She actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time-people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Magie filed a legal claim for her Landlord’s Game in 1903, more than three decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing Monopoly. She also spent her leisure time creating a board game that was an expression of her strongly held political beliefs. In addition to working as a stenographer and a secretary, she wrote poetry and short stories and performed comedic routines onstage. Unlike most women of her era, she supported herself and didn’t marry until the advanced age of 44. “Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.”īy the turn of the century, Magie had made her way to Washington, DC. The goal of the stunt, Magie told reporters, was to make a statement about the dismal position of women.
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Her ad said that she was “not beautiful, but very attractive,” and that she had “features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine.” Purchasing an advertisement, she offered herself for sale as a “young woman American slave” to the highest bidder.
Finding it difficult to support herself on the $10 a week she was earning as a stenographer, Magie staged an audacious stunt mocking marriage as the only option for women. Women’s advocacy was a particularly impassioned cause of Elizabeth Magie and her willingness to push for equality would make national headlines. The anti-monopoly movement also served as a staging area for women’s rights advocates and many abolitionists, like the Magies. Many Americans connected with his message in the late 1800s, when poverty and squalor were on full display in the country’s urban centers. George advocated for a “land value tax,” also known as the “single tax,” the general idea of taxing land, and only land, that could help shift the tax burden to wealthy landlords. The seeds of the Monopoly game were planted when Magie shared with his daughter a copy of Henry George’s best-selling book, Progress and Poverty, written in 1879.Īs an anti-monopolist, James Magie drew inspiration from George, a charismatic politician and economist who believed that individuals should own 100 percent of what they made or created, but that everything found in nature, particularly land, should belong to everyone. He was an influential newspaper editor and political advocate, values he infused in his daughter-a feminist father far before his time. Her father, James Magie, was an early force in the Republican Party, having traveled with Abraham Lincoln as he debated Stephen Douglas. And with Monopoly, understanding the story of its true inventor provides a fascinating window into not only one woman’s life and times, but how the game that sits in many closets isn’t necessarily what we thought it was.īorn in rural Illinois in 1866, Magie lived a highly unusual life. Magie is one of countless women whose contributions were minimized, largely ignored, or in some cases, deliberately erased. Monopoly’s roots begin not with Darrow, but with a woman-a progressive named Elizabeth Magie. He sold the game to Parker Brothers, not only saving him and the company from financial ruin, but becoming wealthy-a Cinderella story made of cardboard and real-life Monopoly money. Often tucked into the game’s box, the tale revolved around Charles Darrow, an unemployed man in Philadelphia who dreamed up the game in the 1930s. For generations, the story of Monopoly’s Depression-era origin story delighted fans.
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