The Monopolists Read online

  “To the best of my recollection,” Barton said, “he submitted his game to us sometime in ’34, and it was put through our regular R&D department and turned down. I had very little to do with it. I didn’t see the game, and I do not remember how it was turned down other than that my father-in-law thought it was much too long and would not be successful. The first time that came to my attention was in early ’35 when one of my wife’s friends called her up, I think after Christmas, to say that she’d been playing Monopoly and it was a very fine game and did we have it, and if not why didn’t we get it.”

  “I see,” Droeger said. “And then did you initiate contact with Mr. Darrow?”

  “I did,” Barton said and then described how he had written to Darrow, probably sometime in early 1935, to say that Parker Brothers had reconsidered and was interested in meeting him in New York. At that time, Barton said, Darrow had already produced an initial run of the game through a local printer, and the printer had not affixed a copyright notice to it, even though that would have been routine procedure at the time. As part of his deal with Parker Brothers, Darrow turned over most of his unsold games to them.

  “Can you tell us everything that you can recall of your first meeting with Mr. Darrow?” Droeger asked. “Was there any agreement reached at that meeting with respect—”

  “Immediately,” Barton said, recalling that in their Depression-era meeting in the Flatiron Building, Darrow had entered into his contract with Parker Brothers on the spot.

  Droeger then presented the letter that Darrow had written to Barton relating his version of Monopoly’s origins. He handed it to Barton and asked him to read it.

  “Do you recall receiving that letter?” Droeger asked.

  “No, I honestly cannot say that I do,” Barton said. “But I have no doubt that I asked Charles Darrow to give me the history of the game for publicity purposes.”

  “I see,” Ralph’s lawyer said. “Now, it appears the letter is in response to a request for some kind of elucidation; and I thought perhaps you’d made that by a prior letter. Mr. Howes has informed me while we were off the record that the contract that you made with Charles Darrow was dated just a few days before this letter. Do you recall having asked him to give the background of his game?”

  “No,” Barton said. “But it was customary in the publishing business to require all the information that we could about an author’s game so we could use it for advertising and publicity.”

  Barton then said that he couldn’t remember if he had responded to Darrow’s letter or not.

  “Now, sir,” Droeger said, “do you know what you got in your deal with Charles Brace Darrow? For example, you must have got some rights and some property, I would assume. Do you recall as you sit here today what you actually got by way of consideration from him?”

  “Yes,” Barton replied. “We acquired full right, title, and interest to a game which he was actually publishing called ‘Monopoly.’ And if I remember the simple contracts that we used to draw in those days, we also acquired his assurances of cooperation in helping us defend his right to the game and in helping us publicize it and so forth. In other words, to make a success of its publication. We usually put all those things.”

  “For years,” Barton continued, “we had a paragraph in the contract stating that if the game was attacked, and we were defending it, he would appear as a witness anywhere provided we paid for expenses. That was about all the publisher could ever acquire in those days. We also warranted that he also did have full right, title, and interest to the game.”

  “Essentially,” Droeger said, “you got what he had, in other words?”

  “That’s about all we could take.”

  Barton further described acquiring Darrow’s stock of the games on consignment and mentioned that at the time, he hadn’t thought Parker Brothers would be able to sell them. “That I remember perfectly,” Barton said, “because when I think that shortly thereafter we were selling 10,000 a day, it always made me smile.”

  Barton explained that 95 percent of game submissions in those days were rehashes of older games. These were examined by the Parker Brothers staff, who usually sent them back to their inventors without Barton’s or his fellow executives’ knowledge. The remaining 5 percent of ideas went to him or his father-in-law, George Parker, and other executives for review. If they liked a game, they accepted it, and if they didn’t, they sent it back to its inventor, along with a rejection letter.

  Droeger asked about Finance, the game that Daniel Layman had sold to Knapp Electric. Barton had negotiated the Finance deal himself and had paid ten thousand dollars for the game, which in Ralph’s eyes was proof that Monopoly had existed before Darrow under a different name. Droeger showed Barton copies of the contracts the company had signed as part of its deal. Barton said that they had changed the game to make it easier to remember and had added the Parker Brothers branding.

  “Now, sir,” Droeger said, “I understand that, also, in this era, the mid-1930s, Parker Brothers acquired some rights in games from a Mrs. Elizabeth Magie Phillips. Now, do you recall acquiring any games or rights in games from Mrs. Phillips?”

  “I do,” Barton said. “We purchased her game called ‘The Landlord’s Game,’ all of her rights in it including her patent.”

  “And that was done pursuant to written agreement?”

  “I would think so,” Barton said, “but I cannot remember because my father-in-law handled that purchase.”

  “That would be Mr. George Parker.”

  “Right,” Barton said.

  “Do you know whether Mrs. Phillips had any prior dealing with Parker Brothers before the game was purchased in 1935, I guess it was?”

  “To the best of my knowledge and belief,” Barton said, “she had not.”

  The answer sidestepped the firm’s prior publication of Lizzie’s game Mock Trial.

  “Do you remember when your father-in-law negotiated this deal with her?”

  “Now again,” Barton said, “this is the best of my knowledge and belief.”

  “Sure,” Droeger said.

  “Sometime after we purchased Monopoly and he thought that we should try for a patent, engage the services of Mr. Townsend in Boston, Mr. Townsend, in conducting a patent search, discovered that she had a patent on this type of game and that no additional patent could be issued unless we owned the basic patent, which was hers.”

  “Do you remember the amount paid to her for rights in the game that she owned?” Droeger asked.

  “I have no idea,” Barton said. “But it could not have been very much because the game was completely worthless. I know that we published a small edition of it merely to make her happy.”

  Barton’s lack of interest in Lizzie Magie and her original Georgist-themed game could not have been made clearer. Barton added that as far as he knew, Parker Brothers had never acquired any rights from her regarding the trademark Monopoly because she had not used it.

  “Now, sir,” Droeger said, “in 1936, Parker Brothers became involved in litigation with a gentleman named Rudy Copeland in the Northern District of Texas. Do you recall that Copeland lawsuit?”

  The lawsuit had taken place roughly forty years earlier, but Barton clearly remembered going with the Parker Brothers attorney to meet the loud Texan and his attorneys in Indianapolis. “I remember going out there and meeting this infringer,” Barton said. “He was my idea of a true professional Southerner.”

  Droeger asked him what he meant.

  “I mean professional to the extent that everybody is a damn Yankee and so forth,” Barton said, “and he had the hat on and the South could do no wrong. I further remember him stating that if we came down there, we’d just be damn Yankees and when we got in Texas to court, we would find out what was what.

  “His attorneys seemed very embarrassed about it all. And then I did something which I despise doing, but if you go down in the gutter you get in the gutter. And I said, ‘Well, if that’s the way you want to fi
ght the case, on the Civil War, I’ll ask our Texas attorney to have me admitted. I’m a member of the Maryland and Massachusetts Bar. And I’ll tell the court that my grandfather was adjutant for Stonewall Jackson and that I had four great-uncles die in the War whose names are on the rotunda at Charlottesville, and we’ll see who wins the Civil War all over again.”

  Barton said he recalled the Parker Brothers attorney at the time, a quiet man, just sitting in the corner with “a grin from ear to ear” as Barton spoke.

  “And it shook this fellow up,” Barton said of Copeland. “And after he left, his own attorney went all over with us our purchase of Monopoly and our purchase of Finance from the Knapp Electric Company, the whole thing.

  “When we got through, he said, ‘Had I known all of this at the start, I wouldn’t have represented the man. I’ll tell you that right now.’ But he said, ‘You’ve got a situation down there in Texas. I don’t know what it will cost you to fight the suit and so forth. I can probably settle the thing for you.’”

  That very day, Copeland agreed to settle the lawsuit for ten thousand dollars. The next afternoon, Barton and his lawyer delivered the check and bought Copeland’s game, Inflation. Barton said that he didn’t remember Copeland’s counterclaim about the Darrow patent being invalid.

  After a short recess, the interrogation began again. It was time to learn about what had transpired between Barton and Darrow.

  “Now, sir,” Droeger said, “after your purchase, that is, Parker Brothers’ purchase, of Charles Brace Darrow’s interest in the game ‘MONOPOLY,’ did you ever receive notice or information or claim from any other person to the effect that Mr. Darrow was not the true inventor of the game?”

  “No,” Barton said.

  That contradicted Charles Todd’s claim, and those of several other early players, that he had written to the company and never received a response.

  “If there had been such a communication addressed to Parker Brothers, would it have in the normal course been brought to your attention?”

  “Yes,” Barton said.

  Then Droeger asked Barton what magazines he had read at the time, and Barton answered Playthings and Toys and Novelties, two trade publications. Droeger held up the June 1935 issue of Playthings, which carried an advertisement for Finance. He read aloud a description of the game: Players could buy and sell real estate, build houses, collect rent, buy and sell railroad and utility stocks, get rich, or go broke.

  “Wouldn’t you agree that’s a pretty good description of MONOPOLY?” Droeger said.

  Ollie Howes stepped in. “I object to the form of the question,” he said.

  Droeger withdrew the question.

  “Did Charles Brace Darrow ever submit any other games to Parker Brothers for their possible use?”

  Barton recalled Darrow’s follow-up game to Monopoly: Bulls and Bears. It was “a complete failure,” but Darrow had had “little or nothing to do” with its invention, Barton said.

  The questioning over the reason for acquiring Finance resumed.

  “We covered the waterfront whenever we bought anything,” Barton said. “But we knew that Charles Darrow had based his game Monopoly on both the Landlord’s Game and possibly something of this kind. We knew that perfectly well … We knew that he based Monopoly on this type of play. Whether he got it all from Magie Phillips, whether he got it from somewhere else, we didn’t know. And we cared very little about it.”

  Droeger asked whether at the time there was any question about who had invented Finance.

  “The only question I can think of might be relating to Mrs. Magie Phillips’ patent,” Barton said, “which we had purchased in complete good faith. And I think it’s for this reason that we covered the waterfront. Remember, in making this thing we are in an adverse position. We are trying to buy this game as cheaply as we can get it. Knapp Electric is trying to get the price as high up as they can get it. So we claim everything and they claim everything.” Barton added that he had never had discussions with Knapp Electric about what it knew about the origins of Monopoly or Finance.

  “So it’s your belief,” Droeger said, “as you sit here today that no one had ever called a game Monopoly before Charles Brace Darrow?”

  “That is true,” Barton said. Parker Brothers had never done an investigation of whether or not the name had been used before, he went on, because if it had been used, Parker Brothers “would have known of it in the industry.”

  “Now, sir,” Droeger said, “have you ever met anybody by the name of ‘Thun,’ T-h-u-n, particularly a Mr. Louie Thun or a Mr. Ferdinand Thun?”

  “Never heard of the name,” Barton said. He also said he hadn’t heard of Paul Sherk, the man whose game board he had purchased in the 1930s.

  Droeger confronted him with Daniel Layman’s letter to Time magazine, a publication that Barton said he read regularly.

  “I can’t say I have a recollection,” Barton said of the letter. “But I almost certainly read it.”

  “Do you know whether there was any follow-up, any communication, with Mr. Layman to find out what he was talking about?”

  “None whatsoever,” Barton said.

  The room was tense, with the Anti-Monopoly team hoping to back Barton into a corner and the Parker Brothers lawyers relying on him not to implicate the company or lie under oath.

  “Were there ever any discussions with Mr. Darrow through the years about how he got the game?” Droeger said. “Did you ever say, ‘Look here, Charles Darrow, what is the true origin of this game? We want it straight from you now,’ or words to that effect?”

  “No,” Barton said. “He had given us his version of the history of the game, so we were not about to question the veracity of one of our leading licensors. I don’t think any publisher would under such a situation.”

  The next line of questioning concerned Lizzie Magie. Barton said that the company had sought her out and that she had never indicated to them that Monopoly infringed on her rights to the Landlord’s Game. Parker Brothers had first learned of Magie’s game when it had done its initial patent search, Barton testified. “She was a rabid Henry George single tax advocate,” Barton said, “a real evangelist. And these people never change.”

  “And was the game that was published by Parker Brothers—let me put it this way,” Droeger said. “The very attractive game that had her silhouette on the cover, was that game a single taxer game?”

  “It was,” Barton said. “But, to the best of my knowledge and belief, we took some slight editorial privilege.”

  “I see,” Droeger said. “You deradicalized? Would that be a fair statement?”

  “Well, you could at least end the game. Let’s put it that way.”

  “The game of life never ends,” Droeger said. “The single taxer will never go away. However, I think they do change.”

  Droeger asked Barton about a pamphlet that recounted the Darrow story called “Seventy-five Years of Fun, The Story of Parker Brothers Inc.” and whether anyone had reviewed it for accuracy.

  “I suppose that if you wanted to take it apart with a witness on the witness stand, you might find a little inaccuracy just as you are,” Barton said, “the way with what the law calls ‘puffing’ as permitted in advertising, if you know what I mean.”

  “Surely,” Droeger said.

  He rested, and Howes took over to cross-examine. He was brief. Within two hours, Barton’s turn at the stand was over, leaving Ralph and Droeger baffled. Barton’s claims of ignorance of pre-Darrow monopoly games didn’t add up. Barton had, however, revealed several new details about the Magie deal. He had admitted that Parker Brothers had bought her out and that the company had tried to do the same to all of its competition.

  Next up to be deposed: Ralph Anspach. Again.

  •

  On June 12, 1975, Ralph once again returned to Robert Daggett’s pristine offices on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. He was expecting another sear session, maybe even one that could last another
eight hours, but he was more emboldened than he’d been the first time around. To prepare, he had gone through the pile of letters he’d received either in discovery or from the Quakers and other early monopoly game players and bracketed the word “monopoly” whenever it appeared so that he could pull the material out easily when needed. He had conducted enough research to know that the Darrow invention story was sour, even if he did have many hurdles ahead as far as proving it went.

  In a letter to his Anti-Monopoly supporters some time earlier, Ralph had written, “We will show in court that the alleged inventor of the game did not invent it, and that Parker Brothers has been aware of this since at least 1936 …

  “What was done here was much more serious than depriving a real inventor of his rewards. In that case, one person loses and another gains but it makes little immediate difference to the public since this is only a matter of replacing a legal monopoly with an illegitimate one. Here, however, the public as a whole has been deprived of its property.”

  In the conference room, Ollie Howes began by questioning Ralph about Charles Darrow. “Is it true that there have been published statements,” he said, “attributed to you and that you have written letters to third parties in which you have asserted that the game which Charles Darrow sold … was not in fact invented by Mr. Darrow, is that correct?”

  Ralph said that it was, and that Monopoly’s trademark was invalid because the game had been played prior to its publication by Parker Brothers. He recounted his Portland television appearance the year before. “The lady told me a strange story,” he said and described how his exchange with Mrs. Stevenson had led him to the mysterious Joanna and other early monopoly players.

  “In your investigations in this case have you found any game boards made by persons other than Darrow or Parker Brothers that have the word ‘Monopoly’ displayed on them?” Howes asked.

  “No, I have not,” Ralph said. “And I would not have expected to, since people don’t put trademarks on homemade games.” He mentioned the Landlord’s Game passage in A Toy Is Born, the book that his son Mark had discovered.