Take the Monopoly Money and Run | 143

In the midst of the Great Depression, out-of-work salesman Charles Darrow sold the board game he created, Monopoly, to Parker Brothers. The game was an overnight success, and Charles became a hopeful example of the American dream. But soon, fellow game obsessives questioned Charles’s inventor status. Decades later, another game creator’s tireless pursuit of the truth reveals Monopoly’s subversive origin story and the twisted journey it took before landing in Charles Darrow’s hands. Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletter Listen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:13Speaker 00

  Sarah, are you a big board game player? You know, I'm not. I'm not someone who would own a board game or be the one to suggest playing a board game, mostly because I don't love the amount of rules you have to remember right off the bat. But if the night goes there and someone is patient with me to explain the rules, I'm down. That's fair. Do you have a favorite board game or a least favorite board game? I don't think I have a true favorite of a go-to, but Scrabble is always fun. We like Scrabble because we're good at words. Nobody else likes Scrabble. It's just us. Well, today I get to tell you about the humble and complex origins of a board game that, to this day, makes me want to run away screaming

• 0:58Speaker 00

  every time it's pulled out at a family dinner, a house party, or a long weekend away at a cottage. We're going to talk about the game that somehow never, ever ends: Monopoly.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  In the spring of 1974, Ralph Anstach walks into the lobby of an enormous office building in San Francisco's financial district. Ralph is in his 40s, on the shorter side, with blue eyes and a disheveled look. And today, he's feeling anxious because he's about to give a deposition that could completely ruin his life. Ralph is a professor of economics at San Francisco State University. And about a year ago, he had an idea for a board game. He was looking for a fun way to demonstrate the economic concepts he teaches in his classes, like the problems with monopolies. Sarah, here's a photo of Ralph holding his game. Can you describe it? Yeah, it's like a black and white photo, and he's holding the board.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  It looks very similar to how Monopoly boards look now, where you can tell there are all the stops. And I could sense that there are different colors for the properties. But in the middle, it says "Anti-Monopoly", and there's a map of the United States. So me thinks this won't go well for him. Well, anti-monopoly was actually a moderate success, but it did catch the attention of General Mills, the company that owns Monopoly. They think anti-monopoly infringes on their game's trademark. So now Ralph is in a legal battle with one of the biggest corporations in the world. It's around 12:30 in the afternoon, and Ralph hasn't had lunch yet. The only thing worse than having to go through with this deposition is doing it on an empty stomach. So he stops by the deli in the lobby

• 2:40Speaker 00

  to pick up a chopped liver and onion sandwich, a pickle, and a cream soda. You know, as much as I would like to eat that sandwich because the sound of it is making me currently hungry, that is a very risky choice before you go into a life-changing deposition. Honestly, brave. Well, Ralph starts gnashing in the elevator, and when he walks into the lawyer's fancy office with a half-eaten sandwich and liver and onions on his breath, everyone looks completely horrified. Now, a different man might be embarrassed, but Ralph realizes these guys were counting on him being intimidated by the surroundings. They hoped his nerves would trip him up and that he would say something incriminating. But instead, his very fragrant meal choice has made it clear that he does not play by their rules.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Okay, he's already the hero to me. Like, eating a smelly sandwich to be like, "Screw you. I'm not scared of you fancy people. I'm gonna eat my liver and onions." That's pretty good. Well, the General Mills lawyers put Ralph through the wringer. He answers questions about his game and how he came up with it for eight hours. By the time he leaves, it's almost 9:00 PM, well past dinnertime. It's a good thing he had that sandwich, right? Ralph is confident in how he handled the deposition. But he knows that confidence can only take him so far. General Mills has almost unlimited financial resources. They can just keep fighting him until he's bankrupt. However, Ralph is determined to keep fighting. After all, the whole point of anti-monopoly

• 4:09Speaker 00

  is to teach people that letting one company control an industry is harmful. It allows them to crush smaller competitors, and it's bad for consumers. So he's gonna fight them with everything he has, even if he has to go down swinging. Ralph's legal battle is about to uncover secrets about the origins of Monopoly that have been buried for decades. And he may be a decent guy, but it turns out that almost everyone else involved in this game should have gone directly to jail.

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• 5:28Speaker 00

  From Wondery, I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And this is Scamfluencers.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Monopoly's story is chock full of twists and scammers. The original Monopoly was created by someone just as idealistic as Ralph. But that version of the game was stolen from its creator by a man desperate to make his fortune. And he sold it to a company that was happy to maintain a life and help them make a buck. It'll take decades for the world to learn who really taught us to pass go. I'm calling this one, "Take the Monopoly Money and Run."

• 6:09Speaker 00

  We need a little context to really understand Ralph's epic legal battle over Monopoly. And for that, we have to go way, way back to right after the end of the Civil War. The inventor of Monopoly is a woman named Elizabeth Maggie. Lizzie is born in Illinois in 1866. Her dad is an idealistic newspaper man who traveled with Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. He's smart and educated, and he wants his kids to be independent thinkers. As a kid, Lizzie watches the second industrial revolution take off. She sees how rich businessmen take advantage of their workers to make themselves richer. And she starts to wonder if there could be another way of doing things. When Lizzie is 13, she has to leave school to start working to help support her family.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  She ends up in the brand-new field of stenography. Basically, she's a professional typist. But she's got an entrepreneurial streak. In 1893, at 26, she gets her first patent. It's for an invention that allows paper to pass through typewriter rollers more easily. At this point, Lizzie is living in Washington, DC. In the early 1900s, she saves up enough to buy her own home, plus several acres of property. And she's doing it all on her own. Lizzie's not married, and you know what? She doesn't want to be. I am very inspired by Lizzie. I mean, I can't imagine... Doing all this is hard now. Forget back then. She seems like a very remarkable woman. I love Lizzie immediately. Immediately.

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  Well, Lizzie's dad knows all about her interest in economics, and he gives her a book by an economist named Henry George. George hates economic inequality, just like Lizzie, and he has a plan to solve it: eliminate all taxes on labor and implement a single tax tied to land ownership. The idea is to make wealthy landlords pay to support the people who create communities that give the land its value. George is a celebrity in the late 1800s, and the people who support his ideas are known as Georgists. Lizzie is definitely a Georgist. She even becomes the secretary of the local Women's Single Tax Club and contributes to journals all about Georgist theories. But she doesn't just want to have an academic conversation about this stuff.

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  She wants to bring Georgist ideas to the masses, and she has the perfect medium: board games. At this point, board games are the hot new trend. That's partly because more and more homes have electric lighting, which means you can play games after the work day ends. So Lizzie invents what she calls "the landlord's game." I'm going to show you a picture of the original board, and Sarah, I would love if you could describe it. Yeah, I mean, this looks very similar to the monopoly boards we are used to now, where in each corner is kind of like a different landmark. There's like jail and a public park, it seems. And along the edges are different things, like luxury properties, everything. The middle has the bank, like it is now.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  So I definitely see the vision of monopoly here with this board game. Yeah, you can see the vision. Well, The Landlord's Game actually has two set of rules. In one version, you win by creating monopolies. But there's an alternate set of rules that operates on George's principles. This version rewards everyone when wealth is created. Lizzie wants her players to explore two different types of economic structures and think about which one they'd rather see in the real world. In 1904, Lizzie patents her game. It's the first time a woman has ever patented a board game in the United States. She publishes her game through a small company she co-owns. And The Landlord's Game becomes a word-of-mouth phenomenon.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  Lizzie plays it with her friends, who are largely prominent East Coast intellectuals, and they bring the game to their friends, and so on, and so on. Unsurprisingly, the game is especially beloved by the people living in a commune in Delaware organized around Henry George's ideas. It was co-founded by a Quaker, and its residents include architects, professors, and writers like Upton Sinclair. But the idea of games as mass consumer products is still pretty new at this point. So players tend to hand-make boards rather than buy them. This gives people the chance to customize their version of the game, including changing the names of spaces to include streets and landmarks in their own community. Some of these players forget the game's proper name, while others never knew it in the first place. So they just start calling it things like "The Monopoly Game."

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Almost immediately, Lizzie's connection to The Landlord's Game is being obscured. And as her invention continues to move from hand to hand, it's only a matter of time before it falls into the wrong ones.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  It's 1927, 20 years since Lizzie created the Landlord's Game. Daniel Lehman is having a wild night at Williams College in Massachusetts. He and his friends are gathered in the living room of their fraternity house, Delta Kappa Epsilon. They're probably doing what frat boys have done since the dawn of time, drinking beer, smoking cigars, and shooting the shit. Tonight, though, they're also indulging in their new favorite craze, playing the Monopoly game. Daniel rolls the dice and moves his token along the hand-drawn board. He decides to buy property where he lands. And once he's paid the banker, he puts a miniature house there to mark his ownership. The house is his fraternity's new addition to the game. Some friends brought them back from a trip to Ukraine and made them part of the Monopoly setup.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  At some point in the last couple of decades, a professor brought the Landlord's Game to Wharton, and from there, it spread to colleges all over the Northeast. That's how Daniel and his friends discovered it, and they became obsessed. Wow, it is crazy that this is a true word-of-mouth success and that people play it so much, they're adding their own additions to it, and the houses is something that you remember in Monopoly now. Iconic. Well, in 1931, a few years after Daniel graduates from Williams, he decides to try to sell and market his own version of the game. Daniel's version is called Finance. Sarah, can you describe how the board has evolved at this point? OK, so we have all established what a Monopoly board looks like. Yes.

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  However, this one looks a little bit evil. I think it's just... It's so scary. There's something sinister about this. You know, it says Finance in the middle, and then around the sides, it's a lot of stuff I can't even quite make out. I'll say this, there's like way more chances to go to jail. Yes, I was just gonna say, there's jail in two corners. This looks like evil Monopoly. Yeah, it's super weird. And you'll also notice that there is one new addition, which is the Community Chest. And the Community Chest is a new addition since The Landlord's Game. It was added to boards around World War I, inspired by people getting together to create funds for needy members of their communities. Daniel never claims to have invented Finance, so he doesn't try to patent it.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  But he does say that he's the first person to write down the rules, and he includes a copy of them with every game he sells. Finance does well enough that for a few years, Daniel can hire a friend to sell games for him. But the Depression is in full swing at this point, and Daniel needs money. So eventually, he sells his interest in the game to his friend for $200, and that would be about five grand today. But Finance isn't the last iteration of this game. Someone else is about to take it out of community property and put it back on the market.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  It's the fall of 1932, about a year after Daniel Lehman started selling Finance, and Charles Darrow desperately needs to make money. Charles is in his mid-40s, with round cheeks and a receding hairline. He's married with two kids. He lives in Philadelphia, and he spent most of his life working as a salesman. But Charles has been unemployed for years, ever since the Depression hit, which is especially troubling because one of his sons needs very expensive medical care after a bout with scarlet fever. One night, Charles and his wife go over to a friend's house for dinner. After they eat, the friends teach Charles something called the Monopoly game. At this point, there are many versions of the game going around. Charles's friends are playing a version that they found through a Quaker community in Atlantic City. Like every community, the Atlantic City Quakers

• 14:12Speaker 00

  added their own flourishes to the Monopoly game, locations like Pennsylvania Avenue, Park Place, and the Boardwalk. First of all, Atlantic City Quakers sounds like a basketball team. I would join immediately. It is so interesting how this game transforms based on whatever community it's found in. There's clearly some type of need to play a game that emulates some of the ideas of life. And all of these locations are on Monopoly boards now. Thank you, Atlantic City Quakers. They really gave us something with that. Well, Charles loves the game so much that he asks his friends to make him a board of his own. He and his wife even invite other couples over to play. Then, Charles gets an idea.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  What if he sold his own version of the Monopoly game? Maybe that could help lift his family out of poverty. He asks the friends who introduced the game to him to write down the rules, but he doesn't tell them why. Because Charles is trying to create his own Monopoly, and he doesn't want to share the winnings. There's no doubt that Charles is straight up copying his friend's board. In his version of the game, he keeps all of the names of the Atlantic City properties, and he even carries over an error from his friend's board, spelling Marvin Gardens with an I when the real Marvin Gardens in Atlantic City is spelled with an E. But Charles does make the board look more professional. He collaborates with an artist friend to redesign it. And we don't know for sure, but this friend might have been the person who originally designed the Mr. Monopoly character,

• 15:39Speaker 00

  which first appears around this time. Let's take a look at Charles's version of the game. I guess one thing that strikes me about this is that in its simplicity of how it looks like us imagining Monopoly now, it doesn't seem like there's a true stance here. It just seems like a game where you pretend to buy things and someone wins. Yeah, he has taken what Lizzie invented and kind of took the teeth out of it. It's definitely a defanged version of what she made. Charles prints up a bunch of copies of his version of the board. And in 1933, he starts selling them himself. But he's also looking for a publisher to support him. So he submits Monopoly to Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, and they both turn him down.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  We don't know exactly why, but it's probably because the game seems so serious. It's about real estate, and it's the middle of the Depression. Who wants to play a game about money right now? It does seem pretty insane to try and market that when everyone's broke. Yeah, it's a tough time for it. But then, Charles gets a break. At the very end of 1934, Monopoly earns a spot in the FAO Schwarz Christmas catalog. And this gets Parker Brothers' attention. They reach out to Charles and ask him to come to their New York City headquarters for a meeting. And at this meeting, in March of 1935, Charles sells Parker Brothers the rights to Monopoly for $7,000, plus royalties. That would be about 160 grand today. When he gets home, the company's president writes him a letter.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  He wants Charles to put Monopoly's origin story in writing. This way, they can use it for publicity and to strengthen the patent that they plan to get for the game. Now, Charles could admit that he adapted Monopoly from a folk game, but instead, he lies his face off. He writes that he came up with the idea all by himself, and he says he started playing it with friends, and they liked it so much that they asked him to make them copies. It seems like a pretty stupid lie because it can be easily disproven, in my opinion, but he knows that people like a good story to sell something. It's like exciting that this guy just made something up and his friends loved it. And he was like, you know what? I'm just gonna sell it so the whole world can fall in love. Yeah. And now Charles has done his part and it's up to Parker Brothers to turn his self-serving

• 17:49Speaker 00

  story into an actual patent. Of course, there are a couple of people who could really mess this up for him, including the woman who actually invented the game in the first place. Lizzie Maggie is beside herself. It's November 1935, more than 30 years after she first patented The Landlord's Game. And today, she's meeting with a big wig board game executive. Lizzie is now 69 years old and still working as a stenographer. And I'm sorry to tell you, Sarah, but she did eventually get married. At least her husband is an interesting character in his own right. In 1889, he had to go to court because of a publication he ran called Climax. It included pictures of women making sultry faces and showing their arms and knees.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  You know, this must be like the old timey version of like, cool couples now. These two in Brooklyn would be so poly- Yeah. And exhausting. For sure. Now, Lizzie is meeting with George Parker, the founder of Parker Brothers. He's come all the way to her house in Virginia to give her some exciting news. He wants to buy the patent to The Landlord's Game. Not only that, he'll also buy and publish two more games from her. This is Lizzie's dream come true. Sure, Mr. Parker only offers her $500, which is about 11 grand today. And the deal doesn't come with royalties. But it's not about the money for Lizzie. Even though Georgism has fallen out of fashion since Henry George's death, Lizzie is still a devout believer.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  She hopes that passing her game off to a larger company will help it and George's economic ideals find a bigger audience.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  But soon afterwards, she starts seeing advertisements for a new Parker Brothers game called Monopoly. And it seems very clear that Monopoly was based on the landlord's game. Some of the boxes even have her patent number on them. But the ads feature the game's supposed inventor, Charles Darrow, and tell his sob story of creating the game to pull his family out of poverty. Lizzie is not about to let herself get erased from history, so she gets in touch with the local papers to tell her side of the story. She even has them photograph her and her original board. Lizzie isn't the only one crying foul here. Daniel, the creator of Finance, has already spoken out to say that Charles didn't invent Monopoly. But these stories never really gain any traction.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  For one thing, Parker Brothers is a big company with a big reach. Lizzie does interviews with outlets like The Evening Star, while Parker Brothers cede their version of history in magazines like Time, on the radio, and on the evening news. Besides, Parker Brothers' narrative is just way more compelling. They've presented Charles Darrow's story as a classic American tale. Regular guy who's down on his luck, has great idea, and manages to get rich. People want to believe in him. So despite Lizzie's best efforts, Parker Brothers' myth about Charles remains the best-known story about Monopoly. Oh, this is so sad because she's a woman trying to advocate for herself and absolutely no one cares or will believe her. Yeah, it's so depressing.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  And maybe worse is that the game becomes a huge hit. There's nothing Lizzie can do but watch as Charles gets as rich as the industry men she's always hated. He earns $5,000 in royalties the first year that the game is for sale. That would be more than $100,000 in today's money. Charles and his wife use the windfall to help their son get the care he needs. Charles takes up orchid farming, and eventually, he becomes the world's first millionaire game designer. Lizzie, meanwhile, spends the rest of her life doing what she's always done: working, writing, and teaching georgist ideals.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  She dies in 1948, believing that Parker Brothers had successfully erased her game from history. When Charles dies almost 20 years later in 1967, he gets a glossy obituary in The New York Times. It seems like the story of Monopoly has been set in stone. In a cruel irony, a woman who invented a game warning the public about the danger of greed has been boxed out by opportunistic men who stole her work and lied to make millions. But as anyone who has played Monopoly can tell you, it's a test of endurance, and another player is about to go on a wild run and rewrite the rules for this iconic game.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Alice, have you ever wondered why the Mini is so small?

• 22:10Speaker 04

  The skirt or the magnum?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Well, I meant the iconic British car, because in 1956, Britain's oil supply was suddenly cut off. Petrol rationing was brought in, and the car industry was scrambling around for a vehicle that hardly used any fuel. Enter the Mini.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Interesting, but actually not technically British Scandal series material.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Well, the reason they had to save petrol is because the Prime Minister started a war and lied about why.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Okay, scandal siren going off.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  I'm Matt Ford.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  And I'm Alice Levine.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  And our latest British Scandal series involves a secret meeting in a French villa, a Prime Minister running on amphetamines.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  An Egyptian president that everyone fancied, the end of the British Empire, and at the heart of it, a canal.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  This is the story of the Suez Plot.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Follow British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Audible.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  I'm Gemma Whelan, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of the original femme fatale, the spy who was Mata Hari. A famous dancer turned World War I secret agent, accused of seducing Allied officers to uncover their plans. But was she a temptress or a scapegoat for French failures? Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Was Mata Hari, early and ad-free on Audible.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  It's 1973, about 25 years after Lizzie's death. In Berkeley, California, Ralph Anspach is getting ready for work. Remember Ralph, Sarah? This is a couple of months before he brings an obnoxiously smelly sandwich to a deposition. Yes, I remember my hero Ralph.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Well, it's the early 1970s, so like many Americans, Ralph is feeling the effects of the latest oil crisis. The oil conglomerate OPEC recently decided to embargo shipments to the United States, so now gas prices are sky-high. It's an economic crisis caused by a small group of powerful people, kind of like the Great Depression. Ralph hates that monopolies have the power to do stuff like this. He starts complaining about it over breakfast with his wife Ruth and their two sons. But his son starts to object. Ralph actually told his story for the PBS documentary, Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History. And here's how he described what happened next.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Suddenly, my 80-year-old son says, "Dad, you're a really poor loser." And I said, "Why, William? Why my poor loser?" He said, "Yesterday, we played Monopoly. I won the game. Now you're such a poor loser, you're attacking my victory."

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Ralph realizes that his kids and kids like them all over the world now associate the idea of monopolies with fun and games. And he does not like this. So he decides to fight fire with fire by making his own game. I think this is a very noble idea because it's easy to see a board game as pretty harmless, but kids pick up on these things, and he doesn't want his kid to think that way. So I do understand trying to flip it on him, the same way the original Monopoly was to show people what a better world could look like. Yeah, it's smart. Ralph's game is sort of like Monopoly's mirror image. Instead of starting with nothing and trying to hoard cash and property to form a monopoly, the game begins with monopolies already established,

• 25:43Speaker 00

  and players win by breaking them up. Just like Lizzie, Ralph hopes his game can be fun and spread populist economic ideas.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  At first, Ralph calls his game Bust the Trust, the anti-monopoly game. But people are confused by the title. They don't really get what a trust is. So he shortens it to anti-monopoly. He pitches the game to a few big companies, but no one wants it. So, just like Lizzie did with the original landlord's game, he distributes it himself. Let's take a look at his board. Sarah, can you describe it? You know, one of the boards we talked about had an evil presence. I couldn't even read it, and I knew it was bad news. But this one is so pleasant. It's softer. There are rounder edges. It looks better. And, you know, it's making fun of a guy holding all the monopolies, the properties there. And he looks very angry. And there's no jail, so I'm into it. Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Well, anti-monopoly is a family affair. Ralph's wife works the phones to sell copies to friends and neighbors, and his sons help him make deliveries to local toy stores. Ralph's timing is good. The OPEC crisis has pissed people off. And then, just as the game hits the market, the Watergate scandal breaks. Anti-establishment sentiment is hotter than ever. Ralph is also a canny marketer. He sends a copy of the game to Ralph Nader. And he doesn't know how, but apparently Patty Hearst gets her hands on a copy, too. You know, I'd never heard of this game before. I didn't know anything about anti-monopoly. But Patty Hearst getting a copy rocks. Iconic. Well, then, The San Francisco Chronicle writes an article about his game. It's critical, but all press is good press.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  The article leads to a boost in sales. And Anti-Monopoly sells out its initial run in 10 days. It looks like Ralph has a decent hit on his hands. Ralph is thrilled. But customers aren't the only ones learning about anti-monopoly. Parker Brothers is taking notice, too. And they're about to give Ralph more attention and legal trouble than he can handle.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  In early 1974, about six months after creating Anti-Monopoly, Ralph gets a letter from General Mills. Yeah, the cereal company. They actually bought Parker Brothers in the late 60s, which means they own Monopoly now. And they think that Ralph's game is a little too close to their intellectual property. So they order him to change the name of Anti-Monopoly, or else. Now, Ralph could just change the title of his game, but that would go against everything he and Anti-Monopoly stand for. So he decides to fight. He finds a local trademark lawyer who's willing to go up against one of the biggest companies in America. Together, they decide to sue General Mills before General Mills can sue Ralph. Because this way, the trial will take place in California,

• 28:28Speaker 00

  so at least Ralph will save on travel costs. I think this is really smart, and I appreciate that he's very ready to fight. And honestly, he seems very principled so far. It's inspiring. Well, their suit asks for declaratory relief, which basically means asking a court to rule on whether the Monopoly trademark is still valid. And if so, if the name Anti-Monopoly infringes on this trademark. Ralph's team also includes some long-shot claims, including that the original Parker Brothers trademark on the word "Monopoly" was never legitimate in the first place. Ralph's lawyer assures him that they'll have plenty of time to look into this claim more thoroughly once their suit is official. Ralph sues General Mills in April 1974. Immediately, it's bad for his game.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Stores don't want to buy Anti-Monopoly if it's just going to get recalled when Ralph loses his lawsuit. So that summer, he does a bunch of press to try to drum up sympathy for his cause. In August, he heads to Portland to do an interview on public television. It's a call-in show, but no one seems super excited to talk to Ralph about Anti-Monopoly. So he vamps for a while, giving an impromptu lecture about Watergate, Nixon, and insurance monopolies. And then, the phone finally rings. A woman on the other end says that one of her good friends, a woman named Joanna, has always claimed that Monopoly was stolen from her family. Joanna would say that her dad and his friends used to hand-make boards in the early 30s, which was well before Parker Brothers released the game.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  But the caller doesn't have any contact information for Joanna, not even a last name. Ralph's mind is spinning. Up until now, his claim that Parker Brothers didn't really own the trademark to Monopoly was just a shot in the dark. But if this story is true, he might be able to prove that they don't have the exclusive right to use this name. And if that happens, he could beat one of the world's biggest monopolies at their own game.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Ralph immediately starts searching for the mysterious Joanna. He calls NYU, where she apparently went to college, and one of her former workplaces. But no one has any information on where she is now. So Ralph starts looking into the game's legal history to see if anyone has ever tried to challenge Parker Brothers' ownership of it. And his digging pays off. He finds a suit from 1936, when Parker Brothers went after the inventor of a game called Inflation. That guy countersued, alleging that Parker Brothers had no grounds to sue him because their patent on the game was fraudulent to begin with. He claimed that Monopoly had been a folk game long before Parker Brothers started selling it, so there was no way they could own it. This is an even bigger swing than the claim that Ralph and his lawyer made.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  They challenged Monopoly's trademark, basically its right to exclusively call itself by that name. But the Texas lawsuit says that Parker Brothers might not actually own the patent, which is for the game itself. This is very tangled and very juicy. I know, I kind of love it. It's such good mess. Well, the Inflation suit was settled out of court, so there's no evidence or testimony to look through. All of these claims are still just allegations. But there is a witness list, so Ralph starts calling everyone on it. At this point, it's been about 40 years since the lawsuit was filed, and so a lot of the people involved in it have died, while others don't remember that much anymore. But the list does connect Ralph to Daniel Lehman, the frat boy who created Finance.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  It's becoming clearer that something like Monopoly existed long before Charles Darrow supposedly invented it. But Ralph has no way to connect Charles to the theft of the original game, and he still has no idea who did originally dream up Monopoly. So he keeps looking. His team places ads in magazines, searching for more early Monopoly players. All of this research is hard on Ralph and on his family. He's constantly traveling and worrying about money. His wife is sick, and no one can figure out why. But he believes in his cause too strongly to even think about giving up. Then, one day, Ralph's son bursts into his office. He just found a book about the history of toys and games, and it says that Monopoly was probably based

• 32:36Speaker 00

  on something called "The Landlord's Game", and that game was probably invented by a woman named Lizzie Maggie. That's so insane. Like, the kid who made him create the game in the first place, wow. I know. Truly full circle. This is poetry. This kid's doing a lot of hard work. Yeah. Well, Ralph finally has a real lead on who came up with the initial idea for Monopoly. But he still needs to connect her invention to Charles Darrow to prove that he never really owned the game that he sold to Parker Brothers. Thankfully, the magazine ads he placed start paying dividends. One ad, in the Christian Science Monitor, leads them to the Quakers who brought Atlantic City onto the Monopoly board. Through them, Ralph meets the very man who taught Charles Darrow the game in the first place.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  That man still has his original board, with its Marvin Gardens misspelling. And these kinds of misspellings are considered compelling evidence of plagiarism in court. They make it clear that Charles had seen and played this specific version of Monopoly before he supposedly invented it.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Ralph finally has the story he needs. In June 1975, he gives a deposition laying out everything he's learned in the last year. It's damning. So damning that General Mills offers him a settlement. They'll give him $500,000, more than $2 million in today's money, and make him an executive in its game division, as long as he agrees to hand over the rights to Anti-Monopoly. It's an incredibly good offer. If Ralph takes it, it would be enough money to pay for his legal fees and his kid's college education. Plus, he could finally rest, take care of his marriage, take care of himself. But General Mills has been suppressing this story for more than 40 years. If he becomes an executive at the company,

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Ralph likely won't be allowed to share the truth about Monopoly. He doesn't want to sweep it all back under the rug. So he decides to stick to his principles, risk everything, and say no. He's committed to going to trial. The time has come to see who will win this game, once and for all.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  Two years after turning down the settlement offer, Ralph is sitting in his home in Berkeley, watching TV. He's about to watch the last three years of his life disappear into a landfill. When Ralph's suit went to trial, all the people he found testified under oath about Monopoly's real origin story. A Parker Brothers executive even took the stand and was forced to admit that he knew Charles Darrow hadn't invented the game when they bought it. But eventually, the judge ruled against Ralph anyway. The judge found that Ralph was infringing on the copyright and demanded that he stop selling the game immediately and destroy all existing copies. That is bad news for me, because I would like a copy of this. Also, I really didn't think it would play out that way. It seemed really airtight.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  But again, I am biased towards the sweet board game maker who just wanted... Did his son to not be bad? Yeah. Ralph is devastated, but he and his legal team are ready to appeal. And the judge's ruling has given them a key to building an even stronger case. The judge writes that the word monopoly has become a generic term for a type of game. The same thing has already happened to names like Chapstick and Kleenex. It's called genericization. Basically, Parker Brothers made monopoly so popular that people don't necessarily mean capital M monopoly produced by Parker Brothers when they say they want to play monopoly. Ralph's lawsuit claims that Parker Brothers has, therefore, lost their monopoly on the name.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  But while that appeal is ongoing, General Mills has decided to make an example out of Ralph. He had to give them all of his remaining copies of Anti-Monopoly. He assumed that they would just put them in a warehouse until the appeals were finished. Instead, they decided to throw them away. Today, they're tossing every copy into a Minnesota landfill. It's crazy that they own this thing that they didn't create, but this is monopoly. This is the game monopoly in real life. Well, Ralph made sure the press knew about it. He wants the world to see how Parker Brothers is bullying him, but he couldn't make it stop. Ralph probably feels like he's the one being buried. Losing this case means he has to pay his own legal fees, and he can't afford that,

• 36:51Speaker 00

  especially since his wife's mysterious illness has recently been identified as MS, which means a lifetime of medical bills. His only hope is winning his appeal. After years of legal battles, Ralph has been fully railroaded by monopoly, but he's about to pull one last chance card, one that will make sure that Parker Brothers' decades of scamming stay in the spotlight.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat and Fish are back for a whole lot of wonderfully whimsical fun. What happens when you switch bodies with your best friend? Discover a caveman frozen in ice? Or make an alien so angry he threatens to destroy the planet? Find out in season two of The Cat in the Hat. Cat in the Hat Podcast. The Cat and Fish are traveling the world in the great catastrophic cacophony cruiser, meeting genies, clown professors, cave trolls, and extraordinary characters along the way. With clever wordplay, imaginative rhymes, original songs, and stories celebrating curiosity, empathy, and creative problem solving, every adventure brings something new to discover.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  It's a world of wonderful words, big imaginations, and plenty of heart for the whole family. Listen to the Cat in the Hat Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all 20 episodes early and ad-free right now.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm Cassie DePecce, the host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who lived to tell the tale. In our latest series, we track the story of Hugh Glass, the real-life revenant that inspired the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1823, Glass was brutally mauled by a grizzly bear in present-day South Dakota and left for dead. His survival depended on trekking through 350 miles of wilderness alone with grave injuries. But he was driven by his thirst for revenge. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

• 39:07Speaker 06

  And I feel like I... Like I...

• 39:12Speaker 00

  It's now 1982, five years after General Mills threw all of Ralph's games in the trash. He's already appealed the original decision in his case once and lost, but he and his team are still trying to argue that monopoly isn't a legitimate trademark. Ralph is at home when the phone rings. It's a court reporter. They say the decision has come down. The court says that, in fact, monopoly has become a generic term, which means that General Mills's trademark on it is invalid. Ralph is dumbfounded. He actually won. You know, this guy... Inspirational. He fights for what's right. I know, he did it. But General Mills is not about to take this ruling in stride.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  They immediately appeal the case all the way up to the Supreme Court. They get a bunch of other companies to talk about what a damaging precedent this ruling would set. But the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case. General Mills has to settle with Ralph reportedly for something in the six-figure range. And it's more than enough to pay off his legal bills. But just because Ralph won doesn't mean that General Mills really lost. They're still one of the most powerful companies in the world. And they're going to get to keep manufacturing and making money off of their version of monopoly. They just can't stop Ralph from marketing anti-monopoly while they do it. And the market for anti-monopoly isn't as strong as it was in the 70s. On top of that, after nearly a decade of legal battles, Ralph and his wife's marriage is more strained than ever.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  A few years later, they file for divorce. Ralph may not have had to pay his own legal fees, but this case has cost him plenty. He does self-publish a book about his experience. It's called "The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle: The True Story Behind Monopoly." And the back cover declares, "This is the book they didn't want you to read." But sadly, not that many people do read it. It's going to take an intrepid reporter to finally turn the billion-dollar monopoly swindle into front-page news.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  It's 2009, more than a decade since Ralph published the true story of monopoly's origins. Mary Pallan is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Mary is in her early 20s with blue eyes and straight blonde hair. As she's working on her latest article, she comes across a question about who invented monopoly. Remarkably, despite losing to Ralph in court, Parker Brothers' official history still tells Charles Darrow's story the way he did back in 1935. But Mary is a good journalist, so she digs a little further and finds Ralph's name. She reaches out to see if he'll talk to her. It turns out that he is eager to tell his story. And Mary is fascinated by what she hears. Here she is telling PBS what she finds so compelling about the story.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  You know, I think often about this, that why should anybody care about monopoly, right? I mean, it's a silly thing as a journalist in a lot of ways to be reporting on. But if we can't get the story of that right, what hope is there for anything else?

• 42:07Speaker 00

  I think that is fundamentally why everyone should care. It's because Monopoly is one of the most popular games in the world. Everyone knows what it is. And not having the correct story for something so popular seems kind of insane. Yeah, it's kind of sad, isn't it? And plus, this is right after a massive recession that nearly tanked the global economy. And a lot of major banks and corporations got government bailouts. The world seems primed for the story that Mary is pursuing. And she quickly becomes obsessed. She ends up researching and writing a book about the history of Monopoly. It's called The Monopolists. And even though it doesn't come out until 2015, many people are still recovering from the financial crisis. The book becomes a New York Times bestseller.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  And finally, Lizzie's story gets real traction. Now, if you Google "who invented Monopoly", her name pops up right next to Charles Darrows, usually in a story about how he passed her work off as his own. Which means people are also talking about Henry George in 2024. So in some ways, Lizzie got what she wanted. But Parker Brothers also got what they wanted. Since its release, Monopoly has sold over 275 million copies. It may well be the most popular board game in the world. In the 90s, Monopoly was bought by Hasbro. And to this day, they still haven't changed the game's official origin story.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Sarah, do you want to play a 10-hour game of Monopoly with me where I get frustrated and flip the board? No, I don't want to do anything with you Oh. that you're not into because I don't want to be tortured.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Okay, well, did you know any of this? Did you know that Monopoly was created by a woman who was like kind of a socialist? And then her idea was stolen from her? There were rumblings of Monopoly being originally not Monopoly that I kind of ambiently have heard. But I didn't know the full story. I didn't know a woman created it at all. I am kind of tickled by the idea of Monopoly getting so popular that it transforms meaning and then is too popular to trademark. That is maybe my favorite part of this mess. Yeah, it only has gotten more popular. It feels like everybody in this story, except for maybe Lizzie, is like kind of full of shit and was ripping something off or someone off. Hmm.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Who do you think is the biggest scammer in this story? The biggest scammer is Charles Darrow, probably.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Creating this origin story that has like a sob story element kind of pisses me off. This is just a tale as old as time. Someone starts something with the intention of being good and bringing good to the world. And then someone who is more ruthless takes the idea, puts some lipstick on it, and sells it to the masses. But I do think even with Ralph, yes, he won in the end, but his life was kind of destroyed through this pursuit. Yeah, it seems like he did win kind of like a symbolic victory, and he obviously made them give him a lot of money, and that's really embarrassing as a company. But, I mean, he lost his marriage. It sounds like his family had a really hard time.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  He was embroiled in legal issues for 10 years. That's expensive, even if you do get money at the end of it. Sort of like, how worth it is it to fight the big guy? Yeah, and you know, his win is nothing to General Mills, you know? I think the most useful thing is that he brought the story of the true origins of Monopoly to like a wider set of people. But it's so far down the line that no one will ever play that version in a big way. And all everyone thinks about is, you know, evil Monopoly. I'm just kind of like, can something just not be evil? Can somebody just be good? No. And also, you know what is so stupid about Monopoly?

• 46:01Speaker 00

  If I want to be evil in a game, like, I want to be killing people, you know? I don't want to be like getting property like some loser, you know what I mean? I don't think I could play Monopoly anymore. I think this has really soured my experience. Sarah, I can't tell you how excited I am to have another reason to not play Monopoly. I won't play Monopoly because I believe in Georgeist ideals and I think that landlords should pay more tax. That's why I won't play Monopoly. I can't wait to say that to a seven-year-old. Do you think you learned anything new today about scams? Have you learned a new way to be a scammer to avoid being scammed? Yeah, adding the layer of a sob story kind of works. I think the lesson here is if you want to be evil, come up with your own idea.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Just be original. I'm gonna build my own board game where I win and everybody loses, and that's the game. Yeah, I think I'm gonna make a board game where by the end of it, everyone's like, you know what, Sarah? I'm really grateful for you, and I'm glad you're around.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Follow Scamfluencers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Scamfluencers ad-free by joining Audible.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  This is Take the Monopoly Money and Run. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Haggy. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at [email protected]. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were Mary Pallan's book, The Monopolist, and Ralph Anspach's The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle. Zan Romanoff wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Haggy. Eric Thurm and Olivia Brierly are our story editors. Fact checking by Lexi Peary. Sound design by James Morgan. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lim. Our music supervisor is Scott Palasquez for Freeze on Sing. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Our senior managing producer is Callum Pluse.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Janine Cornolo and Stephanie Jens are our development producers. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our producer is Julie McGruder. Our senior producers are Sarah Enney and Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louie and Aaron O'Flaherty. For Wondery.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Kenya Barris. And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects. We're bringing you fresh, new conversations from guests like Anderson Paak, David Zedars, Ryan Howard, Richel, Amy Schell, and many more. Sign up for a free trial to Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.