Clarity & Concision Practice Test

PASSAGE IV: Monopoly’s Stolen Origins

¹ Almost everyone has played a game of Monopoly. With its iconic top hat playing piece, colorful paper money, and "Go to Jail" square, it is arguably the most famous board game in the world. According to popular corporate lore, the game was invented in 1933 by Charles Darrow, an unemployed heating engineer (31) who dreamed up the real estate trading game in his basement during the Great Depression. However, the true history of Monopoly is much more complicated, and it begins three decades earlier with a woman named Lizzie Magie.

² In 1903, Magie designed a board game she called The Landlord's Game. She was a progressive thinker and a follower of Henry George, an economist who believed that land should belong to everyone and that landlords unjustly profited from the labor of others. Magie created the game as an educational tool (32) to illustrate the negative consequences of land monopolies. (33) The board featured a continuous track around the outside, properties that could be bought, and a corner space that sent players to jail.

³ Magie’s game was unique because it featured two sets of rules. Under the "Prosperity" rules, every player gained money when a property was acquired, reflecting the idea of shared wealth. Under the "Monopolist" rules, the goal was to acquire all the land and bankrupt the other players. Magie hoped that players would experience both versions and (34) have recognized the superiority of the cooperative approach.

⁴ Instead, players found the cutthroat "Monopolist" version to be far more thrilling. Over the next thirty years, the game spread organically through word of mouth. College students, Quakers, and intellectuals made their own handcrafted boards, modifying the rules and adding local street names. (35) One of these localized versions eventually found its way to Charles Darrow.

⁵ Darrow played the game, loved it, and asked his host for a written copy of the rules. He then made his own version, claiming the invention as his own, and sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935. It became an instant sensation, (36) making Darrow a millionaire. When Parker Brothers discovered that Darrow had not actually invented the game, they quietly bought the patent for The Landlord's Game from Lizzie Magie for a mere $500. (37) Magie never received any royalties from the millions of Monopoly games sold worldwide.

⁶ For decades, Magie’s contribution was completely erased from history. It wasn't until a (38) high-profile legal battle in the 1970s that the true origins of the game were brought to light. Today, Lizzie Magie is finally being recognized as the brilliant, progressive inventor behind the world’s favorite capitalist pastime. (39) Its a profound irony that a game designed to critique the concentration of wealth was ultimately used to make a few men very, very rich. (40)