PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2023

Back then, board games were expen sive to purchase. As a result, people would create their own game boards on paper or oilcloth. As a result, over the years the game morphed into slightly different layouts, with the rules evolv ing, as well. Ultimately, The Landlord’s Game landed with a Quaker teacher in Atlantic City. Baltic Avenue, Park Place and other Atlantic City landmarks made their way onto the board. Enter a man named Charles Darrow, who played one of these homespun versions of the game, spruced it up, and sought a patent in 1935 for the newly named Monopoly game. Darrow then sold it to Parker Brothers, the biggest game distributor in the nation. Of course, Parker Brothers wanted to ensure that Darrow really was the game’s inventor. In researching its origins as part of their due diligence, they discovered Magie’s patent for The Landlord’s Game , which was remarkably similar to Monopoly . Soon thereafter, company founder George Parker met with Magie and sweet-talked her into signing over the rights to the game for a meager $500 and a promise to publish two more of her original games. Lizzie Magie drew a Chance card and rolled the dice, but she didn’t pass go and didn’t collect $200 because she wanted her Georgist antimonopoly teachings to reach a broader audience.

regulated, the scales were tipped in favor of a wealthy minority, while most Amer icans barely scraped by. Lizzie saw and resented these class differences. She became a follower of Henry George, who had authored a popular book, Progress and Poverty , that preached against cap italism’s excesses. His followers, called Georgists, were critical of monopolies and the business titans whose practices made them possible. That book and the movement it spawned inspired Lizzie to create The Landlord’s Game in order to expose the injustices produced by those monopolies. “When that didn’t work out as planned, she revamped the game so you could play it two ways,” said Hedblade. “One way was as a monopolist and the other as an anti-monopolist, where rent profits go into the public treasury for railroads and public utilities.” In 1904, Magie applied for a patent on The Landlord’s Game . The original game bears striking similarities to the city of Macomb. At one time, Macomb’s square had a poor house, a public park and a jail on the corner. On the board game since the very beginning were three little words: “Go to jail.” Magie’s patent meant she got credit for the board game’s creation, if not the profits from its sale. So, how did the Monopoly game find its way into American homes?

Little did she know that her game would become more of a lesson in greed, instead. To learn more about Lizzie’s story, watch the WTVP story Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History and WTVP’s You Gotta See This! episode on Magie. Lizzie and the ‘monopoly’ game she patented in 1904. To her left is the miniature model. Pictured on the right is the ‘landlord’s game’ – Star Staff Photo

Julie Sanders is executive director of content and marketing at WTVP PBS. She also co-hosts WTVP’s You Gotta See This!

APRIL 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE 65