The impacts of board games and cards on children’s play was guided by two main themes. The first is economic influences: how economic patterns at the time, experiences, and woes impacted the creation, distribution, and themes of games. The second is how games socialized children in educational settings. At a larger scale, this second concept strongly correlates to how children were socialized in the early 1900s. Adults created games based off their beliefs, biases, and experiences. Thus, when these games were used in educational settings, they taught geography or literature, whatever it may be. They also subconsciously taught students racist and traditional social norms and hierarchies through the uses of examples or what barriers existed between the player and winning the game.
Economic Influences
One of the key aspects of board games during the early 1900s were the economic influences. The interaction between board games and economic patterns were apparent in their creation and distribution. Some games were influenced by sentiments or critiques of current events: created to send a message. From a corporate point of view, games as a whole were seen as a new and efficient mechanism to get parents to spend more money. Companies revolutionized the toy industry by sneakily advertising in previously untapped sectors of society (Jacobson, 2004). Toy magazines, editors would capitalize on a child’s persuadable nature by associating “good boys and girls” with those who had this or that toy (Jacobson, 2004). In this sense, board games and toys were seen as a new avenue to expand profit margins. However, board games also served a social purpose of allowing those experiencing these economic harms to air out their unhappiness. The most common example of this would be the evolution of “Monopoly”, over time. “The Landlord’s Game” was the original, modern, Monopoly. Created in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie, an active proponent of the single tax system, she hoped this game would have players experience the unfairness of a multiple tax system and that the children would become activists for the movement later in life (Donovan, 2017). For Magie, board games served as a platform to share and highlight the monetary issues she sees within American society. As to the later success of Monopoly, author Tristan Donovan strongly places it within the context of the Great Depression. People were poor and struggling to make money, obtain food, and find a job. Even though it wasn’t real, Monopoly suddenly gave the ability for players to hold bills upon bills of cash, to own plenty of property, and freedom to screw other players over with no real repercussions (Donovan, 2017). It becomes a critique but also a pathway to success in the capitalist system that most people were losing in. These games provided an outlet for citizens trapped under the oppressions of capitalism, meanwhile they also provided the vehicle for corporations to generate more profit.
Elaborating on this idea of success, is how the meaning of success has transitioned from having good morals to financial achievement throughout the latter half of the 1800s. This transition in meaning was represented in the goals of board games. Pre-existing The Landlord’s Game was the “Mansion of Happiness”, a game designed in favor of morality as success. The winner of the game was whoever landed on the most virtuous spaces: purity, temperance, honesty, prudence, truth and others (Adams and Edmonds, 1977). As capitalism and industrialization further permeated through the late 1900s, these values became “pulling oneself up by their bootstraps”, working hard to make money, and ultimately simply connotating financial achievement (Adams and Edmonds, 1977). This transition was seen as the “Mansion of Happiness” became “The Landlord’s Game” and then “Monopoly”, a game purely centered on succeeding as a financial tycoon. The values that get a player to win a board game changed drastically from the mid 1850s to the early 1900s, and this shares how the value of monetary success grew to be the most important quality of life. Overall, looking at how money and economic patterns have altered board game success and dissemination reflects the changing value of money in general.
“The Mansion of Happiness” Boardgame, (Adams and Edmonds, 1977)
Educating and Socializing Children
There are two main ways board games served as a mode of education: consciously and subconsciously. During the early 1900s, the relationship between education and board games became more nuanced. Games became popular aids for education, with schools and libraries offering a multitude of toys, games, maps, puzzles, and resources for enhancement of learning opportunities. The themes in board games taught children lessons such as how to win, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, goodness versus the bad, and general school knowledge. It is important to remember that adults created, marketed, sold, and popularized these games for children. Thus, much of the blame for introducing and teaching harmful or incorrect themes lies within the adults present. Games, while presenting important United States locations and trade relations, for example, also “awarded players for rescuing Christian slaves in Algiers” (Pierce, 2016). The information was presented as educational but engaged with racist and traditional societal norms. While using games like these were conscious decisions, it becomes subconscious when children grow to be racist and judgmental to others.
Lessons like these were taught through the themes and obstacles in board games because of the role adults played in encouraging games. The road in which play interacted with education was two ways, tied by board games. Games make learning more fun and what one learns can be used in play. Furthermore, Children at Play: an American History, written by Howard P. Chudacoff, argues that as industrialization and capitalism in America took hold, children’s ability to imagine their play has decreased (Chudacoff, 2007). He explains that fads of different toys and board games dictated what play should look like, introducing concepts of jealousy and economic hierarchies of play, rather than allowing children to create their own games and world to spend time in (Chudacoff, 2007). Following this line of thought, racism and sexism are difficult concepts for children to truly understand, so it can be assumed that children would not have incorporated such ideas into their play. Thus, it can be concluded that to whatever extent, play would have been less harmful without the intrusion of adults creating and encouraging the use of these games.
“Chopped Up N*****” jigsaw puzzle…after the turn of the century, some doll manufacturers marketed characters with racial and racial features such as Louis Marx Company’s ‘Alabama Coon Jigger’ (1921). These figures and other toys that represented [Black people] as plantation mammies, urban dandies, and erratic fools no doubt transferred demeaning stereotypes to children’s attitudes.” (Chudacoff, 2008)
Another theme taught through games in an educational setting, closely linked to capitalism, is the practice of competition. A Century of Historical Change in the Game Preferences of American Children, written by Van Rheenen in 2012, looks over major studies conducted on children’s play habits through the 1900s to draw overarching themes and comparisons. One component discussed was a continuous increase in competition during the 1900s resulting from more groups of children engaging with school sports (Van Rheenen, 2012). This literature review presents an additional perspective to Rheenen’s paper to just physical sports: board games. Board games inherently pit players against one another to have a winner; the rise in popularity of board games additionally instilled an increased sense of competition into the minds of children. Overall, the biases of adults towards other people in society as well as what values are important in life were subconsciously conveyed to children in a way that teaches them to adopt these ideas.