My Le
Honor U.S. History
Dr. Hall
10 March 2015
Picture of the Great Depression
Monopoly a Parker Trading Game is the board game named after the economic concept of monopoly. Although it was not the first version of this game, it was the most famous version of this game, which was invention of Charles Brace Darrow. His time period when he created this game reflects the Great Depression.
Darrow was a domestic heater salesman. When he was young, he lived in Philadelphia and he moved to Germantown to live at that time. Because of the Stock Market Crash in 1929, he lost his job at a sales company and had to work at various odd jobs. When he didn’t have a lot of things to do, he saw his neighbors playing a homemade board game in which the object was to buy and sell property. Then he had an idea that he could make this board game by his own and with his own version. With help of his wife, Ester and his son, William, he started producing this game.
In 1934, Darrow had his first printed cardboard game box. He started selling its copies in long white box in Philadelphia with help from his friend who was a printer. He sold 5,000 sets to Philadelphia department store. Later in that year, Darrow brought his game to Milton Bradley, an American board game company, but they rejected it in a letter. He did not give up; he went to Parker Brother for another chance. Successful didn’t come to Darrow soon; he received a rejection letter again with the reason “too complicated, too technical, (and it) took too long to play”. Starting difficult didn’t beat Darrow’s will. He tried to invest money again on the sales of smaller sets, sold in black cardboard boxes and boards sold separately from the sets. He received orders again from Philadelphia stores and other stores. At this time, Parker Brothers heard about excellent the sales during Christmas season and reconsidered it. The president of the company held a first meeting with Darrow on March 18th 1934 to reset the game and renew looking of the box based on the original one. Then the demand for the game was growing rapidly.
By April same year, the company discovered that Darrow was not an inventor of this game but the Landlord’s Game and Finance. They held second meeting with Charles Darrow in Boston. He had to admit that he had learned from his friend’s set. Then he and Barton, inventor of Landlord’s Game and Finance, met together and signed a revised royalty agreement, granting that Parker Brothers has the right to release Darrow’s from legal costs and defending the origin of the game. The version seen as the first one is The Landlord’s Game, created by Elizabeth Maggie. It started out for college professors and students. After that, there was the variant game called The Fascinating Game of Finance. It was traveled from the Midwest to back