Meet the real inventor of the Monopoly board game: Progressive activist Elizabeth Magie
Before there was Monopoly, there was the Landlord’s Game, invented by progressive activist Elizabeth Magie in 1903. The New York Times’ Mary Pilon, who has written a book about the origins of Monopoly, explains that she “created two sets of rules for her game: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.” The aim was to show people that broad prosperity resulted from an economy of inclusion, rather than an economy of exclusion.