess the answer to that question. Cautionary tales will return
(09:56):
in a moment. Unlike Charles Darrow, the man who claimed
to have invented Monopoly, Lizzie McGhee was a true original.
I'm thankful that I was taught how to think and
not what to think. When McGee created the original Monopoly
(10:20):
style game, it was the early nineteen hundreds. Here's how
Mary Plon's History of Monopoly describes McGhee, 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 descendant of Scottish immigrants. She had pale skin,
(10:43):
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 and bought herself a home and a substantial
parcel of land near Washington, d c. Lizzie's father had
(11:07):
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 McGhee was
a Georgist, a committed follower of the ideas and ideals
of Henry George. She was friends with Henry George Junior,
(11:29):
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 running to be the mayor of New
York City. A hundred thousand people lined up to pay
their respects to his funeral casket. His followers, including Lizzie McGhee,
(11:54):
had felt bereft and determined to carry on the fight
for Georgist policies. But what could McGhee do A progressive
in a capitalist world, A woman in a man's world.
She was death sprit for social change, but felt frustrated
in what she could achieve. Mary Paland's description of her
(12:15):
conjures a powerhouse of creativity. McGhee wrote poems about unrequited love.
She wrote essays on George's taxation. She wrote stories too,
including one The Theft of a Brain, about a young
woman whose brilliant idea is plagiarized. But none of these
creative projects really broke through. McGhee was frustrated. How to
(12:40):
get the message across? How to achieve lasting change? 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. Yes, how to reach the children?
What better method than through a board game. Lizzie McGhee's
(13:03):
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 co operative approach. There was Finance sold
by the NAP Company, Inflation sold by Rudy Copeland of
(13:24):
Fort Worth, Texas, and easy Money sold by Milton Bradley.
But Lizzie mc ghee herself had been almost forgotten, and
so had the subversively educational version of her game. It
turns out that when people play board games, they'd rather
try to crush their opponents than all accumulate resources together
(13:45):
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 deserved the most credit, there is no question that
it would be Lizzie McGhee. So how come it was
(14:06):
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 all patented inventions. This
(14:29):
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 high as twenty percent
before long. In fact, we're on course to achieve gender
(14:52):
parity and 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 Michigan's University. Professor Cook studies
why certain groups of people seemed to be shut out
(15:15):
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 Ostroum wanted to study economics at UCLA,
(15:35):
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 Ostrum had the last laugh. In
two thousand and nine, she was the first woman to
win the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. It was astonishingly
(15:57):
late for the profession to recognize the first female laureate,
but as Linostrum 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. That is changing, but slowly. Between nineteen seventy
(16:21):
and twenty fourteen, the proportion of PhDs in science, technology, engineering,
and mathematical subjects that were awarded 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 by a team of economists led by Raj Chetti
(16:43):
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
to girls than male inventors are, and since there are
(17:05):
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
innovate more than two and a half times as much
(17:25):
as now, and the gender innovation gap would be less
than half as big. That's why the mus Monopoly set
and advertising campaign, with its celebration of women inventors, is
so important. But among the female inventors credited on the board,
Lizzie mc ghee is conspicuous by her absence. It is
(17:48):
an astonishing missed opportunity. But it's also a mystery. How
did Lizzie mc ghee find herself so comprehensively airbrushed out
of history? And why don't the publishers of Monopoly want
to acknowledge her more than a century later. Could it
be perhaps that they're a little a share aimed cautionary
(18:14):
tales will be back in a moment. Lizzie McGee broke
the mold in so many ways. It wasn't just her politics,
her defiance of traditional values in refusing to marry when young,
her far reaching creativity as a poet, actor, novelist and essayist.
(18:37):
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 to
monopoly because Lizzie McGhee didn't have a patent. But she did.
In fact, she had two. The earlier one is for
an improvement to a typewriter roller. But it's the patent
(19:00):
for the Landlord's Game that deserves to be remembered. Letters
Patent numbers seven hundred and forty eight, six hundred and
twenty stated January fifth, nineteen o four. My invention, which
I have designated the Landlord's Game, relates to gameboards and
more particularly to games of chance. When a player stops
(19:25):
upon a lot owned by any 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.
Even today, few patentholders are women. In McGee's time, less
than one in a hundred word. She was a member
(19:46):
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 opportunity
or even the presence of mentors. There's also the question
of whose ideas get taken seriously. You can have a
(20:08):
good idea and you can even get it patented, but
that does not mean your idea will thrive if your
face doesn't fit. For example, Lisa Cook's own cousin, the
chemist Percy Julian, was repeatedly turned down for jobs as
an academic and as a corporate researcher because he was black. Eventually,
(20:29):
Julian became the first African American to run a large
corporate laboratory at Gliddon. He developed techniques for producing hormones
such as eastrogron and quarter zone, and earned several patents.
In nineteen fifty, Percy Julian was named Chicagoan of the
Year by the Chicago Sometimes. It was the same year
(20:52):
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 both women
and African American inventors were throughout the twentieth century, then
Professor Cook's work makes it clear having a patent might
(21:15):
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,
developing products as varied as a gas mask, a traffic light,
and hair straightening cream. But he was also African American,
(21:36):
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
an underground explosion near Lake Erie. The rescuers used Morgan's
invention of a firefighters smoke hood. Officials awarded medals to
(21:57):
the white 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
Southern cities canceled their orders and they discovered that Morgan
was black. Morgan often concealed his race, even using surrogates
(22:19):
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
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
(22:42):
opportunities constrained by her gender. A couple of years after
patenting The Landlord's Game, she took out a newspaper advertisement
offering herself for sale, young woman, American slave. This stunt,
shocking then and shocking now, was a way of satirizing
the idea that marriage was the only option for a woman.
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We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes, and ambition.
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,
(23:33):
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 McGhee 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
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no match for Charles 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
(24:19):
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.
(24:41):
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 o two. Nevertheless,
(25:03):
Parker Brothers applied for a patent on Monopoly and managed
to secure it with remarkable speech. 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,
(25:26):
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
(25:46):
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 McGee in one corner, an elderly left wing feminist
(26:09):
desperate to teach the children of the world the merits
of a single tax system through her obscure board game.
In the other corner, a smooth talking Charles Darrow with
a tail to tug at heart strings and a host
of sharp suits from Parker Brothers, it was no contest.
One November day in nineteen thirty five, traveling from Salem, Massachusetts,
(26:33):
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, if we may move to the matters of business,
missus Phillips. My colleagues of Parker Brothers who have become
(26:54):
aware of your landlord's game, and we would like to
publish it. But this is wonderful news, mister Parker. At last,
the ideas this game espoused us will reach the whitest
possible audience. That is our hope. Although a Parker Brothers
we talked less about ideas and more about the joy
(27:18):
of play. And so Lizzie McGee and George Parker agreed
a deal five hundred dollars for all rights or compared
to today's wages. Parker brought the rights to Lizzie McGee's
creation for just twenty five thousand dollars, no royalties, But
(27:39):
she thought she was getting what she had dreamed about
for thirty years 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 a letter addressed to her creation. It was
(28:02):
not until the Great Game, King George S. Parker did
us the honor of seeking you out and offered you
brada opportunity than I could ever do. That I would
part with you. Farewell, my beloved brainchild. Remember the world
expects much from you. The Great Game. King George Parker
(28:24):
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 McGee, was it. He was
buying a monopoly on Monopoly. Charles Darrow became a millionaire,
(28:47):
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 fever and had severe learning difficulties.
(29:08):
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. Lizzie McGhee was desperate too.
(29:29):
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, she was to fly,
but hasn't got the wings. The journalist Mary Plot found
(29:54):
Lizzie McGhee's entry in the nineteen forty census, the 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 maker of Games. It was,
(30:22):
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,
or maybe it will achieve no more social change than
(30:45):
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. Be it known
that I Lizzie J. McGee have invented certain new and
(31:08):
useful improvements in game boards. Although this is the last
in the current season of Cautionary Tales, don't worry. We're
already working on the next series. After all, when you
get to work with the likes of Helena Bonon Carter,
it's too much fun not to. I'll do one more
(31:32):
letters Patent number four hundred. No, I don't have a
good thing for numbers. Okay, letters peytent number seven a
week with no sorry, it's a Friday. Oh ding dong. Okay,
(31:55):
you do the special effects. That was my knee on
the door. John and Parker come inside. Okay, I'll just
(32:16):
do it. Let's just get on with him. Mister Parker,
do come in like that? She was? She really is
expecting him. She's been expecting him for her whole life.
Do come in Mary Worst too much? The indispensable source
(32:50):
for this episode is Mary Palm's book The Monopolists, supplemented
by Christopher Ketchum's article in Harper's title Monopoly is Theft.
For links to academic work by Lisa Cook, raj Chetti,
and others, see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
(33:15):
written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
by Ryan Dilley 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 Nazar Alderazzi,
(33:38):
Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cognor Holbrook, Smith, Reg Lockett,
miss Eamunroe, and Rufus Wright. The show would not have
been possible without the work of Mia La Belle, Jacob Weissberg,
Kella Faine, John Schnarz, Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostock,
(34:01):
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. In September twenty nineteen, the toy and game giant
Hasbro struck a blow in the battle over women's rights,
although it's not quite clear which side they were on.
They published mus Monopoly, putting a new spin on their
(00:37):
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 for the boys. Why exactly, It's
(01:00):
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 me ale players. So what
is the message? Women have been unfairly treated, women need
help to win. We don't actually know what feminism means.
There is, however, one feature of the game that's hard
(01:24):
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 leakproof diaper, Anna Connolly, the inventor of the
external fire Escape and Heady Lamar, the film star who
(01:44):
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 in chocolate
chip cookies, invented by Ruth Wakefield. And it's hard to
(02:07):
argue where the sentiments expressed. Hasbro's advertisement for MS Monopoly,
which begins with a simple text, women hold just ten
percent of all patented inventions. The mus Monopoly game was
widely derided as a confusing mass of mixed messages, but
the MUS Monopoly advert asks a simple, powerful question, isn't
(02:32):
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 familiar with the
(03:10):
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 unemployed steam radiator
(03:33):
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 game sprang fully formed
(03:57):
from the brow 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 wants
enjoyed taking his wife and children on vacation. It was
a nostalgic decision aimed at cheering up a family that
had fallen on hard times. The Darrows loved the game,
(04:22):
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 reconsidered when they
saw how popular Darrow's homemade sets were. With the backing
(04:42):
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 journalist and historian Mary Plan says in
her book The Monopolists, the story wasn't exactly true. That's
(05:07):
putting it kindly, because, as Pellon'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
to him by his friends Charles and Olive Todd in
(05:27):
nineteen thirty two. The Todd's playing on a board with
go Jail Free Parking and go to Jail at the
four corners, with chants and community chest, with the electric
company and the waterworks, and street names from around Atlantic City.
When drawing up his Monopoly board, Charles Todd even made
(05:50):
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
repeat the same spelling error. After several evenings pleasantly whiled
(06:14):
away with the game, say Todd, would you mind lending
me a copy of the rules of that game. Oh well, Darrow,
I don't know. I'd never written them down. Why do
you want them? I'd love to teach it to others.
I want to make sure I get it right. Charles
Todd was a little puzzled, but he obliged his friend.
(06:36):
Soon after, to Tod's irritation, Darrow started avoiding him. He
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 from another friend,
the cartoonist Franklin Alexander. Journalists repeated the rags to Rich
(07:00):
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 the first place.
They had been taught the game by their friends, the
(07:21):
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. They'd
adapted a version they'd been taught by Ruth Hoskins, who
was a trainee school teacher. So did Ruth Hoskins invent
(07:42):
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. This game was called monopoly,
(08:05):
and the square board had plenty of recognizable elements, with
forty paces, 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
(08:25):
played cooperatively, with resources 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
(08:48):
it in the utopian 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
(09:10):
whoever owned them should be 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
(09:33):
invent the Landlord's Game? No? It was dreamed up by
a remarkable woman named Lizzie McGhee. And is Lizzie McGhee
celebrated on the mus Monopoly board. I think you can
guess the answer to that question. Cautionary tales will return
(09:56):
in a moment. Unlike Charles Darrow, the man who claimed
to have invented Monopoly, Lizzie McGhee was a true original.
I'm thankful that I was taught how to think and
not what to think. When McGee created the original Monopoly
(10:20):
style game, it was the early nineteen hundreds. Here's how
Mary Plon's History of Monopoly describes McGhee, 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 descendant of Scottish immigrants. She had pale skin,
(10:43):
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 and bought herself a home and a substantial
parcel of land near Washington, d c. Lizzie's father had
(11:07):
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 McGhee was
a Georgist, a committed follower of the ideas and ideals
of Henry George. She was friends with Henry George Junior,
(11:29):
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 running to be the mayor of New
York City. A hundred thousand people lined up to pay
their respects to his funeral casket. His followers, including Lizzie McGhee,
(11:54):
had felt bereft and determined to carry on the fight
for Georgist policies. But what could McGhee do A progressive
in a capitalist world, A woman in a man's world.
She was death sprit for social change, but felt frustrated
in what she could achieve. Mary Paland's description of her
(12:15):
conjures a powerhouse of creativity. McGhee wrote poems about unrequited love.
She wrote essays on George's taxation. She wrote stories too,
including one The Theft of a Brain, about a young
woman whose brilliant idea is plagiarized. But none of these
creative projects really broke through. McGhee was frustrated. How to
(12:40):
get the message across? How to achieve lasting change? 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. Yes, how to reach the children?
What better method than through a board game. Lizzie McGhee's
(13:03):
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 co operative approach. There was Finance sold
by the NAP Company, Inflation sold by Rudy Copeland of
(13:24):
Fort Worth, Texas, and easy Money sold by Milton Bradley.
But Lizzie mc ghee herself had been almost forgotten, and
so had the subversively educational version of her game. It
turns out that when people play board games, they'd rather
try to crush their opponents than all accumulate resources together
(13:45):
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 deserved the most credit, there is no question that
it would be Lizzie McGhee. So how come it was
(14:06):
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 all patented inventions. This
(14:29):
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 high as twenty percent
before long. In fact, we're on course to achieve gender
(14:52):
parity and 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 Michigan's University. Professor Cook studies
why certain groups of people seemed to be shut out
(15:15):
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 Ostroum wanted to study economics at UCLA,
(15:35):
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 Ostrum had the last laugh. In
two thousand and nine, she was the first woman to
win the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. It was astonishingly
(15:57):
late for the profession to recognize the first female laureate,
but as Linostrum 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. That is changing, but slowly. Between nineteen seventy
(16:21):
and twenty fourteen, the proportion of PhDs in science, technology, engineering,
and mathematical subjects that were awarded 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 by a team of economists led by Raj Chetti
(16:43):
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
to girls than male inventors are, and since there are
(17:05):
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
innovate more than two and a half times as much
(17:25):
as now, and the gender innovation gap would be less
than half as big. That's why the mus Monopoly set
and advertising campaign, with its celebration of women inventors, is
so important. But among the female inventors credited on the board,
Lizzie mc ghee is conspicuous by her absence. It is
(17:48):
an astonishing missed opportunity. But it's also a mystery. How
did Lizzie mc ghee find herself so comprehensively airbrushed out
of history? And why don't the publishers of Monopoly want
to acknowledge her more than a century later. Could it
be perhaps that they're a little a share aimed cautionary
(18:14):
tales will be back in a moment. Lizzie McGee broke
the mold in so many ways. It wasn't just her politics,
her defiance of traditional values in refusing to marry when young,
her far reaching creativity as a poet, actor, novelist and essayist.
(18:37):
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 to
monopoly because Lizzie McGhee didn't have a patent. But she did.
In fact, she had two. The earlier one is for
an improvement to a typewriter roller. But it's the patent
(19:00):
for the Landlord's Game that deserves to be remembered. Letters
Patent numbers seven hundred and forty eight, six hundred and
twenty stated January fifth, nineteen o four. My invention, which
I have designated the Landlord's Game, relates to gameboards and
more particularly to games of chance. When a player stops
(19:25):
upon a lot owned by any 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.
Even today, few patentholders are women. In McGee's time, less
than one in a hundred word. She was a member
(19:46):
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 opportunity
or even the presence of mentors. There's also the question
of whose ideas get taken seriously. You can have a
(20:08):
good idea and you can even get it patented, but
that does not mean your idea will thrive if your
face doesn't fit. For example, Lisa Cook's own cousin, the
chemist Percy Julian, was repeatedly turned down for jobs as
an academic and as a corporate researcher because he was black. Eventually,
(20:29):
Julian became the first African American to run a large
corporate laboratory at Gliddon. He developed techniques for producing hormones
such as eastrogron and quarter zone, and earned several patents.
In nineteen fifty, Percy Julian was named Chicagoan of the
Year by the Chicago Sometimes. It was the same year
(20:52):
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 both women
and African American inventors were throughout the twentieth century, then
Professor Cook's work makes it clear having a patent might
(21:15):
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,
developing products as varied as a gas mask, a traffic light,
and hair straightening cream. But he was also African American,
(21:36):
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
an underground explosion near Lake Erie. The rescuers used Morgan's
invention of a firefighters smoke hood. Officials awarded medals to
(21:57):
the white 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
Southern cities canceled their orders and they discovered that Morgan
was black. Morgan often concealed his race, even using surrogates
(22:19):
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
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
(22:42):
opportunities constrained by her gender. A couple of years after
patenting The Landlord's Game, she took out a newspaper advertisement
offering herself for sale, young woman, American slave. This stunt,
shocking then and shocking now, was a way of satirizing
the idea that marriage was the only option for a woman.
(23:06):
We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes, and ambition.
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,
(23:33):
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 McGhee 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
(23:57):
no match for Charles 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
(24:19):
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.
(24:41):
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 o two. Nevertheless,
(25:03):
Parker Brothers applied for a patent on Monopoly and managed
to secure it with remarkable speech. 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,
(25:26):
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
(25:46):
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 McGee in one corner, an elderly left wing feminist
(26:09):
desperate to teach the children of the world the merits
of a single tax system through her obscure board game.
In the other corner, a smooth talking Charles Darrow with
a tail to tug at heart strings and a host
of sharp suits from Parker Brothers, it was no contest.
One November day in nineteen thirty five, traveling from Salem, Massachusetts,
(26:33):
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, if we may move to the matters of business,
missus Phillips. My colleagues of Parker Brothers who have become
(26:54):
aware of your landlord's game, and we would like to
publish it. But this is wonderful news, mister Parker. At last,
the ideas this game espoused us will reach the whitest
possible audience. That is our hope. Although a Parker Brothers
we talked less about ideas and more about the joy
(27:18):
of play. And so Lizzie McGee and George Parker agreed
a deal five hundred dollars for all rights or compared
to today's wages. Parker brought the rights to Lizzie McGee's
creation for just twenty five thousand dollars, no royalties, But
(27:39):
she thought she was getting what she had dreamed about
for thirty years 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 a letter addressed to her creation. It was
(28:02):
not until the Great Game, King George S. Parker did
us the honor of seeking you out and offered you
brada opportunity than I could ever do. That I would
part with you. Farewell, my beloved brainchild. Remember the world
expects much from you. The Great Game. King George Parker
(28:24):
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 McGee, was it. He was
buying a monopoly on Monopoly. Charles Darrow became a millionaire,
(28:47):
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 fever and had severe learning difficulties.
(29:08):
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. Lizzie McGhee was desperate too.
(29:29):
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, she was to fly,
but hasn't got the wings. The journalist Mary Plot found
(29:54):
Lizzie McGhee's entry in the nineteen forty census, the 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 maker of Games. It was,
(30:22):
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,
or maybe it will achieve no more social change than
(30:45):
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. Be it known
that I Lizzie J. McGee have invented certain new and
(31:08):
useful improvements in game boards. Although this is the last
in the current season of Cautionary Tales, don't worry. We're
already working on the next series. After all, when you
get to work with the likes of Helena Bonon Carter,
it's too much fun not to. I'll do one more
(31:32):
letters Patent number four hundred. No, I don't have a
good thing for numbers. Okay, letters peytent number seven a
week with no sorry, it's a Friday. Oh ding dong. Okay,
(31:55):
you do the special effects. That was my knee on
the door. John and Parker come inside. Okay, I'll just
(32:16):
do it. Let's just get on with him. Mister Parker,
do come in like that? She was? She really is
expecting him. She's been expecting him for her whole life.
Do come in Mary Worst too much? The indispensable source
(32:50):
for this episode is Mary Palm's book The Monopolists, supplemented
by Christopher Ketchum's article in Harper's title Monopoly is Theft.
For links to academic work by Lisa Cook, raj Chetti,
and others, see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
(33:15):
written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
by Ryan Dilley 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 Nazar Alderazzi,
(33:38):
Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cognor Holbrook, Smith, Reg Lockett,
miss Eamunroe, and Rufus Wright. The show would not have
been possible without the work of Mia La Belle, Jacob Weissberg,
Kella Faine, John Schnarz, Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostock,
(34:01):
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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