This video is sponsored by Masterworks. Monopoly. It’s a game that you’ve likely played in one form or another. You may even have a copy or five in your board game collection. Invented by a man who had lost everything in the great depression, and managed to sell hundreds of copies to become the greatest selling board game in the world with themed versions for almost every brand from Stranger Things, to Lord of the Rings. A game so inspiring that countless knockoffs and rip-offs were made. Or, at least, that’s the lie you’ve probably heard The Monopoly that you know and love is a knock-off. The original game is a story of passion and persistence of a woman who simply wanted to bring attention to the harms of monopolies, only to have it stolen away by a man who became a millionaire. Before we get into the next part of the video, we would like to quickly thank our sponsor, Masterworks. Founded by tech entrepreneurs who have founded billion-dollar companies Masterworks is the only alternative investing platform that lets you invest in multi-million dollar iconic artwork from artists like Banksy, Picasso, and Basquiat. The platform acquires paintings worth anywhere between $1 to $30 million and securitizes them, allowing investors to buy shares in artwork, just like buying shares of Tesla or Apple. For centuries, the ultra-wealthy have used art to protect their wealth from inflation. So it’s no surprise that The Wall Street Journal called the art market “one of the hottest markets on Earth,” and that contemporary art prices have outperformed the S&P by 174%. between 1995 and 2020. On top of that, the market’s estimated to be worth $1.7 trillion and Deloitte projects it to grow by another trillion in less than five years. In the past, the opportunity to invest in fine art was reserved for the ultra-wealthy. Now, through Masterworks, anyone can get set up with just a few clicks. Simply visit their website, create an account, and then browse their paintings. Afterward, you can instantly diversify your investment portfolio with fine art. To date, some of Masterworks offerings have sold out within hours. Join the platform now by clicking the link in the description below. And as always, in everything related to investment, tread carefully. Nothing is risk-free. In the midst of the Great Depression, an out-of-work salesman by the name of Charles Darrow sat alone in his basement. He had a family to support, a wife and children, but had no job, no prospects, and no money. Then, inspiration struck. If he couldn’t support his family, maybe he could entertain them? With a piece of oilcloth, he drew a board that featured squares that resembled Atlantic City streets and properties. He created a game where players moved around, buying and selling land in an attempt to build a business empire and put their competitors out of business. Maybe it could even bring back memories of better days before the Great Depression, and summon fantasies of wealth and riches. His family loved it, and soon Charles decided to market the game. He sought out Parker Brothers, publishers of Tiddledy-winks, and Milton Bradley, publishers of The Checkered Game of Life, but got turned down by both the board game giants. So he did it himself. He made handmade copies of his board game and sold them through word of mouth. It was only then that a struggling Parker Brothers reached out and bought Charles’ Monopoly. The game was an immediate hit, making them both successful beyond their wildest dreams and becoming an earth shattering success. When asked about how he came up with the game, seemingly out of thin air, Charles told Philadelphia-based paper the Germantown Bulletin, “It’s a freak. Entirely unexpected and illogical.” That’s the story that was tucked into every box of Monopoly in the 1930s, and for decades following. The only problem is that it’s a lie. Interested in this story? Want to learn more about the biggest brands around? Be sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and ring the bell so you’ll be kept up to date on every new video from Hook! The real story about the world’s best selling board game begins much earlier. In 1866, Macomb, Illinois, Elizabeth Magie was born to Mary Jane Ritchie Magie, a homemaker, and James Magie, a newspaper publisher. James Magie had been politically involved during the American Civil War, touring with Abraham Lincoln during his presidential debates, and went on to become a devoted anti-monopolist. Anti-monopolists worked against industries being centralized under a single, powerful organization that held a monopoly. This fit into James’ personality as a progressive—even supporting the abolitionist movement, joining the Union army and recruiting others for the cause. It certainly didn’t help that James lived during the Gilded Age, a period of noted corruption and “robber barons” like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who controlled monopolies on industries like steel and oil, and who grew rich in the face of widespread poverty. James had also developed a reputation at giving rousing political speeches to the general public. Elizabeth shared a strong bond with her father, who had taught his beliefs to his children at a young age in the hopes they would also fight for equality. James had even brought Elizabeth into the newsroom, introducing her to journalism at an early age. Later in life she was quoted as saying, “I have often been called a ‘chip off the old block,’ which I consider quite a compliment, for I am proud of my father for being the kind of an ‘old block’ that he is.” Her childhood environment hammered in James’ political teachings. As a child, Elizabeth watched wealthy kingpins and landowners live in luxury among child workers wearing tattered clothing and poor farmers struggling to make ends meet. The Magies suffered as a result of the Panic of 1873, a financial crisis that swept across the United States. At the age of 13, Elizabeth left school to help support her family, and found a career at a stenographer convention. To further share his beliefs with Elizabeth, James gave her a copy of economist Henry George’s best selling 1879 book Progress and Poverty. In his book, Henry went into the economic reforms he believed would aid society. Henry proposed the government implement a “single tax” that specifically targeted land-grabbing landlords. It would allow workers to keep all the income they earned and only tax property. Henry believed that the government’s annual income from this tax would be so large it could fund vast public works. The book resonated with Elizabeth, and soon she became one of Henry George's life-long followers. A group who called themselves Georgists. A few years later, Elizabeth secured a position at the Dead Letter Office, a depository for undeliverable mail in Washington, D.C., as a stenographer and typist. At the time, these were specialized positions that involved using a typewriter, and were opening up to women following the loss of so many men during the Civil War. Using her experience as a typist, Elizabeth decided to build a device that would make it easier for paper to pass through a typewriter’s rollers. It worked so well that eventually, Elizabeth patented it as her first invention. During this time, Elizabeth also explored ways to express herself creatively. She wrote poetry and performed as an actress on stage in Washington’s budding theatre scene. There, she earned a reputation for her comedic characters, bringing an audience inside a Masonic hall to roaring laughter with her performance of a simpering old woman. Nine years after she patented her first invention, Elizabeth would create something new that would take on a life of its own. Wanting to spread her anti-monopolist philosophy, Elizabeth began working on something that would teach people the harms that monopolies could inflict on the common people —such as low quality products, price fixing, and low wages—in an interactive manner. She began teaching classes on the topic in the evenings after she finished work, but found she wasn’t getting the reach she wanted. She needed something that was more easily digestible. At the time, board games were becoming popular in middle class households, and were also being used as a means of communication, like Mansion of Happiness which was meant to teach Christian virtue and deeds, and the Scrabble-like Anagrams, meant to teach language. So, she set about making a board game that might look a little familiar. The Landlord’s Game was played on a looping board with four large spaces on each corner including a public park, a “Go To Jail” space, and a “Labour Performed Upon Mother Earth” which players earned 100 dollars each for passing. Between these spaces were properties that could be bought and rented out, utilities, and Luxury Tax spaces. Elizabeth’s goal with this rule set was to show players how anger inducing and cruel monopolies were. She wanted players to feel like they had been wronged as some players got rich through a roll of the dice, and other players lost out big. This also means that the anger you feel towards friends and family when playing Monopoly isn’t a side effect or result of poor game design. It’s the core message that the game is built around. Elizabeth wrote about The Landlord’s Game in the Single Tax Review’s Autumn 1902 issue in an attempt to spread the word, saying: “It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.” “It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seems to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth.” The next year, Elizabeth patented the game. She even worked with a New York City publisher named the Economic Game Company that listed her as a part-owner. However, the game never saw widespread acceptance, largely only taking hold with left-leaning academics who used the game in their lessons, and Quakers who traded homemade versions of the game. For her part, Elizabeth sought out new ways to spread her political message, including putting herself up for sale in a newspaper ad that read, “young woman American slave,” and said she was up for sale to the highest bidder. She described herself as, “not beautiful, but very attractive,” and with “features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine.” This stunt took off, with newspapers reporting on the stunt and many individuals responding to Elizabeth’s ad. Some realized the point she was making, while others responded with serious bids. One tempting offer was sent by an elderly couple who offered her free room and board on their farm, giving her the freedom to do whatever she wanted. Elizabeth later described her intent to journalists, stating that the ad was meant to bring to light the dismal position women faced in the United States at the time, adding that, “We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.” In 1906, Elizabeth got a job as a newspaper reporter, and in 1910, she married 54-year-old businessman Albert Phillips who was ten-years her senior. Before this, Elizabeth had actually been the head of her household, having saved up and bought a house and several acres of property on her own. Elizabeth never stopped creating games. Also in 1910, she created a humorous game called Mock Trial which she sent to Parker Brothers. To her delight, they published it. In 1913, Elizabeth found a British publisher for The Landlord’s Game: the Newbie Game Company. They changed the branding up and released it as Brer Fox and Rabbit, with a more streamlined design. Later, Elizabeth created a modified version of her old Landlord’s Game that included rules such as owning all railroad or utilities allowing the player to charge more in rent for them. She also included Chicago-themed spaces and numbers along the edge of the board that marked property groups. At the time, support for single-tax was falling, and she may have wanted to try and spread her message more, filing for a patent update in 1923. Yet, despite this, she would soon lose control over her own creation. While Elizabeth had been busy pursuing other avenues to spread her message, something interesting happened. The Landlord’s Game took on a life of its own. The game hadn’t sold especially well, mostly taking hold with academics that leaned towards left-wing politics at universities. The game had also taken root in the Quakers, a religious group that believes there is part of God in everyone and so everyone should be treated equally and are all worthy of respect. These copies of the game were often drawn or painted, with each new copy altering the rules in some way, shape, or form. Along with rule changes, the name changed as it moved from community to community, shifting from The Landlord’s Game, to Auction Monopoly, before settling on the simplicity of Monopoly. And so the game of Finance was born. Created by Dan Layman, Finance—or Fortune as it later became—was published by L.S. Ayres & Co and later Electronic Laboratories. Finance launched in 1932, and while Dan tried to patent the game, he was unable to when his lawyer found Elizabeth’s patent already applied to the game. While Dan had originally wanted to call the game Monopoly, he was advised that he wasn’t able to by his legal counsel. According to his attorney friends, the name “Monopoly” had been used as the name of the homemade version of the game, therefore was in the public domain and couldn’t be protected. Louis Thun, the friend and dorm mate who taught Dan about Monopoly, also attempted to patent a version of the game he and his brother Fred made in 1931, though he encountered the same issue that Dan did. His lawyer discovered Elizabeth’s patent and is recorded to have said, "Patents are for inventors and you didn't invent it.” The two brothers decided instead to copyright their own version of the game, including specific rules changes such as Owning a group of properties lets a player double rent of those properties. Owning multiple railroads allows a player to increase rent for each railroad owner. The addition of the randomized “Community Chest” event cards that could help or harm players. Paying money to get out of jail. All the while, Elizabeth’s creation continued to spread as homemade copies of “the monopoly game" thanks to the Quaker community. Newlyweds Ruth and Eugene Raiford learned the game while visiting family in Atlantic City before returning to Philadelphia. There, they taught their friends and neighbours Charles and Ruth Todd, who in turn taught the game to their friends, Charles and Esther Darrow. In 1932, the two couples sat around the Todds’ homemade board. The Darrows loved the game, and Charles Todd even made them a board of their own and taught them the rules. And in doing so, set the stage for a case of theft so audacious that it’s hard to believe. Charles Darrow kept asking about rules, prompting the Todds to invite the Raifords over, since they knew the rules better. Ruth Raiford later commented on how the Darrows kept asking questions about the game’s rules with the explanation that, “they wanted to be sure they were doing it right.” Then, Charles Darrow asked for a written copy of the rules. Charles Todd was confused, since he’d never even seen a written copy of the rules, but Darrow assured him that he wanted to help teach the game to others. Charles Todd eventually agreed. Charles Darrow copied the game—unchanged to the point of containing the same spelling mistakes—and began selling it as its “sole creator” under the name others had been calling it for years at this point: Monopoly What the Todds hadn’t realized was that the Darrows’ situation was dire. Charles and Esther had two children, preschool aged William, and their toddler, Richard. Tragically, Richard had been stricken with Scarlet Fever and was left mentally disabled. At the time, there were few resources available for those dealing with situations like Richard’s, especially since he was becoming dangerous to himself and others. At one point while on vacation, Richard’s lack of danger recognition led to him almost drowning, only being saved at the last moment by another child. Charles Darrow clearly needed to make money. Seeing something marketable in the game he had played at the Todds’, Charles Darrow turned to an artist friend by the name of Franklin Alexander. He told Franklin that he had recently played the game and wanted to market it, but “Needed to jazz up the design a bit” and asked for help. Charles Darrow didn’t try to trademark or patent Monopoly at the time. Instead, he got a copyright for the new board game, though the original documents for his claim disappeared from the US Copyright office at some point. Later, Charles Darrow found a publisher in the Philadelphia-based department store Wanamaker, who added the game to their holiday catalog. As copies of Monopoly sold, demand grew to the point where Charles Darrow needed to hire another Pennsylvania-based printer to accommodate sales. He sent copies of Monopoly to both Milton Bradley and Parker Bros., but both rejected the game at this time. Charles Darrow continued to sell Monopoly locally, but Parker Bros. was not doing well themselves. The Great Depression and the stock market crash had hit the board game company hard. As it happened, people who were struggling to pay bills and buy food were less interested in luxuries like board games. In 1932, Parker Brothers revenues had halved from their pre-Depression figures. Their corporate structure was outdated, and executives believed that people wouldn’t want to buy board games in an economic downturn and were unwilling to take risks. In 1933, co-founder of Parkers Bros, George Parker stepped down and asked his son-in-law Robert Barton to take over. Though Robert had no experience with board games, he agreed on the condition he be given total control over the firm. George accepted, and Robert began to assemble a new team. First off was the issue of money. It seemed that with people struggling to put food on the table, customers were no longer willing to buy board games with money they didn’t have. Parker Brothers, meanwhile, continued to pay out dividends to investors even as sales dwindled. The hope was that they could keep their confidence up, even at the cost of their own cash cushion. There was a new national pastime brewing. Families were sitting around the radio to listen to the news instead of gathering around the table to play board games. Robert went through the company’s operations and tried to find ways to stop Parker Brothers from losing money. Despite his efforts, they still lost over $100,000 in his first year as the Great Depression continued to take its toll on sales. Monopoly continued to take ground, somehow gaining a spot in the luxury F.A.O. Schwarz toy catalog, even as Finance outsold it ten-to-one. At the time, Elizabeth seemed unaware of bootleg copies of her game being sold. Somehow, Charles Darrow’s version managed to get into the hands of Robert Barton’s wife, Sally Barton, who in turn told Robert about it. When Charles Darrow originally pitched Monopoly to Parker Brothers, they had turned the game down believing no one would want to buy a game about buying property when property was at the heart of so much trouble in the world. Now, the company was on the verge of collapse and taking a chance couldn’t hurt. Robert summoned Charles to the Parker Bros. showroom and offered him to buy the game for $7,000 plus royalty payments for copies of the game sold. Charles agreed. This was despite the fact that Elizabeth had made the game, Charles Todd had written the rules, and Alexander Franklin had created the art. Charles Darrow had left the core game unchanged, right down to a spelling mistake. Robert bought out Charles Darrow’s leftover stock of Monopoly, and got to selling it. But George Parker believed it would hit an early slump and ordered his factories to stop printing it. He was wrong, and even he realized it. He reversed his decision and Monopoly turned business around for Parker Brothers. 270,000 copies of Monopoly sold in its first year on the market, 1935. In 1936, it sold over 1.75 million copies. And while Monopoly made Parker Brothers and Charles Darrow millions, Elizabeth didn’t see a single cent. Despite patenting her game twice and having Mock Trial published, it seemed as though The Landlord’s Game had been forgotten. But this wouldn’t be the last that Parker Brothers had heard from The Landlord’s Game. Monopoly had done well for Charles Darrow and his family, making them rich practically overnight. Charles and Esther Darrow sent their son Richard to a facility in New Jersey that would be able to care for him better than they were able to. They also bought a farm nearby to visit. But while their fortunes seemed bigger than ever, trouble was brewing elsewhere. Parker Brothers had made a disturbing discovery. Charles Darrow hadn’t made Monopoly. After Robert had published the game, a vice-president of Parker Brothers wrote to Robert about previously released versions of the game like The Landlord’s Game, and Finance, saying: “lawyers had investigated the situation and found that Darrow had appropriated the discarded name Monopoly—and further, that Finance was on the market quite some time before Monopoly.” Robert in turn asked Charles Darrow to sign an affidavit stating that his version of the game’s history was correct—something that he refused to do. Robert used Charles Darrow’s lie to his advantage. According to the University of Iowa, he had a secret meeting with Charles in 1935, where he leveraged the inevitable legal costs from defending the game to secure Parker Brothers’ worldwide rights to distributing Monopoly. But even with the deception revealed, Robert decided that the origin story was too good to pass up. People became emotionally attached to rags-to-riches stories like Charles Darrow, they identified with the story-teller. And more importantly, they thought that if Charles Darrow could do it, so could they. And Parker Brothers was undeterred in seeking to seal its hold on Monopoly. Because Charles Darrow had stated he first published the game on July 30, 1933, Parker Brothers only had until July 29, 1935 due to a two-year limit on patent applications. They missed this deadline. Still, they filed for a patent on August 31, 1935 and despite two previously filed patents on The Landlord’s Game, they got it for reasons unknown. And now, Parker Bros. was left to cover up the facts. Despite having stepped down as CEO of Parker Brothers, in November 1935, George Parker himself traveled out to Arlington, Virginia in order to tie up one loose end of Monopoly’s messy business: preventing a lawsuit from Elizabeth. George succeeded in finding Elizabeth and told her that Parker Brothers had come across The Landlord’s Game and that he wanted to buy the patent. George also told her that he wanted to publish two more of her games, Elizabeth was elated, and sold the game to him for $500, with no royalties. Next, they went after Dan’s Finance. That Finance was already on the market and had been outselling Monopoly was dangerous. So Robert and his team purchased Finance from their publisher, Knapp Electric for $10,000. An easy solution. Their next issue was a larger one: rival board game juggernaut Milton Bradley had published their own game based on Finance called Easy Money. Because Milton Bradley was a large rival to Parker Brothers, buying them out was out of the question. So they went through a different avenue to achieve their goals. Parker Brothers went after Milton Bradley with a legal action, claiming that Easy Money infringed on their patent for Monopoly. In the end, the two companies came to a resolution that seemed strange on the outside, but made sense for both businesses. Milton Bradley was allowed to keep producing and publishing Easy Money through a royalty agreement with Parker Bros. That way, Milton Bradley got to keep selling their game, and Parker Bros. had saved themselves a much fiercer lawsuit for patent fraud. But that legal battle seemed to be brewing regardless. On June 1, 1936, Parker Bros. sued a Texas man by the name of Rudy Copeland. Rudy had a deep knowledge of Monopoly, and had created his own version like Dan before him. Rudy’s game was named Inflation, and when Parker Bros. sued him over it, he countersued them for copyright and patent fraud. Parker Bros settled out of court for $10,000 with the agreement that Rudy never speak of it again. In 1939, Parker Brothers made good on George’s 1935 deal with Elizabeth and published a version of The Landlord’s Game. This version featured Elizabeth’s face on the box, her rules to the game, and a board where properties were laid out in a more natural-looking city. Parker Brothers didn’t seem interested in promoting the games though, and soon Elizabeth’s works faded into obscurity along with their author. According to George Parker’s grandnephew, Edward Parker, the game’s popularity stemmed from families not having enough money to go out during the Great Depression, and that Monopoly gave them a feeling of wealth. It provided an escape from real life. Edward is also quoted as saying: “... What kept it going is the chance for individual gain. It appeals to the competitive nature of people.” Buyers from around the world wanted to publish their own versions of the game, swapping out Monopoly’s Atlantic City locales with local ones. The United Kingdom edition included tiles such as Piccadilly, Bond Street, and Mayfair, for example. Not only had Monopoly single-handedly saved Parker Brothers from bankruptcy, but these rebranded editions would become a staple of the game, and these days every brand conceivable has been present on the box from Game of Thrones to My Little Pony. All the while, Elizabeth Magie’s name had faded from history. Though not everyone sat idly by. Dan wrote to Time magazine to complain, and the Quaker community was rattled as a whole. The Raifords, the family who had introduced Charles Todd to the game, decided they should no longer loan out their homemade board games, fearing that they were committing something morally wicked and dangerous. Charles Todd was infuriated, and both Charles and Esther Darrow avoided him whenever they saw him on the street and refused to talk to him. He further wrote to Parker Bros. saying, “Darrow didn’t have anything to do with originating the game. He stole it.” Parker Brothers did not respond. Still, despite the outcry, the true story of Monopoly’s creation seemed destined to fade. Until 1974, when Parker Bros. sued an economics professor at San Francisco State named Ralph Anspach. Ralph had become angered by monopolies thanks to the then-ongoing OPEC crisis. Causing shortages and price hikes for gasoline. In response, Ralph made a board game of his own to educate people on breaking them up which he called Anti-Monopoly. When word got to Parker Brothers, they sent him a cease and desist letter. In this case, Ralph believed that Parker Brothers was using the lawsuit to eliminate competition and uphold their own monopoly on games similar to Monopoly. However, as he investigated, he soon suspected that Monopoly’s patent might be fraudulent. While researching, Ralph’s son discovered a book that claimed Charles Darrow had stolen Monopoly from the public domain—taking something that was free for anyone to use and tried to claim ownership over it. Not only that, but while promoting Anti-Monopoly on television in Oregon, an elderly woman called in and claimed to play Monopoly before the Great Depression, before Parker Brothers claimed it had been created. Ralph set about uncovering the real story of how Monopoly was created, and as a result discovered The Landlord’s Game. He tracked down sources and interviewed those who had played the Quaker version of the game. One of these interviewees happened to be Charles Todd himself. Parker Brothers was getting worried, and offered Ralph $500,000 to just purchase Anti-Monopoly and make the problem go away. Ralph refused. Having studied the history of The Landlord’s Game, Ralph knew that Parker Brothers had bought the game and then buried it. He feared the same would happen to Anti-Monopoly. And then… he lost. His fears that Parker Brothers would bury Anti-Monopoly turned out to be true. Literally. In the aftermath of the court case, Parker Brothers was given all 40,000 copies of the game and invited journalists out to watch them be buried in a landfill. Ralph didn’t take his loss sitting down, however. He appealed the decision on the patent infringement case and took it to a higher court and the case was reviewed by the Ninth-Circuit court in 1980. At first, the court ruled against him. Then, in 1982, the Ninth-Circuit court re-evaluated their decision and overturned it. The court found that Monopoly was too generic a trademark, and was therefore invalid. Anti-Monopoly, unlike The Landlord's Game is available in stores to this day. Yet, while Parker Brothers had their trademark for Monopoly stripped, it still owns the copyright to the art, gameboard design, and Mr. Monopoly name and character, and the game can still be found everywhere. Though these days, Hasbro, the toy giant and owner of brands like My Little Pony and Nerf, owns the rights. Since 1935, over 275 million copies of Monopoly have been sold around the world. Yet, the game alone couldn’t keep Parker Bros. on top of the world forever. In 1991, Hasbro acquired Parker Bros and all their properties, including Monopoly. Still, the new owners haven’t slowed the release of the game, and today you can find Fortnite, Sonic the Hedgehog, Millennial, and electronic board editions of the game. Elizabeth and the story of The Landlord’s Game may have been forgotten, much like the lessons of Henry George. But try as they did, Parker Brothers and Charles Darrow weren’t able to cover up the real origins of Monopoly, even if their story remained widely accepted for decades after its release. This is the story of how a journalist who tried to educate people on her economic beliefs created what would grow into the most popular board game of all time, only to have it stolen away from her. For more fascinating stories about the biggest brands in the world today, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
