![]() For capitalism to succeed, he believed, it must be competitive. It had occurred to Anspach during a lecture on Adam Smith that Monopoly was problematic. In 1974, attorneys for Parker Brothers sent a cease and desist letter to Ralph Anspach, an economics professor at San Francisco State. ![]() In her excellent new book, The Monopolists, author Mary Pilon revisits the sordid story of Monopoly and recounts how those understandably touchy lawyers almost undid the board game giant. In 1935, a fellow named Charles Darrow claimed her idea as his own and sold it to Parker Brothers, which in turn surrounded its newfound gold mine with an army of lawyers. “Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system,” she wrote in 1902, “and when they grow up, if they are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will soon be remedied.” She received a patent two years later (which you can read here), but it ultimately did her little good. The true story of Monopoly is no secret to mental_floss readers: It was Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie who first drew the square board framed by properties, railroads, and utilities, and she called her creation The Landlord’s Game.
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