Pilon’s 2015 piece in the Times also chronicles Magie’s newspaper ad satirizing the economic nature of marriage by offering herself up to the highest bidder.ĭespite her news-making antics and her hand in creating a world-famous game, Magie’s story was almost lost to history. Monopoly ad highlights how few patents are held by women. She obtained a patent for her game, notable in part because of how Hasbro’s Ms. Magie was also an early feminist who believed in empowering herself. His ideas were popular with some progressives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and though they were critiqued by contemporaries like Karl Marx, George's work - including a book called Progress and Prosperity - helped draw people into the burgeoning political left of the era.
George’s theories were called Georgism, and as explained by the 2011 Encyclopedia of Global Justice, were grounded in the idea that all taxes should be replaced with a single tax on property.
Young Lizzie worked as a stenographer and did comedy while perfecting her board game based on the theories of economist Henry George. According to a 2015 New York Times article adapted from Pilon’s book, Magie's father was a slavery abolitionist and rousing speaker who worked with then-presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in the late 1850s. Challenging the status quo ran in Magie’s family.
