In 1904 , Elizabeth " Lizzie " Magie design a plug-in game to show the tragic effects of land - grabbing . In this secret plan , oligarchs enrich themselves at the disbursement of renter , the latter of whom only grow poorer as available land decreases and the monetary value of rip increase . Anyone interested in traveling a non - fiddling distance has to pony up for a railway ticket . Anyone desiring light and weewee had better open their wallet . And crossing the wrong landowner sends a instrumentalist directly to jail . The poorer the proletarian player get , the more he or she is squeezed ; there is nowhere to go that does n’t demand a fee of some form , and there is no break . The biz end only when everyone is repulse penniless into the ground , but for a exclusive patrician who now owns everything . Lizzie Magie mention her grim reflection of lifeThe landlord ’ Game , but you likely make out it comfortably asMonopoly .
Magie was a adherent of Henry George , a 19th C economist who proposed that land was “ vulgar property , ” and that as a fashion of mitigate the self - unmistakable ridiculousness of owning nature , a single taxation would be applied to landowner . The revenue enhancement would replace the tax revenue of “ productive labor , ” and such regressive taxes as those on sales would be eliminated . Magie believedThe Landlords ’ Gamewould show the world as it is , and might hopefully animate reforms . “ permit the children once see empty the gross injustice of our present land organisation and when they grow up , if they are allowed to rise by nature , the evil will presently be remedied , ” she said two class before she patented her idea .
Thirty - one year later , a humankind named Charles Darrow sold a game calledMonopolyto George and Fred Parker . As later printed in the game ’s instructions : “ In 1934 , Charles B. Darrow of Germantown , Pennsylvania , presented a biz called MONOPOLY to the executives of Parker Brothers . Mr. Darrow , like many other Americans , was unemployed at the time and often play this plot to amuse himself and pass the time . It was the game ’s exciting hope of renown and fortune that initially prompt Darrow to produce this secret plan on his own . ” This finely - threaded phonograph needle of a history miss to refer that Darrow stole the estimation alone from Lizzie Magie .
AfterMonopolybecame a bang , the crony Parker move quickly to seize all right to the game . They tracked down the elderly Lizzie Magie Phillips and propose her one bright orange $ 500 bill and no royalties . When Parker Brothers provide to produce an unsullied interpretation ofThe Landlords ’ Game , she lief sold the rights . She was keen to elevate Henry George ’s economic philosophy and perhaps make a dispute in the world . After manufacturing a few copies of the original , the circuit board game giant quickly and thoroughly bury it , all the while slipping the name Elizabeth Magie into the memory hole with its deceitful “ history . ” It was far sexier to toy up fictitious Great Depression descent than to describe how a couple of board game robber barons ripped off an old lady .
Elizabeth Magie Phillips died in 1948 .
Primary image courtesy ofPieceOfMind .
