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We’re Off to See the Wizard

Part 1

By Claude Bohn

          Undeniably, one of the most enduringly popular films of all time – for young and not-so young alike - has got to be, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Most baby boomers – and their parents - can instantly rattle off the familiar characters – Dorothy and Toto, Auntie Em, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion; and don’t forget the Munchkins, and the Wicked Witch of the West! Most of us know the storyline by heart; and each succeeding generation passes the joy and wonder of this cinematic masterpiece onto the next, thru television re-runs, and now videotape. But I wonder how many know that the book,  “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” written by journalist L. Frank Baum - and first published in 1900 – was originally written as a political allegory? I certainly didn’t! At least, not until a few years ago, when I first read a delightfully entertaining and informative book entitled: “The History of Money,” by Jack Weatherford.

          This article is not meant as a book review per se, of either  “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” OR, “The History of Money,” so I will attempt to cut to the chase so to speak. In “The History of Money,” I learned that author/journalist L. Frank Baum “greatly distrusted the power of the city financiers,” and “supported a bimetallic dollar based on both gold and silver.” [1] At the turn of the century there was a raging political debate over this issue, of whether to have a single gold standard, or a bimetallic standard of gold and silver make up the money supply. [2]

          As Mr. Weatherford tells us, “taking great literary license, he [Baum] summarized and satirized the monetary debate and the history of the era through a charming story about a naïve but good Kansas farm girl named Dorothy, who represented the average rural American citizen.” Weatherford adds, “Baum seems to have based her [Dorothy] character on the Populist orator Leslie Kelsey, nicknamed “the Kansas Tornado.”

          After a twister whisks Dorothy and her little dog Toto out of Kansas and sets them down in Munchkin Land, they set out on their now famous journey down the gold road - the “Yellow Brick road” – to the Land of Oz. Along the way they meet “the Scarecrow, who represents the American farmer; the Tin Man, who represents the American factory worker; and the Cowardly Lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan.” [3]  Dorothy and company’s journey is  a re-creation of the 1894 march of Coxey’s Army, where a group of unemployed men, led by “General” Jacob S. Coxey, marched on Washington to demand another public issue of $500 million in “greenbacks,” and more work for the “common man.” [4]

          In Baum’s book, the Wizard represented Marcus Hanna – the power behind the Republican Party and the McKinley administration - “controlling the mechanisms of finance in the Emerald City. He was the Wizard of the Gold Ounce – abbreviated, of course, to the Wizard of Oz.” The Munchkins were “the simpleminded people of the East who did not understand how the wizard and his fellow financiers pulled the levers and strings that controlled the money, the economy, and the government.”

          Weatherford explains that the citizens of Oz were required to wear green-colored glasses attached by a gold buckle; and beyond the Emerald City, “the Wicked Witch of the West had enslaved the yellow Winkies – a reference to the imperialist aims of the Republican administration, which had captured the Philippines from Spain and refused to grant them independence. In the end, all the good American citizens had to do was expose the wizard and his witches for the frauds they were, and all would be well in the bimetal monetary world of silver and gold. In the process, the farmer Scarecrow found out how intelligent he was, the lion found his courage, and the working Tin Man received a new source of strength in a bimetallic tool – a golden ax with a blade of silver – and he would never rust again as long as he had his silver oil can encrusted with gold and jewels.”

          In the movie, Dorothy gets back home using her ruby slippers; in the book the magic slippers were silver – ruby red is a much more dramatic color on the silver screen. And now you know, “the rest of the story”!

NOTES

[1] In the same year that the book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written, Congress passed the Gold Standard Act of 1900, which further committed the United States to a single commodity gold standard. Populists, such as William Jennings Bryan, continued to press for a bimetallic standard of both gold and silver, but they eventually lost their struggle. Oddly enough, vast new deposits of gold were discovered in South Africa, Alaska, and Colorado, roughly doubling the world supply of gold, thereby easing the currency shortage the bimetallist sought to remedy. Of course, all that new gold caused prices between 1897 and 1914 to rise by nearly 50% in the U.S., and by about 26% in Britain! [From “The History of Money,” P. 177]

[2] The word “dollar” was originally a term of measurement, like a yard, or a pint. It meant a certain weight – in grains – of either gold or silver, i.e. MONEY. That is, the gold or silver was money; a “dollar” was merely a term of measurement of how much money.

[3] William Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925). Learn more about him: http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=00C50000

http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/side/bryan.html

[4] Jacob S. Coxey (1854 – 1951). Learn more about him: http://www.scry.com/ayer/product.asp?ProductID=4400000019760&Res=T

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