0:00

This is Planet Money from NPR.

0:06

Okay. The name of the game is Monopoly. Do

0:08

you all know how to play the game No.

0:11

No. What? I

0:13

think that we should review That does the game.

0:15

Don't

0:15

worry.

0:16

I try playing monopoly with my nephew.

0:18

Used recently. Hello. I'm Ali.

0:20

I'm Jade. I'm Doha. And they

0:22

had a lot of questions. Maybe

0:24

can steal? What do they mean my parking time?

0:27

Or you can't steal? How much is the rent?

0:29

Questions that feel much bigger than

0:31

a board

0:31

game? They're the obvious

0:33

things Monopoly teaches you how to

0:36

negotiate, how to manage your cash flow,

0:38

how to diversify your assets. Like

0:40

owning homes and

0:42

hotels. And then they're

0:44

the implicit things. The idea

0:46

that anyone with just a little bit of cash

0:48

can rise from rags to riches in this country.

0:51

This swags to riches narrative is even

0:53

part of the game's origin

0:54

story. At one point, this story

0:56

was included in every bar of Monopoly

0:59

that a man named Charles Darrow was unemployed

1:02

and came up with the game to pass the time.

1:04

In nineteen thirty four, he brought Monopoly

1:06

to the game company Parker Brothers, hoping

1:09

to make some money off of it. became

1:12

a millionaire. But there's

1:14

another origin story a very different

1:16

one that promotes a very different

1:18

image of capitalism. Hello,

1:21

and welcome to Planet Money, a Amanda Urache.

1:24

And I'm Rhonda

1:24

DiFitte. Rhonda is one of the hosts

1:26

of NPR's through line podcast.

1:29

Today, I'm the show, how a critique of capitalism

1:32

grew from a seat of an idea in a rebellious

1:34

young woman's mind into a game

1:37

legendary for its celebration of

1:38

wealth. No matter

1:40

the cost. For this episode, we are

1:42

going to hand over the mic to Rhonda and

1:44

to her cohost a throughlined Ramtine Arabui

1:46

to tell us the fraught origin story

1:49

of this famous board game.

1:59

It's eighteen seventy nine. In a

2:01

small town in Illinois where thirteen year

2:03

old Lizzie McGee, is curled up next

2:05

to the fire with a book her father

2:07

gave her. Progress and poverty

2:10

by Henry George. Lizzie

2:12

had to stop going to school Our

2:14

family was struggling, never having

2:16

recovered from the recession six years

2:18

earlier. And as she dives

2:21

into this

2:21

book, the world begins to make

2:24

a little more sense to her. The

2:26

great cause of inequality in the distribution

2:28

of wealth is inequality in ownership

2:30

of land. Ownership of land is the

2:32

great fundamental fact, which ultimately

2:35

determines the social, the political, and

2:37

consequently the intellectual and moral

2:39

condition of people. Henry

2:41

George is pretty much the equivalent of

2:44

a rockstar. He'd started forming

2:46

his ideas about the pitfalls of wealth

2:48

while traveling around the world to places like

2:50

Australia and India.

2:53

What is the current explanation of the hard

2:55

times over production? There

2:58

are so many clubs that men must go ragged.

3:00

So much coal that in the bitter winters, people have

3:02

to shiver. Such overfilled granaries

3:04

that people actually die by starvation, want

3:08

due to overproduction, Would

3:10

a greater absurdity ever uttered?

3:12

How can there be overproduction to all

3:14

have enough? It's

3:17

really important to understand that in the United

3:19

States after the civil war this time,

3:21

there was an incredible amount of wealth being created

3:23

that hadn't been seen in this

3:25

country. Anymore. And you got a very you got

3:27

a handful of people who were

3:29

controlling it. Mary Pilon is

3:31

a journalist who covers sports and business.

3:34

She wrote a book about the history of Monopoly.

3:36

And George is asking questions about

3:39

all this money is now coming in. Our

3:41

country was ripped apart, and now it's you

3:43

know, we're rebuilding. And how

3:45

does how is distributed? And what

3:47

is the government's role

3:48

and, you know, taking it a cut? Or, you know,

3:50

how does that how does that pan out? A

3:52

growing number of Americans were fed

3:54

up with the monopolies of the so called

3:56

Gilded Age, railroad, sugar,

3:59

oil, and the growing riches of the elite

4:01

few, the vanderbilts,

4:02

cargoes, and Rockefellers.

4:05

Novicious, the ignorance and

4:07

the millionaires. Lizzie's

4:10

dad, James McGee, a staunch progressive

4:12

who traveled with Abraham Lincoln during the

4:14

Lincoln Douglas

4:15

debates, strongly backed the ideas

4:17

of Henry George. We cannot

4:19

shut our eyes to the fact that

4:21

all over the country, there is a feeling

4:24

of restlessness and discontent

4:26

among working

4:26

men. On account of their supposed

4:29

meager pay compared with the wealth

4:31

which they produce. He

4:33

understood that wealth and owning land

4:35

were deeply connected. Whoever

4:37

owned the land made the profits and maintained

4:39

all the power. And he made sure that

4:41

his daughter, Lizzie, knew it too,

4:43

not just by giving her books, but by

4:45

encouraging her to live a life that transcended

4:48

the societal norms of the time.

4:53

And she did. Professionally,

4:58

she got a job as a sonographer. She

5:00

died traveled in engineering and invented

5:02

a whole new tool for sonography, which

5:04

she went and got patented under

5:06

her name. So she was absolutely

5:09

a trailblazer. Throughout

5:11

all her adventures, Lizzie kept

5:13

going back to the ideas of Henry George

5:16

to the book her father gave her all

5:18

those years ago. She became

5:20

friends with Henry George's son and

5:22

became the secretary of the woman single

5:24

tax club of Washington a club

5:26

dedicated to advancing Georgia's

5:28

central theory on how to solve

5:30

inequality. As I

5:32

say, The man that owned the land is

5:34

the master of those who must

5:36

live on it. So

5:39

the single tax theory, the general

5:41

idea was that you had a land value

5:43

tax, also known as a single tax.

5:46

And the general idea is to tax land

5:48

and only land So then that shifts

5:50

the tax burden to

5:52

wealthy landlords. Anybody

5:54

who lives in New York or Los Angeles are a

5:56

high rent neighborhood, I'm sure, is kind of nodding

5:58

nodding your head at that nodding head.

6:00

And that message really resonated

6:03

with Americans in the late eighteen hundreds

6:05

because you know, this is at a

6:07

time when poverty and squalor are

6:09

very much on display in urban centers.

6:11

And that's part of why I think he had such

6:13

a big audience and they sometimes called

6:15

themselves the anti monopolists. Those

6:18

were people who wanted to break apart monopolies,

6:20

break apart these, you know, concentrations of

6:23

power, whether it's railroads, banking,

6:25

steel, and this

6:27

continues on and

6:28

on. The monopoly of

6:31

the land gone. There need be

6:33

no fear of large fortune. For

6:35

when everyone gets what he fairly earns,

6:37

no one can get more than he fairly

6:39

earns. How many men are there

6:41

who fairly earn a million dollars?

6:43

It's about income inequality. It's about

6:46

how do we tax people? How are they wealthy

6:48

treated? How what are we doing for those

6:50

who are in poverty?

6:54

Henry George died in eighteen ninety

6:56

seven, but his followers made

6:58

sure his ideas would live on.

7:00

And as for Lucy McGee, She

7:02

turned to the latest fat to get his

7:04

message across. Board

7:08

games. Around

7:17

this time, Americans were getting really

7:19

into board games, like the game

7:21

of life. Yes.

7:24

The game of life that's still around

7:26

today, but not quite the same.

7:34

From building brand, The

7:40

game of life had been around for a while at

7:42

that point. That was a game that

7:44

was published by Milton Bradley. And

7:46

the Game of Life is the original

7:48

version is very dark. It's

7:50

it's very much about teaching kids about

7:53

the morality of the world.

7:54

Mary writes that the board had an

7:56

intembrance space that led to

7:58

poverty, a government contract

8:00

space that led to wealth and the

8:02

gambling space that led to ruin.

8:05

The game these days has almost none

8:07

of that, but it still imparts a

8:09

particular message of what one should

8:11

expect out of

8:11

life. A car, a job,

8:14

a marriage, kids, and a

8:16

house. With the single

8:18

tax theory in mind, Lizzie Magee

8:20

invented what she called The Landlords

8:23

game, the very first version

8:25

of Monopoly. She

8:29

gets her patent for the landlords game,

8:31

which is Monobli in nineteen o

8:34

four. It's striking how similar it

8:36

is to what we know is Monopoly

8:38

today. You've got the railroads. Obviously,

8:40

you don't have cars quite the same way, so

8:42

we don't have free parking, but you have park,

8:44

which again parks and land is a

8:46

huge deal for Georgia, and you have

8:48

properties and you go around and around. The

8:50

object of the game is to obtain

8:52

as much wealth or money as

8:54

possible. When a player stops upon

8:56

a lot owned by another player, he

8:58

must pay the rent to the owner. The

9:00

player who has the largest sum

9:02

total is the winner.

9:05

But there is one major difference

9:08

from the Monopoly game we all know and

9:10

play today. When

9:12

Lizzie creates the game, she

9:14

makes two rule sets. She makes an

9:16

monopolist rule set and an anti

9:18

monopolist rule set. The

9:20

anti monopolist version rewarded

9:22

every player when wealth was created. All

9:24

for one, one for all kind of

9:26

thing. While the monopolist set rewarded

9:28

individual players who created

9:30

monopolies to crush opponents.

9:33

And the monopolist rule set is the version that

9:35

ends kind of taking hold on one progressive.

9:37

It was played by a who's who of left wing

9:39

America. It was played at several Ivy League schools.

9:41

It was played by Scott Meering, who's a famous

9:43

socialist professor Warden.

9:45

And it was played by Upton Sinclair

9:48

himself who obviously, you know, the

9:50

jungle is very much a, you know, kind of

9:52

the quintessential muck breaking critique

9:54

of a lot of what is going on in the country

9:56

at the time. It's

9:58

spread like wildfire, and the game

10:00

started to change depending on

10:02

where you played. People localize the

10:04

boards and made them their own. So if you were playing in

10:06

Boston, you would have the comments on there. If you were playing in

10:08

New York, you would have Broadway, if you were in

10:10

Chicago, you would have the loop. So she

10:12

is very much about, you know,

10:14

creating a game that has kind of these core

10:16

ingredients, these core rules,

10:18

and instructions, but also

10:20

encourages people to, you know, in terms of the tokens,

10:22

use what you have around the house, make the game

10:24

around. Mhmm. And that's pretty interesting.

10:26

Right? And that's very different than what we kind of think of as games

10:28

now, which is like you go to a mass

10:30

market, a big box retailer, where you buy it

10:32

online, and they all come the same. She,

10:35

you know, games at that time,

10:37

mass manufacturing wasn't quite the same as it

10:39

is now. So she also kind of

10:41

cooks into this idea of making it

10:43

your own. With people inventing their own

10:45

hometown versions of the game,

10:47

cash wasn't exactly pouring into

10:49

Lizzie's bank account. She wasn't

10:51

making money off the penny. And she

10:53

wasn't getting known. But

10:55

the game share was being played

10:57

and reinterpreted everywhere.

11:07

In the nineteen

11:09

thirties, Atlantic City was the

11:11

place for summer vacation. It was

11:13

known for its nightlife. At

11:15

the same time, it was home to a

11:18

sizable quaker community who

11:20

were maybe not so into all the

11:22

bikes, but were really into monopoly.

11:24

The game was gripping fun and a

11:26

social event that drew friends

11:28

together. A

11:31

Quaker family based in Atlantic

11:33

City beginning share and make copies of their homemade

11:35

board based on their neighborhood with friends

11:37

and even local hotels. It

11:39

was spreading and there were even

11:41

spin offs. And

11:42

one of

11:43

the people who gets exposed to the game is a man named

11:45

Charles Darrow. Charles

11:47

Darrow was a self described practical

11:50

engineer from Philadelphia. A

11:52

city not far from Atlantic City. A

11:54

lot of people were coming on going from Atlantic City

11:56

in Philadelphia. You had the time? One

11:58

day, Daryl's wife, Esther, runs into

12:00

her old friend, Charles Cotton, they

12:02

had gone to quaker school together, but

12:04

had lost touch. They make plans to

12:06

have dinner with their spouses, really fun

12:08

night, after dinner, Charles Todd

12:10

suggests they come to his house sometime. Hey, why

12:12

don't you come over and we'll have a monopoly

12:14

night? So they come over,

12:16

they play the game. And then

12:17

leader, Darryl asked Todd, hey,

12:20

that game was really fun. Can

12:22

you type up the rules for me?

12:24

When we come back, Charles

12:27

Darrow takes the game and

12:29

runs.

12:41

We left

12:45

off with Charles Darrow learning to play

12:47

Monopoly with Charles Toth who learned in

12:49

Atlantic City. After that

12:51

game, Darryl asked Todd to type

12:53

up the rules. And Todd

12:55

thinks this is really weird because at this point, the

12:57

game's been around for thirty years or so,

12:59

but

13:00

he does it anyway. Darrow then

13:02

takes those rules and starts redesigning

13:04

the board. He has a cartoonist

13:06

friend help him with those strations.

13:08

He starts marketing it a little bit. And

13:10

eventually, he pitches the game to big

13:12

game companies Milton Bradley and

13:14

Parker Brothers. And

13:15

he claims that he invented it.

13:19

Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers

13:21

weren't impressed and turned

13:23

them Parker Brothers wrote

13:24

back. Dear mister Darrow, our

13:27

new games committee has carefully

13:29

considered the game, which you so kindly

13:31

sent into us for examination.

13:33

While

13:33

the game no doubt contains considerable

13:36

merit, we

13:36

do not

13:37

We basically thought it was too complicated. Online.

13:39

But a

13:40

few months later, they came back and

13:42

said, wait. We do want it.

13:44

And maybe they did or

13:46

maybe they needed it.

13:49

Parker Brothers is a company that is on the

13:51

brink of destruction, like many

13:53

companies. There had just been a

13:55

handover George Parker, hands

13:57

over the reins to his son-in-law

13:59

Robert Barton, they need a hit and they

14:01

need it fast. And so they

14:03

start selling monopoly and they're just as surprised

14:05

as anybody that this game sells

14:07

like gangbusters.

14:09

MONOPOLY, the great financial game

14:12

is sweeping the country because it

14:14

feels to every Americans love a

14:16

bargain and business a ceiling. Give

14:18

them an off play party and guess we'll want to

14:20

play all night. And

14:22

something really interesting happens then too,

14:24

which is that Charles Darrow becomes

14:27

part of the marketing of the

14:28

game. At the time, my brainchild was

14:30

born. I was far more thoroughly

14:32

unemployed than I even like to imagine now,

14:34

not only unemployed from a financial

14:36

point of view, but a morale point

14:38

of view. I simply had to have

14:41

something to do. Nobody used to

14:43

care who invented games. Right? It's not like,

14:45

oh, I'm gonna buy a book because it's buy a certain

14:47

author or see a movie because it has a certain star.

14:49

But Darrow's Cinderella story, this

14:51

fabricated notion that he

14:53

goes into his basement, and he's

14:55

unemployed, trying to support his family,

14:58

and innovates. It has this Eureka

15:00

Label moment and creates this massive

15:02

best seller of a

15:02

game. That is such a romantic

15:05

story even if it's not true.

15:09

So this The Darrow story

15:11

captivates the country as does the

15:13

game. In some ways, it was the

15:15

story the country needed at that

15:17

time.

15:17

The richest country in the world began a

15:19

better journey downhill. The

15:22

stock market buckled and

15:23

crashed. And

15:24

the nation's economy plummeted into

15:26

the depression.

15:26

Jobs were scarce, poverty was

15:29

rampant, and hope hard

15:31

to

15:31

come by. By nineteen thirty two,

15:33

nearly one man out of four was unemployed.

15:36

But here was the sky and

15:38

this game. Keeping the so

15:40

called American dream alive.

15:44

Charles Darrow does all these interviews use

15:46

all these photoshoots where, you know,

15:48

he's telling this Cinderella

15:50

story. And they

15:52

start to put it in the game itself.

15:54

It's tough it was tucked in the game I

15:55

played. It was nineteen thirty four, the

15:58

height of the Great Depression, when

16:00

Charles B. Darrow of Germantown

16:02

Pennsylvania showed what he called the anomaly

16:04

game to the executives at Parker

16:06

Brothers. And becomes part of the romance of the

16:08

story too in its past year,

16:10

nineteen thirty five, the Monopoly game

16:12

was the best selling game in

16:14

America. The rest, as

16:17

they say, is history.

16:20

If you think about the news industry, when

16:22

you get an error and it gets picked up

16:24

everywhere, it's very hard to course correct

16:26

that. Right? So especially back

16:28

then, this is obviously way way before the

16:30

Internet. So the story is all

16:32

over the

16:32

place. And Lucy McGee catches wind

16:35

of it. And she does not

16:37

take this quietly. She calls the reporters

16:39

with the Washington evening star and the

16:41

Washington Post as she does these interviews where

16:43

she is holding up her games she says,

16:45

I have patents. I made this

16:47

game. I conceived of the game of

16:49

landlord to interest people in the

16:51

single tax plan of the great

16:53

economist Henry George.

16:55

Parker Brothers catches wind of

16:57

Lizzie's noise. They get in touch and

16:59

offer her five hundred dollars for the

17:01

patent to the landlord's

17:02

game, which is roughly ten grand

17:04

today. George Parker is on the

17:07

verge of retirement, but to make this

17:09

deal, he pays Lizzie a

17:11

personal visit. And

17:13

she's excited at first because she thinks,

17:15

wow, my ideas, my idea Henry

17:17

George is long dead, but like, my

17:19

game and my invention is gonna be out there

17:21

and part of Brothers is gonna publish it. This

17:23

is amazing. Two days

17:25

after the agreement was signed,

17:28

Lizzie sent a note to Parker Brothers.

17:30

Very well at my beloved brainchild.

17:32

I regretfully part with you, but

17:34

I am giving you to another. Will

17:36

be able to do more for you than I have done.

17:39

I shall do all I can to add to your

17:41

success and fame, which will in

17:43

some measure, add to

17:45

my own. I charge you do

17:47

not swerve from your high purpose and

17:49

ultimate mission. Remember,

17:51

the world expects much from

17:54

you. But there's no

17:56

evidence they acknowledged her, really is the

17:58

inventor at all. And the

18:00

Darrow story has taken

18:01

hold. It is all over the

18:04

place. Which is

18:05

good and bad for Darrow.

18:07

Because people who had been playing the

18:10

game for decades at this point

18:12

see this story being spun about this new game

18:14

called Monopoly invented by

18:16

Charles

18:16

Darrow. And they're

18:19

like, People

18:21

start to write

18:22

into Parker Brothers and they're like, this guy didn't let

18:25

the game.

18:26

Even Charles The person who

18:28

taught Darrow how to play and wrote down the

18:31

rules for him, wrote Caparko

18:33

brothers in disgust at

18:35

Darrow Sherate. Darrow didn't have anything

18:37

to do with originating the game.

18:39

He stole

18:39

them. But his letter went

18:42

unanswered. Argger Brothers doubled down on

18:44

Darrow's Cinderella story.

18:47

As

18:47

for Lizzie McGee Of all the hats

18:49

she wore, of all the things that she did, she

18:51

was a receptionist She was a writer. She was a

18:53

stenographer. She lists her occupation as maker of

18:56

games, and her income is

18:58

zero. She dies in nineteen

19:00

forty eight with this like any bitty little obituary that

19:02

you have to really look for. There

19:04

wasn't a single mention

19:06

of MONOPOLY in her obituary.

19:08

And Charles Darrow gets, like, the New

19:10

York Times treatment, hailing him as the inventor

19:13

when he

19:13

passes, you know, decades later. Charles

19:16

Darrow, who became a millionaire by inventing

19:18

the game monopoly, died at his

19:20

Bucks County Pennsylvania home yesterday

19:22

at the age of seventy eight.

19:24

So they have very, very different fates

19:26

as a result of what happens

19:28

in the 1930s.

19:36

And

19:36

that could have been the end. Lizzie

19:38

forgotten and Charles Darrow's false

19:40

history living on, a very

19:42

bleak finale to lazy's anti capitalist

19:45

monopoly. But Mary

19:47

Pelon sees another legacy.

19:48

The signs were everywhere,

19:51

but now it's official we are in

19:53

a recession. Twenty seven percent drop

19:55

in the number of homes sold last month

19:57

compared to June. Twenty seven

19:59

percent. That is terrible

20:00

news. But

20:01

the car question now, when will it

20:04

end? It started in twenty

20:06

eleven after the global financial

20:08

crisis. The housing market

20:10

had plummeted the

20:12

stock market was at its lowest since the Great

20:14

Depression, and many people

20:16

were fed out. Around

20:22

the time I started getting interested in the story.

20:24

Occupied Wall Street was something that I was covering.

20:26

It's our duty as Americans

20:29

to fight for our country and

20:31

to keep

20:31

it, you know, true to serving its people. And

20:33

when it doesn't do that, it's

20:36

immoral not to stand up and

20:38

say something. And the mister Monopoly

20:41

icon became, you know, very much

20:43

used in love by protesters

20:45

as a critic of capital of them. And I thought, okay. Now we've come

20:47

full circle. Now, like, monopoly and iconography

20:49

has become this, like, you

20:51

know, symbol of Wall Street access and things.

20:53

And I think Lazy would be proud of

20:55

that. That

20:59

was Mary Milan. Her book

21:01

is called The MONOPOLIS. Obsession,

21:04

fury, and the scandal behind the

21:06

world's favorite board game.

21:09

This Planet Money episode was produced

21:12

by MOP is an adaptation

21:14

of a through line episode. For the

21:16

rest of their episode, just look

21:18

up, don't pass, go from

21:20

through line. And since they took over the

21:22

episode today, we are going to throw to them

21:24

to finish the credits. I'm

21:26

Randappetto.

21:27

I'm Ramtina Arablei. This

21:29

episode was produced by me. And me

21:31

and Lawrence Wu? Lane captain

21:34

Levinson, Julie Cain. Victor

21:36

Yves.

21:37

Sonya

21:37

Steinberg. Yolanda, Saint Gwen, Casey

21:41

Miner.

21:44

Back checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voca.

21:46

Thank you to Monsey Carana, Steve

21:49

Drummond, Lane Capital