The Landlord's Game

Here's my favorite example, because it's almost too perfect for this episode.

In 1904, a woman named Lizzie Maggie patented a board game called The Landlord's Game.

She designed it to show how letting a few people own all the land makes everyone else poorer.

Decades later, an unemployed salesman named Charles Darrow learned a version of it at his friend's house, made his own boards and sold it to Parker Brothers as Monopoly.

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Okay, the game most of us know as Monopoly was based on the Landlord's Game, which was designed by feminist Elizabeth Lizzie Magee.

So Lizzie Magee created the Landlord's Game in 1903 or 1904.

Her father was an abolitionist, and she was very progressive in part because of that.

Oh, and also, she had a whole life.

She was determined to do something to address it, or at least educate people about it.

So she started working on a board game.

She received the patent for the board game, The Landlord's Game, in 1904, which was before she was allowed to vote legally, just by the way.

For today's episode, The New York Times best-selling author Mary Pilon tells the remarkable true story behind one of the world's most famous board games.

Her book, The Monopolists, traces Monopoly back to Elizabeth "Lizzie" Maggie, a politically active inventor and Georgist who created The Landlord's Game to teach Henry George's ideas about land, rent, and economic inequality.

We'll follow the game as it spreads through universities, Quaker communities, and early reform circles before Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers turn it into the commercial phenomenon we know today.

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You know, I, I was like, "I don't know if, how many people are familiar with this movement or what have you." Um, so it's interesting to see it all.

And when I do book events, uh, like, Georgist folks are there, you know? It's really, it's cool to see, cool to see it all kind of coming to life.

Um, so this is Lizzie Magie's patent for the Landlord's Game.

So she creates this game in 1903, 1904, shortly after George has died, as a way to teach people about single tax theory.