Passage IV

The History of Monopoly

[1]

As a child, I disliked playing the board game Monopoly. My brothers racing car and my thimble game pieces would go around and around the board, and we would buy property after property with our play money. There always came a point—usually after an hour or two—when I would shout out in boredom, "Who invented this game?"

[2]

[1] The game originated at the end of the nineteenth century with a young Quaker named Elizabeth Magie. [2] George believed that while the renting of property produced an increase in land values and benefited property owners; higher land values placed a burden on the working class, who were asked to pay more to rent. [3] Magie was a follower of Henry George, a political economist. [4] In 1904, Magie patented "The Landlord's Game" as a tool for teaching George's ideas. (50)

[3]

The game enjoyed modest popularity, particularly among Quakers and later among economics students at several East Coast colleges. Everywhere it was played, people made adjustments, naming game spaces after local streets and landmarks and sometimes inventing new rules. (52) In turn, the game eventually lost Magie's message about social responsibility and became almost about the acquisition of property.

[4]

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, salesman Charles Darrow came across the game in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Darrow must have sensed the potential of a game though, during a time of economic hardship, would allow people to play at property would be bought and amassing a fortune. However, Darrow produced thousands of copies of the Atlantic City version of the game and sold them at department stores. In 1933 Darrow signed a contract with Parker Brothers to mass produce the game in the form in which it's best known today.

[5]

The popularity of Monopoly has since spread across the globe. (57) The longest game of Monopoly is reported to have lasted 1,680 hours—the equivalent of seventy days, exceeding more than over 1,500 hours, of nonstop playing.