Episode 24: Monopoly

Pass "Go", collect $200 and learn all about this classic board game (created by a woman). 

Transcript

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Hey everybody, I'm Shannon, and welcome to the They Hid What Podcast. On this podcast, I discuss parts of history that have been kept hidden or swept under the rug. In this week's episode, I will be discussing Monopoly. Let's get into it. But it all had to begin somewhere. Monopoly didn't start as Monopoly. It all started with a woman named Elizabeth Maggie. Elizabeth was born in Maycomb, Illinois, to Mother Mary and abolitionist father James. James was also a newspaper editor and political advocate, which he passed on to his daughter. Pretty radical for the time. Elizabeth followed in her father's footsteps and was always looking for ways to better the lives of the everyday man. At just 26 years old, while working as a stenographer, Elizabeth was granted a patent for an improvement to typewriter rollers which would allow the paper to pass more easily through. It was during this time that Elizabeth realized that she couldn't support herself on the$10 a week salary. The only way she could do so would be with the help of a husband. Elizabeth staged a pretty radical coup. She placed an ad, which I cannot find a copy of anywhere, that said she was auctioning herself to the highest bidder as a quote, young woman American slave, and was looking for a husband. The purpose of the ad was to shed light on the fact, that is still true today, that the only people that are truly free in America are white men. This story spread quickly, and Elizabeth was able to land a job writing a series of articles about working girls in the big cities. Elizabeth's father had introduced her to an American political economist and journalist, Henry George. In Henry's book Progress and Poverty, he inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land, including natural resources, should belong equally to all members of society. This was being called single tax. In 1903, Elizabeth had created the landlord's game as a way to demonstrate that, quote, an economy rewarding individuals is better than one where monopolies hold the wealth. She would play it with her friends and received a patent for the game on January 5, 1904. The game originally had two sets of rules, one with a tax, an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and two, where the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. In 1906, Elizabeth had moved to Chicago, and she and other Georgists formed the Economic Game Company to self-publish her own edition of The Landlord's Game. In 1910, Parker Brothers published Elizabeth's card game Mock Trial. Several similar board games based on her concept were being developed from 1906 through the 1930s. The Newbie Game Company in Scotland patented their own version of the Landlord's game. Elizabeth received a new patent for the revised version of the game in 1924. Versions of the Landlord's game were even used in college classes, such as the case with Dan Layman. Dan had played a version of the Landlord's game with friends, Lewis, Lewis, and Fred, Thuns, at Williams College. The Thuns, Lewis, Lewis, and Fred, wanted to patent their game, so they copyrighted only their editions to the rules and published their game in the Midwest in 1932. The game was called Finance and was used by college professors and their students. Also in 1932, Elizabeth's second edition of The Landlord's Game was published by Ad Game Company in Washington, D.C. In 1932, a Philadelphia man named Charles Darrow and his wife Esther had dinner with friends. They were introduced to the landlord's game and played several rounds. Afterwards, Charles decided to create his own game of buying and selling property and chose to call it Monopoly. Darrow created the game board on a round oil cloth and drew the designs of the properties with drafting pens. Living in Philadelphia, Charles used landmarks and names from nearby Atlantic City, New Jersey. Some of the original icons are still used today, such as the red arrow for Go, the Black Trains on the Railroad Squares, the Faucet on Waterworks, a Lightbulb on Electric Company, and question marks on the chance spaces. Charles got the copyright for his game in 1933, and in 1934 he had the game printed on cardboard and was able to sell it in Wanamaker's department store. Other Philadelphia department stores started ordering the game, and Parker Brothers bought the game's copyrights from Charles in 1935. Within a year, 20,000 sets of the game were being produced every week and became the best-selling board game of 1935. It's believed that the game's popularity at its launch was due to the Great Depression. People in America couldn't afford to go out for entertainment and spend a lot of time at home. This game was cheap, reusable, and provided hours of entertainment to a wide range of people. Elizabeth Maggie spoke out against Charles Darrow and his game Monopoly, saying that the original idea was her own, Parker Brothers had paid her$500 for the rights of her invention, and that she didn't receive any of the credit. After an interview Elizabeth gave to a Washington, D.C. newspaper criticizing Parker Brothers' ways, the company published two more of her games, but continued to give Charles Darrow sole credit for Monopoly. As I said before, the game's street names and landmarks are based on places in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The values on the board reflect real estate property values from the 1930s. The two cheapest properties are Baltic Avenue and Mediterranean Avenue, and the higher value properties are Pennsylvania Avenue, Park Place, and Ventner Avenue, all based on the residents' income in those places at that time. St. Charles Place no longer exists as the Showboat Atlantic City Casino was developed where that road once sat. Also, Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. Parker Brothers began marketing Monopoly on November 5th, 1935. They enlisted the help of cartoonist F. O. Alexander for the artwork. Franklin Osborne Alexander was born in St. Louis, Missouri and studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Northwestern University in Chicago. He served in World War I and began his professional cartoon career upon his return. Franklin launched two comic strips in the 1920s and was best known for a comic strip he took over in 1931 called Hair Breathed Harry. He became the staff cartoonist for the Philadelphia Bulletin before he was asked to collaborate on Monopoly. Franklin created the go-to-jail officer Edgar Malloy, Jake the Jailbird, and Monopoly's Mascot. The mascot has had his own journey. He was created by Franklin Alexander in 1935 and was called Milburn Pennybags. He was added to Monopoly in 1936 and then appeared in a Parker Brothers game called Dig, but was unnamed. In 1946, Parker Brothers produced a game called Rich Uncle, where Milburn Pennybags' image was used, and it was said that he was modeled after American businessman JP Morgan. From 1986 to 2008, the mascot started appearing in the second O of Monopoly and was sometimes called the chairman of the board. In 1999, Rich Uncle Pennybags was renamed Mr. Monopoly and has been known by that name ever since. Monopoly ended up being used for a pretty cool purpose during World War II. In 1939, the British Secret Service hired a soldier and inventor named Charles Hutton to help prisoners of war escape war camps. After some trial and error, Charles contacted John Waddington Ltd. Games in pastimes were items that were allowed to enter into prisoner camps as per the Geneva Convention. The most important thing was to make sure these escape boards, as they were become known, looked like the real thing. A specific mark was put on each board to identify which map was hidden inside of the box. The maps were printed on silk, which was chosen because it's noiseless. This way, German or enemy soldiers couldn't hear the crinkling of the map as the imprisoned men took them out. Also hidden inside of these boxes were metal files, miniature compasses, and money matching the country in which the board was being sent to. For example, if the board had a period after the word Mayfair, the box contained a map of Norway and Norwegian money. An estimated one-third of the 35,000 escaped prisoners of war were able to escape using these silk maps. Parker Brothers was the sole publisher of Monopoly and had only two versions of the game, Regular and Deluxe. In 1991, Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers and was moving to create and license other versions of the game. They even asked for the Publix input. A new wave of licensed products began in 1994 when Hasbro gained a license to USA Oppoly to begin publishing a San Diego edition of Monopoly. You can find a version of Monopoly for almost all major US cities. Not everyone made their money based on games with good intention, though. A 28-year-old Taiwanese American launched two different culturally offensive games in 2003. Major retailers carried and sold these games, despite the outrage from the NAACP and Asian American groups. Hasbro sued the creator over its similarities to Monopoly in October 2003. And by January 2006, the creator was held in contempt of court for not releasing requested documents. The courts estimated that the game made almost$9 million in sales and charged the creator to pay$400,000 in damages to Hasbro as well as to cease operations. Whether he paid this out, I don't know. You can still purchase the game via the creator's website and through Amazon. Variations of the game are fun, but you need to keep things interesting. In the Monopoly Mega Edition that was released in 2006, the speed die was introduced. The speed die has six faces and is rolled at the same time as the regular die. There are three number faces, two faces showing Mr. Monopoly, and one showing a bus. If you roll a number on the speed die, that number is added to the number rolled by the other two die. If Mr. Monopoly is rolled, the player moves the number of spaces from the other two die, then they advance to the next unowned property. They buy or auction that space, then they roll again. If the player rolls a bus, there are two different outcomes, and it depends on which version of the game you're playing. In the standard Monopoly edition, the player chooses to move by just one or two of the numbered die. If they're playing the mega edition, the player moves the number from the regular die, then they either draw a bus ticket card or advance to the next chance or community chest piece. Oof. There are also house rules. Perhaps you even have a few yourself. House rules are well-known made-up rules that people implement when playing the game. An example would be if you roll doubles, you take your turn, then roll again. Hasbro decided to poll their Facebook followers about the top house rules. The rules with the highest vote were added to the house rules edition game released in 2014, then added these rules as an optional set of rules to the regular game in 2015. Another shakeup came when Hasbro decided to change the player tokens. From 1943 to 1991, there were 10 tokens. A battleship, a cannon that were recycled from the failed Parker Brothers game called Conflict, a horse and rider, iron, race car, Scotch Terrier, Thimble, Top Hat, and Wheelbarrow. In 1998, after Hasbro had acquired Parker Brothers, Hasbro asked the public to vote on new playing pieces. The bag of money was added to the collection in 1999. In 2000, the horse and rider tokens were retired. And in 2007, the bag of money followed. In 2013, there was another poll launched to replace one of the existing tokens. This poll ran through Facebook from January to February. The iron was voted least popular and was replaced with the most popular of the new options, the cat. In 2017, Hasbro took another vote for tokens. This time they wanted to retire three tokens: the thimble, the wheelbarrow, and boot, and replaced them with a penguin, T-Rex, and a rubber duck. In 2022, Hasbro announced they would be replacing an existing piece with a previously retired piece. In April 2023, the T-Rex was replaced by the Thimble, which was always my go-to piece. Along with beauty standards, the Game Board was also a victim to inflation. In 2008, the US Standard Edition received the following updates. The luxury tax amount increased from$75 to$100. A flat$200 income tax was imposed. Formerly, the player's choice of$200 or 10% of their total holdings, which they could not calculate until after making their final decision. Originally, the amount was$300 but was changed a year after the game's debut. The player must pay only$50 instead of$150 for the school tax. In addition, a player now gets$50 instead of$45 for sale of a stock. The advanced to Illinois Avenue card now has the added text indicating a player collects$200 if they pass go on their way there. The poor tax received for services, Christmas fund matures, and grand opera opening cards became speeding fine, received$25 consultancy fee, holiday fund matures, and it is your birthday, respectively. Though their effects remained the same. Then there were the cosmetic changes. The colors of Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues changed from purple to brown. All the community chest cards received a graphic upgrade. The backs of the cards have their respective symbols, with community chest cards in blue and chance cards in orange. Recent versions of Monopoly replaced the dollar sign with an M with two horizontal strokes through it. The Monopoly game format continues to be popular to this day. You can find versions of the game for any state, TV series, and movie franchise that you can think of. I grew up playing Philadelphia in a box, and just recently I purchased Shits Creek Monopoly. The game and its many iterations are all thanks to a radical feminist named Elizabeth Maggie, lest we forget. That's all for this week. Come back next week to see what else has been hidden.