Money Game

U. S. citizens who are weary of bridge, ping-pong, cards-in-the-hat, yet who cannot endure the strain of an evening without a game in some form, were last week offered a new and original pastime invented by so famed an author as Norman Angell, British economist and pacifist. Called The Money Game and published by E. P. Dutton & Co. in the unique form of an explanatory book bound with a box of cards, the new entertainment purports to combine the thrill of cards with instruction in finance.

It may be played by any number of persons, though six is the ideal set. One player, the Banker, starts out with little tickets representing $5000 in bank notes.

The $5,000 stands for $500 in gold which the banker is supposed to have in his bank. Each of the other five players is dealt 20 cards from a 100 card deck divided into ten suits. Each suit stands for an industry, such as Coal Mine, Brickfield, Wagon Works, Loom, Pottery, Saw Mill, etc. During the course of the game, the Banker attempts to buy from the players all the cards of all the suits. As soon as he can absorb one entire suit, or establish a monopoly in that industry, he can add that suit, or that industry, to the assets of his bank. But if he, in the course of his purchases, lets any individual player accumulate more notes than he has assets, the bank is broken and the bank-breaker becomes Banker. Mean while players can buy and sell among themselves, each trying to get as long suits as possible, for the more units of each suit a player holds the more the banker has to pay for each unit. (For one Brickyard a player can get $10; for two yards, $40.) When the banker buys up all the cards without being "broke." the standing of the players is determined by the amount of the notes they hold in return for the cards, or units of industry, they have sold. The game is obviously mathematical and with a strong poker element. A player may have one Coal Mine card, for instance, which, if sold to another player might enable that player to break the bank. Or he might be willing to pay several times the face value for a Pottery card that would help him build up a Pottery monopoly. A smart Stock Exchange operator might be a tremendous success at the game, which resolves itself largely into clever trading. On the other hand, the better the game becomes as a game, the less effective it becomes as a course in finance. It does illustrate, in an elementary manner, the fact that a bank can issue more notes than it has gold to support and also the fact that coal and iron and manufactured products are just as truly wealth as is gold. But it would be a queer idea of business which would involve the House of Morgan trading Standard Brands for the House of Mellon's Aluminum Co., both in the hope of breaking the Federal Reserve system.

Mr. Angell has accompanied his book with an essay on money. After upbraiding economists for writing dully and unintelligibly about their subject, and selling his game as economics in easy steps for little feet. Mr. Angell gives a brief discussion of economic theory.