FT260


The myth

Advertised today as the game about “getting rich quick”, Monopoly was invented by an unemployed salesman (or inventor, or heating engineer) in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1934, during the Great Depression. In the typical fashion of the indefatigable US entrepreneur, penniless dreamer Charles B Darrow heroically battled through constant setbacks to eventually sell the game to Parker Bros. It rapidly became the world’s best-selling game.


The “truth”

In 1903, Georgist (see below) activist Lizzie Magie of Maryland created a board game designed to demonstrate the evils of landlordism. She called it “The Landlord’s Game” and patented it in 1904 – and again in 1924.