What We See When We Look at Two Centuries of American Board Games (economics was often featured)

By Mary Pilon. Excerpt:

"As the 19th century drew to a close, a growing middle class found itself with disposable income, shorter workweeks, mail-order catalogs and department stores, all of which helped board games evolve into consumer products. The railroad boom of the 1880s fueled the games industry, which became increasingly focused on capitalism in addition to moral uplift. 

Starting in 1886, a series of games derived from the Horatio Alger books—with titles like From Log Cabin to the White House—caught the public’s fancy. A boy (always a boy) popularized the rags-to-riches fantasy, pulling himself up by his bootstraps toward wealth and respectability. Women, however, frequently received a different message. In one called Marriage Auction, a popular game from the early 1900s, card values laid out a bride’s worth, noting that “the bridesmaids have no value, however they rank.” The rules note: “Marriage they say is a gamble, one thing very certain is that money plays an important part.” Both types of games centered on economic survival, but only one offered agency. 

As the Gilded Age rolled on, one female game designer subverted the script. Lizzie Magie was an impassioned follower of Henry George, a popular political economist and author of the bestselling book, “Progress and Poverty.” George believed that taxing land, and only land (a “single tax”), was the path to a more just world. 

In 1904, Magie received a patent for her Landlord’s Game, which millions know today as Monopoly. What most people don’t know: Her game was created to teach about the ills of concentrated wealth. For decades, Magie’s creation spread as a folk game including to Quakers in Atlantic City, N.J. It was a version of that game, complete with Atlantic City place names like Ventnor Avenue and Boardwalk, that was taught to Charles Darrow, who pitched it to game maker Parker Brothers as his own invention. It wasn’t until economist Ralph Anspach became entangled in a legal battle with the game maker in the 1970s that the true story and Magie’s brainchild came to light. 

From the 1900s through the 1930s, financial games gained favor. The games Finance, Inflation and others thrived during the Great Depression as a fantasy of an American Dream far out of reach for most homes. Magie also published Bargain Day, a 1937 game in which players move through a store making purchases by trying to save the most. The player who shops most thriftily wins." 

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Monopoly (The Board Game) Helped British POWs Escape During World War II (2009)