Darrow told the reporter who wrote this story how to win a Monopoly game fast: "Be a hard-hearted landlord. Demand immediate cash payment of rents and assessments."
It's rather amazing to go through magazines and newspapers and find out how many of them repeated this story, apparently based on an interview with the hometown boy made good, in the Germantown Bulletin - it appeared before that in the December 1935 issue of the king of all business magazines, Fortune, under the simple headline "Monopoly." Then you realize the story was a production of Parker Brothers. See how it reads in Fortune:
"The fastest-selling non-card game in the US, according to Parker Brothers, who make more games than anyone else in the country, is one called Monopoly. It is a game that caters to the most grindingly acquisitive instincts of every businessman and its popularity may be due to the general interest in the workings of business.
"...its inventor, Charles B. Darrow, of Philadelphia... says the game is typical of American business as he knew it when he was employed by an anthracite company to lecture to coal dealers on new coal uses. In 1931 he decided to invent a game to lighten the cheerless evenings at home. Years before, he had read a book about a boy who, having failed at Latin, went to commercial school where the teacher put him on the path to his future success by giving students scrip money to invest. Mr. Darrow started off with a scrip-money idea and it turned into Monopoly. The first homemade game amused neighbors so much that they ordered sets which Mr. Darrow made up by hand for $4...