Speaker 1: Pushkin Happy New Year. Did you pull out a board
Speaker 1: game over the holiday season? Did you play nicely? Or
Speaker 1: did it quickly descend into acrimony, name calling, and accusations
Speaker 1: of cheating. The game that seems to bring out the
Speaker 1: killer instinct in even the kindest of Granny's is Monopoly.
Speaker 1: The cutthroat activity sees players try to amass fortunes while
Speaker 1: gleefully making opponents bankrupt. But it wasn't meant to be
Speaker 1: like that. It may surprise you to know that the
Speaker 1: inventor of the game imagined a far gentler, kinder pastime,
Speaker 1: But as I learned researching the history of Monopoly, her
Speaker 1: ideals and her name were squeezed out of the origin story.
Speaker 1: So take a break from your own gaming to listen
Speaker 1: again to a classic cautionary tale featuring the voice talent
Speaker 1: of Helena Bonham Carter as the inimitable Lizzie McGhee. Whatever
Speaker 1: you do, do not pass go. In September twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: the toy and game giant Hasbro struck a blow in
Speaker 1: the battle of a women's rights. Although it's not quite
Speaker 1: clear which side they were on, they published mus Monopoly,
Speaker 1: putting a new spin on their classic board game. The
Speaker 1: tagline for this new version was the first game where
Speaker 1: women make more than men. They're not kidding. Female players
Speaker 1: start the game with more Monopoly money than male players,
Speaker 1: and they get two hundred and forty dollars each time
Speaker 1: they pass go, rather than the traditional two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for the Why exactly is not clear, some sort of joke.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a consistent joke. Some of the chants
Speaker 1: and community chest cards paid out more cash to mail players.
Speaker 1: So what is the message? Women have been unfairly treated,
Speaker 1: Women need help to win. We don't actually know what
Speaker 1: feminism means. There is, however, one feature of the game
Speaker 1: that's hard to criticize. Instead of buying properties from around
Speaker 1: Atlantic City as in the classic game, players invest in
Speaker 1: inventions that were developed by women, such as Marion Donovan,
Speaker 1: the inventor of the leak proof diaper, Anna Connolly, the
Speaker 1: inventor of the external fire escape, and Heady Lamar, the
Speaker 1: film star who in the nineteen forties co invented frequency
Speaker 1: hopping radio transmissions, a precursor to today's Wi Fi. In
Speaker 1: mus Monopoly, each square represents one of these inventions. For example,
Speaker 1: instead of buying the prestige property boardwalk you could invest
Speaker 1: in chocolate chip cookies invented by Ruth Wakefield. And it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue with the sentiments expressed in Hasbro's advertisement
Speaker 1: for his Monopoly, which begins with the simple text women
Speaker 1: hold just ten percent of all patented inventions. The mus
Speaker 1: Monopoly game was widely derided as a confusing mass of
Speaker 1: mixed messages, but the mus Monopoly advert asks a simple,
Speaker 1: powerful question, isn't it time that the inventiveness of women
Speaker 1: was finally acknowledged and rewarded? Well? Isn't it? I'm Tim
Speaker 1: Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. You may be
Speaker 1: familiar with the traditional story about the origins of Monopoly.
Speaker 1: I remember reading it myself as a child, which isn't
Speaker 1: surprising since the story itself was for decades included in
Speaker 1: every game box. The story goes as follows. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, the Bleakest Depths of the Great Depression, an
Speaker 1: unemployed steam radiator repair man from Philadelphia named Charles Darrow
Speaker 1: was struck with an idea to create a new board
Speaker 1: game about property trading. It was an act of desperation
Speaker 1: because Darrow had no money, and a family to feed.
Speaker 1: But it was also an act of inspiration, since the
Speaker 1: game sprang fully formed from the bread of its creator.
Speaker 1: Darrow drew out the game board on a sheet of oilcloth.
Speaker 1: The board featured the familiar street names of Atlantic City,
Speaker 1: where Darrow once enjoyed taking his wife and children on vacation.
Speaker 1: It was a nostalgic decision aimed at cheering up a
Speaker 1: family that had fallen on hard times. The Darrows loved
Speaker 1: the game, suspecting that he'd created something valuable. Charles Darrow
Speaker 1: tried to interest the big board game distributors. Milton Bradley
Speaker 1: turned him down, so did Parker Brothers. However, they later
Speaker 1: reconsidered when they saw how popular Darrow's homemade sets were.
Speaker 1: With the backing of Parker Brothers, Monopoly became a smash hit.
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow's fortune was assured, as was his reputation as
Speaker 1: the creator of one of the most successful games in
Speaker 1: the world. But as the journal historian Mary Pilon says
Speaker 1: in her book The Monopolists, the story wasn't exactly true.
Speaker 1: That's putting it kindly, because, as Pilon's book makes perfectly clear,
Speaker 1: the story I read in my game box isn't true
Speaker 1: at all. The game of Monopoly did not come to
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow in a flash of inspiration. It was taught
Speaker 1: to him by his friends Charles and Olive Todd in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two. The Todd's plane on a board with
Speaker 1: go jail free parking and go to jail at the
Speaker 1: four corners, with chance and community chest, with the electric
Speaker 1: company and the waterworks, and street names from around Atlantic City.
Speaker 1: When drawing up his monopoly board, Charles Todd even made
Speaker 1: a mistake in the spelling of Marvin Gardens, swapping in
Speaker 1: an eye to become Marvin Gardens. Charles Darrow's monopoly board
Speaker 1: would later use not only the same squares in the
Speaker 1: same configuration, with the same deed values, it would even
Speaker 1: repeat the same spelling error. After several evenings, pleasantly whiled
Speaker 1: away with the game.
Speaker 2: Say Todd, would you mind lending me a copy of
Speaker 2: the rules of that game?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, Darrow, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never written them down.
Speaker 2: Why do you want them? I'd love to teach it
Speaker 2: to others. I want to make sure I get it right.
Speaker 1: Charles Todd was a little puzzled, but he obliged his
Speaker 1: friend Soon after, to Todd's irritation, Darrow started avoiding him
Speaker 1: it crossed the street when the Todds were coming the
Speaker 1: other way. Then came the blockbuster success of Monopoly with
Speaker 1: sparky graphics that Charles Darrow had begged free of charge
Speaker 1: from another friend, the cartoonist Franklin Alexander. Journalists repeated the
Speaker 1: rags to Rich his yarn that Darrow was spinning. Darrow's
Speaker 1: former friends, Charles and Olive Todd, were outraged, but not
Speaker 1: because they felt their idea had been stolen. They knew
Speaker 1: all along that Monopoly had never belonged to them in
Speaker 1: the first place. They had been taught the game by
Speaker 1: their friends, the brothers Jesse and Eugene Rayford. Jesse and
Speaker 1: Eugene had been the ones who named squares on the
Speaker 1: board after areas in Atlantic City, but they hadn't invented
Speaker 1: Monopoly either. The ha'd adapted a version they had been
Speaker 1: taught by Ruth Hoskins, who was a trainee school teacher.
Speaker 1: So did Ruth Hoskins invent the game? No, It was
Speaker 1: circulating widely in the nineteen twenties. It was even popular
Speaker 1: in economics departments. One influential player Scott Nearing was a
Speaker 1: socialist economics professor at the Wharton School who used a
Speaker 1: version of the game to teach the evils of corporate monopolies.
Speaker 1: This game was called Monopoly, and the square board had
Speaker 1: plenty of recognizable elements with forty spaces, including chants, jail,
Speaker 1: go to jail, and numerous properties. But there were two
Speaker 1: ways to play the game. It could be played competitively,
Speaker 1: as players tried to monopolize groups of property and bankrupt
Speaker 1: their opponents, or it could be played cooperatively, with resources
Speaker 1: paid into the public purse, utilities supplying services for free,
Speaker 1: and each player's resources growing over time. The cooperative game was,
Speaker 1: of course, very dull, But monopoly wasn't invented at the
Speaker 1: Wharton School. Professor Scott Nearing learned it in the utopian
Speaker 1: community called Arden in Delaware. Arden had been founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred and organized according to the principles of the economist, journalist,
Speaker 1: and social reformer Henry George. Henry George's most famous idea
Speaker 1: was that all land and natural resources ultimately belonged to
Speaker 1: society as a whole, so whoever owned them should be
Speaker 1: paying a hefty tax, and it was Henry George's idea
Speaker 1: of this single tax that the Arden version of Monopoly
Speaker 1: was designed to explore this game. The progressive Heaven or
Speaker 1: capitalist Hell version of Monopoly was called the Landlord's Game.
Speaker 1: Did the radical folk of Arden invent the Landlord's Game? No,
Speaker 1: It was dreamed up by a remarkable woman named Lizzie McGee.
Speaker 1: And is Lizzie McGee celebrated on the US Monopoly board.
Speaker 1: I think you can guess the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will return in a moment. Unlike Charles Darrow,
Speaker 1: the man who claimed to have invented Monopoly, Lizzie McGhee
Speaker 1: was a true original.
Speaker 3: I'm thankful that I was taught how to think and
Speaker 3: not what to think.
Speaker 1: When McGhee created the original Monopoly style game, it was
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. Here's how Mary Plon's History of
Speaker 1: Monopoly describes McGee, a distinctive looking woman in her thirties,
Speaker 1: with curly dark locks and bangs that framed her face.
Speaker 1: Lizzie had inherited the bushy eyebrows of her father, the
Speaker 1: descendant of Scottish immigrants. She had pale skin, a strong jawline,
Speaker 1: and a strong work ethic. Quite as an unmarried woman,
Speaker 1: unusual at her age. Working as a stenographer, she had
Speaker 1: little prospect of acquiring material comforts, Yet she had saved
Speaker 1: and bought herself a home and a substantial parcel of
Speaker 1: land near Washington, d c. Lizzie's father had been a
Speaker 1: journalist and campaigner, the editor of an abolitionist newspaper, and
Speaker 1: a devoted supporter of Abraham Lincoln. She too was politically active.
Speaker 1: Like the community at Arden, Lizzie McGee was a Georgist,
Speaker 1: a committed follower of the ideas and ideals of Henry George.
Speaker 1: She was friends with Henry George Junior, the son of
Speaker 1: the great Man himself, and she was the secretary of
Speaker 1: the Georgist organization, the Woman's Single Tax Club of Washington.
Speaker 1: Henry George had died suddenly in eighteen ninety seven while
Speaker 1: running to be the mayor of New York City. One
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people lined up to pay their respects to
Speaker 1: his funeral casket. His followers, including Lizzie McGhee, had felt
Speaker 1: bereft and determined to carry on the fight for Georgist policies.
Speaker 1: But what could McGee do a progressive and a capitalist world.
Speaker 1: A woman in a man's world. She was desperate for
Speaker 1: social change, but felt frustrated in what she could achieve.
Speaker 1: Mary Polon's description of her conjures a powerhouse of creativity.
Speaker 1: McGee wrote poems about unrequited love. She wrote essays on
Speaker 1: Georgist taxation. She wrote stories too, including one.
Speaker 3: The Theft of a Brain, about.
Speaker 1: A young woman whose brilliant idea is plagiarized. But none
Speaker 1: of these creative projects really broke through. McGhee was frustrated.
Speaker 1: How to get the message across? How to achieve lasting change?
Speaker 3: Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of
Speaker 3: our present land system, and when they grow up, the
Speaker 3: evil will soon be remedied.
Speaker 1: Yes, how to reach the children? What better method than
Speaker 1: through a board game? Lizzie McGee's The Landlord's Game would
Speaker 1: evolve and become more popular than she could ever have imagined.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen thirties, it existed in several popular versions,
Speaker 1: all of which took the competitive rather than cooperative approach.
Speaker 1: There was finance sold by the NAP Company, Inflation sold
Speaker 1: by Rudy Copeland of Fort Worth, Texas, and easy money
Speaker 1: sold by Milton Bradley. But Lizzie McGee herself had been
Speaker 1: almost forgotten, and so had the subversively educational version of
Speaker 1: her game. It turns out that when people play board games,
Speaker 1: they'd rather try to crush their opponents than all accumulate
Speaker 1: resources together without obstacle or incident. No single person created
Speaker 1: Monopoly any more than a single person created chess or poker.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to pick out the one creative
Speaker 1: soul who who deserved the most credit, there is no
Speaker 1: question that it would be Lizzie McGee. So how come
Speaker 1: it was Charles Darrow and not McGhee who became known
Speaker 1: as the lone genius who invented Monopoly? Remember the advertisement
Speaker 1: for mus Monopoly. Hasbro, the company that absorbed Parker Brothers,
Speaker 1: began with a lament. Women hold just ten percent of
Speaker 1: all patented inventions. This situation is finally improving. Women made
Speaker 1: up less than ten percent of patent holders born in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, but more than fifteen percent of patent
Speaker 1: holders born in the nineteen seventies. As millennials take over
Speaker 1: the process of patenting, who knows, we might get as
Speaker 1: high as twenty percent before long. In fact, we're on
Speaker 1: course to achieve gender parity in patents as early as
Speaker 1: the year twenty one thirty five. Cheer up, So why
Speaker 1: has progress been so slow? One of the scholars who's
Speaker 1: been searching for answers is the economist Lisa Cook of
Speaker 1: Michigan State University. Professor Kok studies why certain groups of
Speaker 1: people seemed to be shut out from the innovation economy,
Speaker 1: in particular African Americans and women. For many decades, women
Speaker 1: had less than equal access to high quality education, especially
Speaker 1: technical education. For example, in the early nineteen fifties, Eleanor
Speaker 1: Ostrom wanted to study economics at UCLA, but she was
Speaker 1: rejected because she didn't have the mathematical skills. She didn't
Speaker 1: have the mathematical skills because as a schoolgirl, she had
Speaker 1: been steered away from the subject because of her gender. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: Eleanor Ostrom had the last laugh. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: she was the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial
Speaker 1: Prize in economics. It was astonishingly late for the profession
Speaker 1: to recognize the first female laureate, but as Linostroum was
Speaker 1: quick to say, she wouldn't be the last. As a
Speaker 1: result of both overt and subtle discrimination, women have been
Speaker 1: underrepresented in technical subjects such as mathematics, economics, and engineering.
Speaker 1: That is changing, but slowly. Between nineteen seventy and twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the proportion of PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical
Speaker 1: subjects that were rewarded to women more than quadruple. And
Speaker 1: if a lack of educational opportunity is a problem, so
Speaker 1: too is a lack of mentors. A huge study conducted
Speaker 1: by a team of economists led by Raj Chetti of
Speaker 1: Harvard found that young people were far more likely to
Speaker 1: become inventors if they could see other inventors around them,
Speaker 1: especially if their own parents were inventors. Gender matters here.
Speaker 1: For example, female inventors seem to be far more inspiring
Speaker 1: to girls than male inventors are, and since there are
Speaker 1: fewer women inventors around to inspire girls, the problem is
Speaker 1: a self perpetuating spiral. Indeed, Chetti and his colleagues estimate
Speaker 1: that if young girls had the same exposure to female
Speaker 1: inventors as young boys did to male inventors, they would
Speaker 1: innovate more than two and a half times as much
Speaker 1: as now, and the gender innovation gap would be less
Speaker 1: than half as big. That's why them as monopoly set
Speaker 1: and advertising campaign, with its celebration of women inventors, is
Speaker 1: so important, But among the female inventors credited on the board,
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGhee is conspicuous by her absence. It is an
Speaker 1: astonishing missed opportunity. But it's also a mystery. How did
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGee find herself so comprehensively the air brushed out
Speaker 1: of history? And why don't the publishers of monopoly want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge her more than a century later? Could it
Speaker 1: be perhaps that they're a little ashamed? Cautionary tales will
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. Lizzie McGee broke the mold
Speaker 1: in so many ways. It wasn't just her politics, her
Speaker 1: defiance of traditional values in refusing to marry when young,
Speaker 1: her far reaching creativity as a poet, actor, novelist and essayist.
Speaker 1: She actually had the determination to follow through on her
Speaker 1: dreams despite all the obstacles. It's easy to assume that
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers were able to lay claim
Speaker 1: to Monopoly because Lizzie McGee didn't have a patent, but
Speaker 1: she did. In fact, she had two. The earlier one
Speaker 1: is for an improvement to a type rolla, But it's
Speaker 1: the patent for the Landlord's Game that deserves to be remembered.
Speaker 3: Letters Patent number seven hundred and forty eight thousand, six
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty six dated January fifth, nineteen oh four.
Speaker 3: My invention, which I have designated the Landlord's Game, relates
Speaker 3: to game boards and more particularly to games of chance.
Speaker 3: When a player stops upon a lot owned by any
Speaker 3: of the players, he must pay rent to the owner.
Speaker 3: The object of the game is to obtain as much
Speaker 3: wealth or money as possible.
Speaker 1: Even today, few patent holders are women. In McGee's time,
Speaker 1: less than one in a hundred were. She was a
Speaker 1: member of a small club of female inventors. So if
Speaker 1: she had a patent, what went wrong. The economist Lisa
Speaker 1: Cook knows that the innovation gap runs deeper than educational
Speaker 1: opportunity or even the presence of mentors. There's also the
Speaker 1: question of whose ideas get taken seriously. You can have
Speaker 1: a good idea and you can even get it patented.
Speaker 1: That that does not mean your idea will thrive if
Speaker 1: your face doesn't fit. For example, Lisa Cook's own cousin,
Speaker 1: the chemist Percy Julian, was repeatedly turned down for jobs
Speaker 1: as an academic and as a corporate researcher because he
Speaker 1: was black. Eventually, Julian became the first African American to
Speaker 1: run a large corporate laboratory. At Gliddon, he developed techniques
Speaker 1: for producing hormones such as estrogen and courtzone, and earned
Speaker 1: several patents. In nineteen fifty, Percy Julian was named Chicagoan
Speaker 1: of the Year by the Chicago Sometimes. It was the
Speaker 1: same year that infuriated that a black man had moved
Speaker 1: into a nice white part of Chicago, racists tried to
Speaker 1: burn down his house. If you're suffering from discrimination, as
Speaker 1: both women and African American inventors were throughout the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: then Professor Cook's work makes it clear having a patent
Speaker 1: might not be enough. A patent isn't much good if
Speaker 1: nobody respects it. Consider the case of Garrett Morgan. He
Speaker 1: was born in the eighteen seventies. He was a gifted inventor,
Speaker 1: developing products as varied as a gas mask, a traffic light,
Speaker 1: and hair straightening cream. But he was also African American,
Speaker 1: which didn't fit America's idea of what an inventor should
Speaker 1: look like. In one dramatic incident. In nineteen sixteen, Morgan
Speaker 1: and his brother led a rescue of several victims of
Speaker 1: an underground explosion near Lake Erie. The rescuers used Morgan's
Speaker 1: invention of a firefighters smoke Hood. Officials awarded medals to
Speaker 1: the eight members of the rescue party, but not to
Speaker 1: the Morgan brothers themselves, and while a publicity about the
Speaker 1: daring rescue helped boost sales of the smoke Hood, several
Speaker 1: Southern cities canceled their orders when they discovered that Morgan
Speaker 1: was black. Morgan often concealed his race, even using surrogates
Speaker 1: to pretend to be him when he was trying to
Speaker 1: sell his inventions. You can't blame him. Lizzie McGhee didn't
Speaker 1: have to fear being firebombed like Percy Julian, or having
Speaker 1: her wares boycotted like Garrett Morgan. But she did have
Speaker 1: to fear being ignored. Her game wasn't selling and she
Speaker 1: wasn't thriving. She was frustrated at having her freedoms and
Speaker 1: opportunities constrained by her gender. A couple of years after
Speaker 1: patenting the Landlord's Game, she took out a newspaper advertisement
Speaker 1: offering herself for sale.
Speaker 3: Young woman American slave.
Speaker 1: This stunt, shocking then and shocking now, was a way
Speaker 1: of satirizing the idea that marriage was the only option
Speaker 1: for a woman.
Speaker 3: We are not machines. Girls have minds, desires, hopes, and ambition.
Speaker 1: But while it made a splash, this outrageous stunt did
Speaker 1: not seem to turn the tide, either for feminism or
Speaker 1: for Lizzie McGee herself. A few years later, in her forties,
Speaker 1: she did marry. Her game continued to languish. Like Garrett Morgan,
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGee did not fit the stereotype of a creative genius.
Speaker 1: By the time Monopoly had become a best seller more
Speaker 1: than thirty years after McGee filed the patent for the
Speaker 1: Landlord's Game, she was an unconventional old woman with unconventional
Speaker 1: political ideals, still trying to get the world to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the case for progressive single taxation. She was
Speaker 1: no match for Charle Darrow, the smooth talking family man
Speaker 1: peddling his version of the American dream. Darrow charmed the
Speaker 1: Todds into giving him the monopoly rules in every detail,
Speaker 1: charmed the artist Franklin Alexander into donating the designs that
Speaker 1: gave Monopoly its clean, modern look, charmed Parker Brothers into
Speaker 1: treating him as a creative genius, and charmed the press
Speaker 1: into repeating his tale of creativity and adversity, carving this
Speaker 1: fictional origin story in stone with the help of the
Speaker 1: publicists at Parker Brothers. In nineteen thirty five, Charles Darrow
Speaker 1: put that story in writing to the president of Parker Brothers.
Speaker 1: It is hard to imagine that the company believed him.
Speaker 1: They must have understood that he was lying to them.
Speaker 1: One internal memo acknowledged that Darrow had appropriated the name Monopoly,
Speaker 1: and added, frankly, and I think without prejudice that the
Speaker 1: original trading game came out in nineteen oh two. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: Parker Brothers applied for a patent on Monopoly and managed
Speaker 1: to secure it with remarkable speed. Then came the business
Speaker 1: of acquiring the rights to rival games. Parker Brothers came
Speaker 1: to an arrangement with Milton Bradley about their game Easy Money,
Speaker 1: and paid a large sum for the rights to the
Speaker 1: game finance. They sued the publisher of the game inflation,
Speaker 1: yet somehow Parker Brothers ended up paying him at least
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. Relative to the wages of the day,
Speaker 1: that's half a million dollars, which does suggest that Parker
Speaker 1: Brothers didn't really want to put their patent to the test.
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow kept telling journalists the story of his moment
Speaker 1: of inspiration, and people such as Charles and Olive Todd,
Speaker 1: while irritated, didn't feel able to pursue the matter. After all,
Speaker 1: while he knew Charles Darrow hadn't invented the game, they
Speaker 1: knew they hadn't invented it either, So that just left
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGhee in one corner, an elderly left wing feminist
Speaker 1: desperate to teach the children of the world the merits
Speaker 1: of the single tax system through her obscure board game.
Speaker 1: In the other corner, a smooth talking Charles Darrow with
Speaker 1: a tale to tug at heartstrings, and a host of
Speaker 1: sharp suits from Parker Brothers. It was no contest. One
Speaker 1: November day in nineteen thirty five, traveling from Salem, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: all the way to Arlington, Virginia, George Parker himself, the
Speaker 1: seventy year old founder of Parker Brothers, paid a call
Speaker 1: to the house of Lizzie McGee Phillips, mister Parker, do
Speaker 1: come here.
Speaker 2: If we may move to matters of business, missus Phillips,
Speaker 2: My colleagues of Parker Brothers have become aware of your
Speaker 2: Landlord's game and we would like to publish it with.
Speaker 3: This is wonderful news, mister Parker. Alas the ideas this
Speaker 3: game espouses will reach the widest possible audience.
Speaker 2: That is our hope. Although a Parker Brothers we talk
Speaker 2: less about ideas and more about the joy of play.
Speaker 1: And so Lizzie McGhee and George Parker agreed a deal
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars for all rights or compared to today's wages.
Speaker 1: Parker bought the rights to Lizzie McGee's creation for just
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars no royalties. But she thought she
Speaker 1: was getting what she had dreamed about for thirty years,
Speaker 1: a mass audience for the Landlord's game, which would teach
Speaker 1: them a more cooperative, ethical way of running an economy.
Speaker 1: She sold the game cheaply, even though she valued it Dearly.
Speaker 1: Two days after the agreement, she even wrote letter addressed
Speaker 1: to her creation.
Speaker 3: It was not until the Great Game King George S.
Speaker 3: Parker did us the honor of seeking you out and
Speaker 3: offered you a brader opportunity than I could ever do.
Speaker 3: That I would part with you. Farewell, my beloved brainchild.
Speaker 3: Remember the world expects much from you.
Speaker 1: The Great Game King George Parker quietly published McGee's board
Speaker 1: game in nineteen thirty nine, just as he promised, But
Speaker 1: it didn't catch on, partly because he didn't promote it.
Speaker 1: After all, that wasn't what George Parker was buying from
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGhee, was it. He was buying a monopoly on Monopoly.
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow became a millionaire, even though his only original
Speaker 1: contribution to Monopoly appears to have been the bold concept
Speaker 1: of claiming that the game was his idea. Still, I
Speaker 1: have some sympathy for Darrow. He had been in a
Speaker 1: difficult place. His son, Dickie, had been disabled by scarlet
Speaker 1: fever and had severe learning difficulties. Few schools would take Dickie,
Speaker 1: and the ones that would were expensive. Charles had no
Speaker 1: job and no income. He really was desperate for money.
Speaker 1: As a plausible charmer with a good story and somebody
Speaker 1: else's idea, he managed to make his name and his fortune.
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGee was desperate too. She was desperate for social
Speaker 1: and political change. She was desperate for the freedoms and
Speaker 1: opportunities that would have been hers without question, had she
Speaker 1: been a man, And she was desperate for her game
Speaker 1: to reach the audience it deserved. As her father once
Speaker 1: said of her.
Speaker 3: She wants to fly, but hasn't got the wings.
Speaker 1: The journalist Mary Plon found Lizzie McGee's entry in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty census, first census after selling her patent to
Speaker 1: George Parker, and the last census before she died. She
Speaker 1: could have given her occupation as teacher or stenographer, or
Speaker 1: writer or housewife, but she didn't. She wrote instead.
Speaker 3: Maker of games.
Speaker 1: It was, after all, just one year after Parker Brothers
Speaker 1: had published The Landlord's Game. She also listed her income zero,
Speaker 1: just like the makers of mus Monopoly. I'm all in
Speaker 1: favor of celebrating female inventors. Maybe it will make a difference,
Speaker 1: or maybe it will achieve no more social change than
Speaker 1: Lizzie McGee did with her cooperative version of the Landlord's Game,
Speaker 1: but it seems worth a try. So when there's a
Speaker 1: new edition of mus Monopoly, I have a great idea
Speaker 1: for someone they might want to include.
Speaker 3: Be it known that I, Lizzie J McGee have invented
Speaker 3: certain new and useful improvements in game boards. I'll do
Speaker 3: one more letters Peytent number four hundred. No, I don't
Speaker 3: have a good thing for numbers. Okay, letters peyton number
Speaker 3: seven a week with the edible for though. No, sorry,
Speaker 3: it's a Friday. Oh ding dong. Okay, you do the
Speaker 3: special effects. That was my knee on the door. Gum
Speaker 3: and Parker come inside. Okay, I'll just do it. I'll
Speaker 3: just get on with him. Mister Parker, do come in?
Speaker 3: I like that she really is expecting him. She's been
Speaker 3: expecting him for her whole life. Do come in too much?
Speaker 1: The indispensable source for this episode is Mary Palon's book
Speaker 1: The Monopolists, supplemented by Christopher Ketchum's article in Harper's titled
Speaker 1: Monopoly is Theft. For links to academic work by Lisa Cook,
Speaker 1: RAJ Chetti, and others, see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilly and Marilyn Rust. The sound
Speaker 1: design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, edited the scripts. Starring in this series of
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonham Carter and Jeffrey Wright, alongside
Speaker 1: Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, Cobner, Holbrook Smith,
Speaker 1: Greg Lockett, Massaia Munroe and Rufus Wright. The show would
Speaker 1: not have been possible without the work of Mea LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Kell Fame, John Schnaz, Carli mcgliori, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Emily Roster, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lakhan and Maya Kanig. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.