The Monopolists

by Mary Pilon

  The Darrows’ first priority was their son Dickie, whom they placed in Vineland, the progressive care facility in New Jersey. They also purchased a farm in nearby Bucks County, Pennsylvania, so that Dickie could come home for holidays and occasional weekend visits. Esther raised orchids in her new greenhouse, and she and Charles spent their days gardening and tending to the land. Charles also puttered in his office.

  One journalist after another asked Charles Darrow how he had managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air—a seeming sleight of hand that had brought joy into so many households. “It’s a freak,” Darrow told the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper. “Entirely unexpected and illogical.”

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  Before long, Parker Brothers needed to manufacture tokens for the game en masse. It called on Dowst Manufacturing Company, a firm on Chicago’s West Side that was already producing the toys that went inside Cracker Jack boxes. Dowst was a revolutionary company that had transformed some of the basic concepts of typesetting into die casting, using molds to fashion metal into new and different shapes. Several of the early Parker Brothers Monopoly tokens were already being manufactured by the firm for other clients, some with a small loop for them to be worn as charms. The iron token had previously been used by Chicago-based Flat Iron laundry, and Cracker Jack consumers in the 1920s may have received a battleship as their prize.

  Charles Darrow, the long-credited inventor of Monopoly in a promotional shot. (Associated Press)

  Some of the early tokens—including the iron, the top hat, the thimble, the shoe, the cannon, and the battleship—were emblematic of their time. The electric iron was one of the first electronic appliances to make its way into homes, thereby liberating women from the dangerous and time-consuming chore of heating an iron in a stove fire. The top hat was a holdover symbol of Jazz Age elegance, the thimble was a vital tool for sewing, and the floppy and dilapidated shoe was a common sight during the Depression. The cannon and the battleship served as reminders of World War I and the role that America had played in the conflict.

  The details of the game itself aside, after signing the contract with Darrow, Barton decided to bulletproof his claim on the game, lest Parker Brothers have another tiddlywinks or Ping-Pong situation on its hands. Barton needed to find out from Darrow precisely what the origin of Monopoly was, and he needed to have it in writing. In a letter with the signature Parker Brothers letterhead, Barton wrote to Darrow.

  March 20, 1935

  Charles B. Darrow, Esq.

  40 Westview Street

  Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pa.

  Dear Mr. Darrow:

  I trust that you had a more comfortable night on the train and that you made proper connections to arrive in Philadelphia this morning. It was a pleasure to have you with us yesterday and we certainly appreciate your courtesy in coming up here.

  After thorough consideration this morning, we have concluded that we will take some of your present stock and box it up for a $3 edition … Under the circumstances we will make very little money out of doing this but at the same time we want to be entirely fair to you and so, for every game of yours that we box up and sell as a $3 number, we expect to pay you an additional five cents …

  Please remember that we are particularly anxious to have you write us a rather detailed history of the game beginning with the time and place where you first received the idea and working up to your final contract with us. The history is exceedingly interesting and we may well want to use it for publicity purposes in one or more of the trade journals. Also, if any patent questions do come up, we will be fully prepared for them and will not have to bother you. Please let us have this as soon as you can …

  I believe I told you that we wired our men last night and by now are undoubtedly selling “Monopoly” in all sections of the country. I hope for the sake of us both that these sales will be immediate and large.

  With kindest regards, I am

  Sincerely yours,

  Robert B. M. Barton

  President

  The next day, Darrow responded.

  March 21, 1935

  Mr. Robert B. M. Barton, President

  Parker Brothers, Inc.

  Salem, Mass.

  Dear Mr. Barton,

  The history of monopoly is really quite simple.

  Friends visiting at our house in the later part of 1931 mentioned a lecture course they had heard of in which the professor gave his class scrip to invest and rated them on the results of the imaginary investments. I think the college referred to was Princeton University.

  Being unemployed at the time, and badly needing anything to occupy my time, I made by hand a very crude game for the sole purpose of amusing myself.

  Later friends called and we played this game, unnamed at that time. One of them asked me to make a copy for him which I did charging him for my time four dollars. Friends of his wanted copies and so forth.

  By mid summer of 1933 it was obvious that we should cover a valuable product with a copyright so applied for this on October 24th of that year. The publication upon which the copyright was asked came out as of July 30th, though the actual game had been in circulation some time. At least two months prior to the date of the application for a copyright.

  So much for the outline of the history of monopoly.

  I can amplify the first paragraph to the extent that there was a book written early in the century that took the same plot and developed it. The story of a boy attending a commercial school in which the boys were rated monthly by their progress or lack of it in investments made on the stock exchange listings with scrip money. I can not remember the name of either the author or the book, but the story nevertheless has always stuck in my mind.

  At the time my brain child was born, I was far more thoroughly unemployed than I even like to imagine now. Not only unemployed from a financial point of view but a morale point of view. I simply had to have something to do. The theme of this paragraph (number three) can be pathetic itf [sic] you choose with an undernote of “Work and Win” or something like that.

  During that period of time, when I was selling to friends and friends of friends there was a tremendous thrill in every sale. One game a day was our objective and when we reached it, there was rejoicing. Remember that I drew each figure on oil cloth with a drafting pen and a sketching pen in india ink. Colored each plot of ground with odds and ends of oil paint. Put in the lettering by hand, cut houses and hotels out of scraps of wood and painted them and then typed all of the paper work. It was a big eight hour job for four hours.

  Later (prior to applying for a copyright) I had Patterson and White print on oilcloth the black lines and a conventionalized form of my original drawings. These blanks I would color in by hand. On this basis I could produce six games a day. The result was still crude but much better than past efforts.

  Presently Wanamakers [sic] wrote to me saying that they were getting requests for monopoly. Then I came to the conclusion that some form of protection was in order. I could not afford a patent and I did not think a patent possible so it had to be a copyright. After putting in an application for the copyright and feeling some degree of security from theft of my idea, I called upon Mr. MacDonald and showed him monopoly. He by the way has been a splendid friend through all of my experiences with him. A brutal critic but a fine friend.

  I think this gives you about what you want. If any point is obscure or if thereis [sic] anything I can add be sure to advise me.

  Very truly yours,

  Charles B. Darrow

  It’s impossible to know what was running through Darrow’s mind as he wrote his letter. Perhaps the class scrip story is true, but to call the game “my brain child” and “my idea” when it had essentially existed in the public domain for thirty years was somewhere between a stretch of the facts and a lie.

  Parker Brothers executives stewed over what to do. After Barton and Darrow had met and corresponded, a vice president at the firm wrote to Barton to say that after Pa
rker Brothers had published Monopoly, another game publisher had told him “frankly and I think without prejudice that the original trading game came out in 1902.” In addition, the vice president wrote, “lawyers had investigated the situation and found that Darrow had appropriated the discarded name MONOPOLY—and further, that Finance was on the market quite some time before MONOPOLY. Also [the game publisher] says he has been selling ten times as much Finance as MONOPOLY and that he has sold approximately two or three thousand of MONOPOLY this past year.”

  The Parker Brothers vice president told Barton that he should prepare a statement that the company could use when answering questions from others in the business. Barton then sent a letter to Darrow asking if he was willing to affix an affidavit to the history of the game. “We have been doing well with MONOPOLY,” he wrote. “And we want to do everything that we can to protect its reputation and position in the trade. Please help us just as much as you can.”

  Creation stories are thought to make patents less vulnerable and were a routine part of the patent business at the time. But Parker Brothers executives also knew that Monopoly’s creation story was good public relations. Little was more irresistible to a prospective customer than a compelling Horatio Alger backstory, especially during the Depression. When hearing a rags-to-riches tale, people didn’t just hear the story for itself—they became emotionally connected to the storyteller and his or her product or invention. They also identified with the storyteller. If an everyman such as Darrow could become a millionaire overnight, so could they.

  Darrow never submitted an affidavit.

  Nevertheless, the company moved forward. It needed a patent for Monopoly in order to seal its hold on the game.

  Darrow had obtained a copyright for the Monopoly board—but not for its written rules or the name “Monopoly”—on July 30, 1933. At that time, an inventor had only two years after claiming that he had published an idea to file for a patent for it. It mattered not when Darrow had first obtained the copyright, but when the game had first been published. So when Darrow claimed that was on July 30, 1933, he started a two-year clock that would stop on July 29, 1935—a deadline that Parker Brothers did not make. But the company opted to file for a patent anyway, perhaps banking on the likelihood that people wouldn’t notice the earlier Darrow date. Saying nothing about the 1933 copyright, it dated the copyright of the game’s written rules to 1935, a time gap that would prove critical a generation later in assessing the ownership of the megahit game. Then on August 31, 1935, Parker Brothers and Darrow filed for a patent for Monopoly.

  Rumors floated that year at the annual Toy Fair in New York, as well as in everyday game industry chatter, that Finance, now published by Knapp Electric Inc. of Indianapolis, would be discontinued or consolidated with Monopoly. David Knapp, the company’s president, told Barton of the rumors, but said that he was sure Barton’s “business ethics are above the average.” Barton replied that the rumors “have no foundation in anything that we have sold.”

  On December 31, 1935, Darrow, Barton, and Parker Brothers got their wish. Monopoly had its patent stamp, published in black and white on the board that had been developed by the Quakers from a board originally invented by Lizzie Magie. But only one name appeared on the board: C. B. Darrow.

  On December 31, 1935, Charles Darrow received his Monopoly patent, sparking controversy decades later as details surrounding Lizzie Magie’s Landlord’s Game and other early pre-Parker Brothers games surfaced. (United States Patent and Trademark Office)

  It’s still unclear how Parker Brothers received approval for the Monopoly patent, given the two Landlord’s Game patents that had come before it. It’s also unclear how the patent was issued in an astonishingly fast four months. Typically, the U.S. Patent Office rejected applications that had strong similarities to ones that were already on file. And even when an application was approved, it took many months or even years to process.

  Parker Brothers did add some of its own flair to the game. Earlier players had relied on simple tokens made of wood or miscellaneous objects like buttons to represent them on the board. Parker Brothers used the Dowst metal tokens. For the most part, however, the game was only a new iteration of games that had come before it.

  Despite now holding a patent for Monopoly, Parker Brothers would benefit from erasing all mentions of Darrow’s July 1933 copyright date. It did not want to risk having its December 1935 patent challenged.

  As part of their efforts, Barton and his team at Parker Brothers purchased Finance from Knapp Electric, acknowledging that a competitor in the industry was clearly aware that Monopoly had a predecessor. At the time, with thirty thousand copies sold, Finance was still outselling Monopoly significantly but for a large lump payment, Knapp also skirted having to sell the game amid rumors of its discontinuation (toxic in the toy and game industry) and having to look into the game’s origins himself.

  Next came Easy Money, published by rival game maker Milton Bradley. Easy Money was similar to Monopoly but, among other differences, had Give or Take cards instead of Chance or Community Chest. In a legal challenge to Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers claimed that Easy Money infringed on its Monopoly patent. That legal action had a seemingly strange result: Milton Bradley was allowed to continue to produce Easy Money through a royalty agreement with Parker Brothers.

  Though at first blush the unusual agreement didn’t make sense, it was actually beneficial to both companies. The deal allowed Milton Bradley to keep selling the game, while Parker Brothers no longer had to worry about Milton Bradley suing it for patent fraud. The royalties that Parker Brothers received from the Easy Money deal were probably quite small, but the company couldn’t afford to sue or buy out a large rival like Milton Bradley.

  Perhaps a bigger threat to Parker Brothers in its quest to gain sole control of Monopoly was Rudy Copeland, an outspoken man from Fort Worth, Texas, who in 1936 tried to market a version of the game that he called Inflation. Copeland’s deep knowledge of the monopoly game showed that its popularity had reached far beyond the Northeast and Midwest and into Texas. “The NEW game” and “Interesting Thrilling Instructive,” Copeland proclaimed of Inflation, priced at $1.50.

  The object of Inflation, Copeland said, was “not only to afford amusement to the players but also to illustrate to them how proposed Share-the-Wealth Plans, Excessive Old Age Pension Plans, etc., will increase taxes and place a heavy burden on all citizens and, at the same time, make it possible for the shrewd manipulators to gain a dominating position in economical affairs of the country.” Copeland’s board featured a large circle printed on a square white board. In one corner was an Uncle Sam figure with dollar bills flying out of his hand. In another, a red banner read, “Share the Wealth.” Also occupying spaces were Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration and an emblematic blue eagle, commonplace on posters and in papers at the time—Copeland’s board was customized with a political flair.

  “If a man has good luck and is a shrewd manager, he may beat the game of ‘inflation,’” Copeland stated. “If he isn’t, he will be no better off than theretofore and distribution of the wealth of the country will not have availed him anything.” Instead of houses and hotels, the game included twenty cottages and ten apartments—the limited numbers designed to “encourage rapid improvement.” The currency was called “boloney money.”

  In 1936, Texan Rudy Copeland challenged Parker Brothers over his right to produce Inflation. (Tom Forsyth/Anspach archives)

  Inflation came to the attention of Parker Brothers attorneys, and on June 1, 1936, they filed a complaint alleging patent infringement against Copeland in Texas’s Northern District court. The lawyers charged “that Charles B. Darrow of Philadelphia, PA, on and prior to the date of Aug 1935 was the original, sole and first inventor of a certain board game apparatus not known or used by others in this country before his invention or discovery thereof.” Barton needed to maintain the Parker Brothers stronghold on the game if he was to avoid what had happe
ned with Ping-Pong and tiddlywinks earlier in the firm’s history.

  Parker Brothers sued Copeland first, but then Copeland countersued Parker Brothers, claiming that its copyright claims on the game were fraudulent because Monopoly had been widely played and in the public domain before Darrow claimed to have created it. Parker Brothers was not about to cede anything, however—by the end of 1936, it had sold 1.8 million copies of Monopoly and cleared over two million dollars in profits. A settlement was reached. Parker Brothers agreed to pay Copeland at least ten thousand dollars. Copeland agreed never to discuss the matter again.

  Barton also visited Layman’s old college friends the Thun brothers in Pennsylvania and asked them if they were going to make an issue of Parker Brothers selling Monopoly. Unaware of the Quakers’ board, the Thuns told him no, but declined his request to buy their board. However, their friend Paul Sherk sold Barton his. Barton told him that the purchase was to stock the Parker Brothers archives, but it’s more likely that it was part of his Monopoly acquisition plan.

  When advertising Monopoly in its catalogs, Parker Brothers went out of its way to tell consumers about its patent. The advertisements stated that the game’s “novel and original features, which are protected by United States and Foreign Patents and Copyrights, exist only in MONOPOLY and ensure the constant immense popularity of this extraordinary and unique game.”

  With Layman, Milton Bradley, Copeland, and the Thun brothers and Sherk taken care of, Barton still had one more major player standing between him and Parker Brothers’ total control of the lucrative game: Lizzie Magie.

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