Patti Kalas

Character Monopoly Board Games

It’s an American classic: each new generation of Monopoly players learns to love (harmlessly) indulging its cutthroat, ruthless, greedy impulses. Players begin the game as equals. Luck — and a bit of strategy — eventually enables one player to dominate all others. That player ends up amassing a huge fortune in cash and real estate. Most Monopoly players don’t know (or care) that this game was originally the product of a passion for social and economic justice. In the late 1800s, a young woman named Elizabeth Magie was introduced to the writings of Henry George by her father. She eventually became one of many people who took on the task of trying to teach others what she had learned from studying Progress and Poverty and George’s other works.

In 2004, a long-time resident of Arden, Delaware contacted the producers of the television program History Detectives asking for help identifying the history of a wooden game board that had been in his family since the early 1900s. Researching the origins of The Landlord’s Game brought the History Detectives to Philadelphia to interview Dan Sullivan, then Director of the Philadelphia Henry George School.

Character Monoply Board Games

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