December of 2014. You can watch this and other programs online. On booktv any event from the museum of American Finance on the origins of the board game monopoly. Mary pilon, author of the monopolists obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the worlds favorite board game refuge the commonly held history by the dms manufacturer parker brokers that an unemployed salesman sold the idea of smallcompany in 1935. What the plan is the history of the gate and opened up to questions and answers but we are not just yet during and getting insight on what you find useful. This is the cover of the book. Monopoly as we know it today, and houses and mr. Monopoly, if you talk to them say Parker Brothers which is now owned by hasbro, for years this story, this gentleman went to the game at the height of the Great Depression and in america one of americas darkest hours egos to his basement and innovates and makes this game and put Atlantic City properties on it as an homage, and here is the regional monopoly pat from 1935. This is a version, this version has been on has bros web site for years lose some people believe darrow was the inspiration for nearly mr. Monopoly characters luteal the problem is the story is exactly true. The actual game originated with a woman. This woman, elizabeth mcghee. Who was she . Prior to inventing her game, she had a patent for a typewriter gadget. She was an outspoken feminist. She had a lot of views on this, her father was this gentleman named james mcgee who wasnt just an influential newspaper owner the traveled with Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln Douglas debate set and was around for the founding of the Republican Party and very impact will in that. Mcghee appeared on stage, wrote short stories wrote a book of poetry which you can see for that. And she was very impacted by this man henry george. A lot of people know about henry george but a lot of people dont. The very short version high am not a henry george scholar, not a fan of single tax theory. The working class would have a better shot at the quality. He writes this book called progress and poverty, a massive bestseller you can read all sorts of newspaper accounts of people packing out policy to speak. Lizzie mcghee is one of the people who reads this book and is moved by him and his teachings. Here is the patent for the 1904 landlords game, applies for 1903, in 1904, do you have people taking to a board game to a teaching tool, may seem strange to us today. In her time it made a lot of sense. Board games are becoming cheaper to manufacture. Theyre fighting for these it time some more people as things like child labor laws improve indoor lighting, there are a lot more things that make board games more conducive to the average american as opposed to upper class parlor games. The landlords game there are elements of her game the carry over to a monopoly go to jail, she has a public park space, cards were not as big a deal in 1904 as they are now. She is very concerned with lane usage. She makes the game and it spreads like wildfire especially among leftwing intellectuals in the northeast. On the far left one of the early a monopoly players later joint fdrs cabinet but was also a teacher at columbia. In the center you have ernest angel who was National Chairman of the aclu playing the game in new york and his son roger angell is a writer for the new yorker. If you are great sports journalism fan. Professor at wharton was involved in that very important Academic Freedom case. Some consider him the father of the green movement. He was far ahead of his time and would have gotten a kick out of brooklyn. In delaware a single tax colony where the game flourished. It was frequented by Scott Nearing and other people. Up and sinclairs house was called the jungle. His book was called the jungle land there was a salacious sex scandal that took place there but that is in the presentation. It was played at wharton and harvard and everywhere. In 1924 lizzie renewed it hadnt. It continues to spread as a folk game. You see the loop and Chicago Properties on the third and one of the groups that really embraces monopoly is the quakers of Atlantic City. This is a picture of a quaker monopoly night, they had wooden boards, people make these boards on a road and add properties for whatever city they were in. There with philadelphia versions of the game, this was an Atlantic City version of the game. Here again we have Atlantic City quaker board this is the charles todd board. Comparing this to the busy mcghee, it is closer and closer. Charles todd lives in philadelphia. He runs into a friends on this reach, charles and mr. Darrow. Why dont you come over and we will have a monopoly light which was in vogue at the time. They have a monopoly night. Todd teaches darrows the game and afterwards darrow asks can you type of the rules for me, somebody coming to the house, play checkers or chess or a game that was around, charles todd, secretary, types of the rules and gives 2 darrow. Lets cut to Parker Brothers and the 30s, Parker Brothers was a firm that was in crisis. Lot of companies at the time nobody was buying and anything. The Balance Sheet was a disaster. Theres george parker, he founded as a teenager in the 1880s and it was not looking good. His soninlaw robert barton, second from the left was taking over at Parker Brothers and was a lawyer by training. He had little gain experience. He needs a solution and need it fast. He starts telling the Monopoly Game in philadelphia, a picture on the far left. If you were a fan of manhattan the movie that is where that was shot. Darrow burton sees this, points it out to him, this Monopoly Game out there and they strike a deal in the platter building where the parker show room was at the time a lot older here and carol they make a deal to buy the game. Monopoly becomes calm monster best seller. Parker brothers cant make these kings fast enough and the story of darrow invented in the Great Depression becomes a huge part of the Publicity Campaign for the game. They actually used their 08 his image to make this game called bulls and bears which you see at the bottom ends sell well. There never been a board game creation story like the darrow story. He is giving interviews, a lot of press everywhere. One thing to do is make tokens. They play the game and use buttons and miscellaneous objects that were around so Parker Brothers this company in chicago, you might know this making crackerjack prices. Some of them have little groups. The crackerjack fries you give customers a little iron token. You use those existing molds. Not long before parker and barton realize they have a problem. A lot of other Monopoly Games out there, so barton rights to charles darrow, where did this game come from . Can you give us a detailed history . For publicity purposes, the letter exchanges in the book, the very short version is darrell waffles and doesnt make the genesis of the game alone that it has around 30 plus years before he sold it. One of those games is when you look at this, you can see that it looks a lot like monopoly and he played it as a fraternity guy. Parker brothers requires it for not a lot of money and they start to buy up other Similar Games on the market. Milton bradley the rival had a game called easy money. A man in texas had a game called inflation. They all make monopoly and draw their origins from it. By the mid 1930s the darrow story, the train left the station. He is hailed as the inventor. Lizzie magee and related boards they are pretty much forgotten. Lindsay is not happy about this, this is from the washington evening star. She is an elderly woman living in washington. Says his that miss phillips got married by then. It is understood she receives 500 for patent and she gets no royalties. If one counts lawyers, preachers, use up and developing it the game has cost her more than she made from it. That is the deal she got from Parker Brothers. Why did the cant office granted arrow 1935 monopoly the one i showed you when mcgee had two similar ones before it. We may never know. With the cat and you have a thing called a patent rapper which the document around a pant explains to you how and where and why this happened. That has been missing for 40 years and i couldnt find it. We dont exactly know what happened at the patent office. This is darrows obituary in the New York Times hailing him as the inventor of the game of monopoly. Is the mcghee is very. I added hard time finding it. Theres no mention of monopoly here than on her grave. She died in 1948. Her whole history was an accident and it came up accidentally because of this guy. This is ralph onstock, this is a picture of him in berkeley in the 70s. He was an economist at San Francisco state. Makes the game called anti monopoly ended is not long before he hears from let me back of he is upset about the opec oil cartels. Mark on the left, feels like monopoly redeye negative and wants to make it more philosophically freezing. They draw up a game, with his sons have done. Anti monopoly, and a nadir raiders and that kind of thing, a Public Service lawyer heroes of the game. Not long before he hears from her Parker Brothers attorneys, you cant make anti monopoly, we are the makers of monopoly. This set off a ten year legal battle between routes onstock and his family, Parker Brothers. A record for different copyright laws. All of that is more detailed in the book. As part of a lawsuit, like everybody else detrimental to the game and the roots go back far, far back. Dan tom lehman is an elderly man in pasadena and held up his finance board and hugs down the quaker players and this is looks like organic chemistry notes but it is ralphs nodes for these photos of monopoly players to find out who went to school with who, who knew who who was married to who and reverse engineering the monopoly story from 1935 and white in his way back and finding a threat from the 1935 game and the 1984 Lizzie Mcghee at. These us some of the quakers, a lot of the past away by the 70s. He did ultimately testify and betsy year. Charles todd told the story of meeting there of an i told you. He makes this point that he didnt live in Atlantic City. He learned the game from a friend that he did. Charles todd lived in philadelphia. Marvin gardens focusing, a combination of the inventor. And he is not from Atlantic City. And one thing people look at in copycat cases when you try to prove Something Like plagiarism is if somebody is an error, what are the odds, the same person making that twice. Charles todd jokes it is the most copies of an error in history. Every time he looked at a monopoly board after he would think about his falling. Groupings are something the court is interested in in early Monopoly Games. Their substantial land everywhere. Ralph in his case, tried to find a copy of the board that has the word monopoly on it. Most people testified they call it the Monopoly Game and i got this from a reader who found me recently and found one in the attic. This is the picture he was kind enough to use. The story is getting a lot of press. Anti monopoly case as well as telling people this game before darrow and Parker Brothers and this that makes a monopoly tournament Parker Brothers is sponsoring and giving out this thing called the darrow cup. This makes ralph sees. He ripped apart this idea that there ares inventor, route decides he is going to set up a truth about monopoly lecture next to the Atlantic City monopoly tournament. Parker brothers catches wind of this a reschedule these events and nobody goes to the lecture. He also heard from a couple college kids at cornell who had been kicked out of the monopoly tournament and a game about how to win at monopoly. Parker brothers attacked them over and another tournament taking place in d. C. Shortly thereafter so route decides to join forces with college kids and go about flipping through the about monopoly pamphlets under the dinner plates of journalists which gets a big rise out of people and they feel victorious about this. That college kid was jay walker, the billionaire founder of price line. Com and his College Roommate was jeff freeman who was the president of cornell and this is their book. And get a copy and their names are on it. A pure how to play monopoly book is great. So meanwhile in court Parker Brothers wins an injunction and usually when you have an injunction what you do is throw the merchandise you are arguing over in a warehouse and when litigation is over you figure out what to do but Parker Brothers is so confident in their victories that they decide to stage a burial of ralphs 40,000 anti monopoly deems. This is a picture, the quality is not great but they buried the 40,000 board games in minnesota not far from where they are manufactured so at this point ralph is greek inflated. This legal battle went on for years, strained his personal relationship, his legal fees were adding up and this isnt going to be good for your selfesteem. If so ralph is victorious in the courts in california but Parker Brothers decides to appeal to the Supreme Court and at this point route needed a lawyer and he finds carl pearson who is still practicing in new york city and he agrees to take the case on contingency so the two of them working out of his tiny office against a whos who of their trademark lobby but the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case and ralph whinnies and he wins his right to reduce anti monopoly wins a settlement for his damaged game and also wins the right to talk about the origins of the game, previously turned down a massive settlement offer that was a lot of money but wouldnt be able to talk about the history of the game. Victory is not enough. He and his friend russ foster, that quality photo here, to deduct the game. They go to minnesota and they think they know where they are buried and they look and have no lock and somebody says you are in the wrong place and route seems okay we will go back, go to where theyre buried and you might have a problem, they built condos on top of where the games are very. So when people ask me why have you spent all this time writing a book about monopoly and board games which is a perfectly legitimate question eisensteins think someday those games are going to be discovered. I dont know when did that is tomorrow or 10,000 years from now but i think we needed document to explain why 40,000 board game end ed up buried in minnesota. Monopoly today i keep a close eye on how iconography is used and how people talk about it. If youre into cat names which i am. It is in gaza girls and sopranos, i really want to find whoever has these cats tos . If you have monopoly, in a book tour, it is the total opposite of what was which was aggressors leftwing political teaching. It is embraced as a symbol of big business. This is my book, you combine millions of copies of it and tell all of your friends how to get in touch with me. If you have any other questions, we will take some now and i sped through things quickly. There are 300 pages if you want even more. Lets take some questions. Dont call talk at once. Yes . What was your discovery process . What made you to get interested in it and to find the back story . This whole project came about by accident. 5 is trying to report something totally different. I was on staff at the wall street journal. I was going to have a throwaway line about monopoly entering the Great Depression. Wasnt setting up for making sense. I was frustrated and i did that reporter trek of calling somebody was involved in litigation which was ralph and i reached out and said this sounds crazy but i am a reporter at the journal and im trying to find out the truth about monopoly and i like everybody had assumed was invented during the Great Depression by some guy. Ralph immediately got back to me and said i know all about the history of monopoly and started talking and i thought it was crazy and sometimes as a reporter you have everybody thinks they are deep throat and you take people seriously but youre kind of like you get a lot of conspiracy theorists. When he started telling me this was the opposite where he would tell me something and i would report it out like the j. Walker peace. I had to call jay walker, said ralph mind this. All this checking out. I wrote the original story and mess with route in San Francisco land he just had boxes of depositions and documents and photographs and reporting and all this stuff that makes like your reporters glow. Now there at my apartment, so i started with those and reported out from that. Example is with lizzie gee, we wanted to know more about her and i approached the first part of the book like i was writing a mini biography of her and research in somebody who died in obscurity in 1948 with no kids is one of the more challenging things i have ever done. As much as Digital Tools really helped in the storytelling process archived newspaper resources from the New York Public Library were incredibly valuable. Ancestry. Com and how they digitized genealogy records is incredible. That made so much of the book possible. The quakers figuring out what streets they lived on, who was a year who living in different parts of their lives that was really critical. A lot of this book wasnt digital. Is changing a little bit but i think among a lot of journalists and readers theres an idea that if it is not on google is not information, it is not real. I kept finding over and over again these jobs that were in peoples attics or tucked away. James mcghee, her father, this is indeed an end litter in the book but his civil war letters were at the New York Historical societys a you get the gloves, and start to get a portrait of who this guy really was so things like that made these people into real human beings as opposed to textbook names. It was a totally different process in some ways from doing a newspaper story, in this case for deceased. Ralph was a huge resource. I never asked more of somebody in terms of time, walking me through the time line and get a lot of notes. Interviewed his sons and his exwife passed away, there were three people and died in the times reported this. I was gathering as much as i could. I had some many moments when i thought why cant i ask you a question or what did you think about this . Theres a lot of genealogy. It was a hodgepodge of everything and it was overwhelmingly that was the hardest part, gathering all the extra rain and putting it together. It felt very unwieldy a lot of time. Ralph must be in the book, if there were things you found that he had never known. Ralph a few days ago and his son, actually a lawyer in new york wrote his harvard law as a about the monopoly trial and how growing up in court rooms made him want to be a labor lawyer. Ralph emailed me, i asked how he was doing and he flips his time between the state in europe. Is not that great to live and he said life begins at 89. I thought it was so amazing we should all be that want to be so spry in our 80s. He is by far the expert on a lot of this and he in the course of his case was an economist before this. We are dealing with someone with a sophisticated knowledge of henry george and how it fit together but he became a paralegal working on this case too but the lehman key pieces he knew she existed but the deeper stuff in her biography was something i spent a lot of time on man their briefings you needed to be interested in, history of Atlantic City and what it was like living there. That was something not as more interested in as a narrative storytelling because he was living in berkeley in the 70s and he wouldnt have had to zoom out and still get what that meant and what was the critical climate fell lot of the character developing and a lot of the deals were in the deposition but they didnt make it to the greeks because they interesting but not part of the time line he was putting together so fleshing out a lot of the characters in the uneasy magee and history of board game pieces, first half of the book was a lot less reliant on those documents. Seeing this there are many teams i find amazing about his story but his conviction for a golfing to turn down a settlement offer which was a big turning point in the book his background i felt i needed to understand because the first year or two of reporting this i had many moments when i thought why did he keep doing this . It was training his family and finances. And learning more about his background before the nazis came in, his life as an immigrant in the states was important background and when i was talking to his son and they were describing their parents and saying theres always a cost whether it was rallying against the vietnam war or anti monopoly. She seems very happy but he was so secure in this and so confident after piecing together the story, the Supreme Court case ended in 1983 so he felt the truth had been out there for a long time. It is funny when theres a mention in the news of the narrow story, it is a long time to wait to have your story told. He contact with has grown in this . I reached out to hasbros, along journal or time story which means no surprises. End you want as many people to purchase as you can. I contacted has broke several times and i am not sure i follow the playbyplay of who was headed what part of p r than but i send them hundreds of questions that were answered. For the time exit i contacted them them. It is obama when somebody doesnt want to participate but because they acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 most of the book takes place before then and what documents, a misfortune it because i try to give everybody a voice and barton had a distant collision damage depositions a life filled with got to hear from him. We have the darrow letters, things that quite frankly i dont know what documents they would have had because they acquire the company solely so even though they didnt participate researching the history of Parker Brothers and the people was important to me and a lot of that because they were such a noted company was out there. There was some stuff out there. [inaudible question] in a deposition you could tell a was a lot of lears, and the night before it closed. I dont think theres that relation but who knows . Is a relatively common theme i believe. You have seen a lot of how industry has changed. The creator of monopoly, and this wonderful question. The short answer is i dont know. She didnt have any children. Theyre so distant that it is what it is. There is and anything tangible in place so when routess trial went to make sure quakers in Atlantic City were not acknowledged. My version is telling the story. I can tell you how many times people say you are writing a book on monopoly a depression game. If anything tangible i would be all years. The entire monopoly [inaudible] at the originals become that . Like the hard core of frazier. Theyre not ludicrously so war i have not seen them. A lot of them were in circulation. They are not really expensive. In general board games are a weird collectible because it is similar to what i think comic books went through a generation ago when people thought they were not valuable people were scuffing plumbing leaks with them. If you are a superman fan it makes you like choke up. Board games are cultural artifacts and they are valuable land reflect times they were made in so i hope they get preserved. He has changed in a little bit. They are out there by which people valued them more. It is again about berkeley in the 70s. Plus the court case is valuable. Any other questions . Very quiet crowd. [inaudible question] yes. There have a collection, a couple games outside the door. The Strong Museum they have some games. The florida gallery at a tremendous monopoly collection for a long time including the board comedy darrow board and, the darrow board and the auction that recently. We know what they look like because ralph gathered them and the know about them but now theyre in private hands. In the first stage of researching this book i could go to the board gallery and walk around and compare things and get a visual sense but even now that is harder to do which is unfortunate. They have a ton of great stuff. The jetblue flight trying to go. Anything else . No . Okay, thank you so much. [applause] like it says up here, misread on sale now, the monopolists