By Bharati J Krishnan
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a popular children’s story about a young girl who gets lost in the mystical land of Oz authored by L. Frank Baum. While the primary audience of the book were children, the story has been subject to many economic and political interpretations. One of them was by Henry Littlefield, an American educator and historian, about how the book by Frank Baum is actually a political satire about the gold standard in America.
A little context
The Coinage Act of 1873 – later condemned by some as the “Crime of ’73” – was responsible for ending bimetallism in America, bringing forth the strict “gold standard”. This meant that the holders of silver bullion couldn’t have their metal made into fully legal tender dollar coins. The demonetization of silver was seen as one of the causes of the Panic of 1873, a severe depression that hit America from 1893 to 1897. Support for bimetallism was stewing in the 1870s and reached its pinnacle with the 1896 campaign of William Jennings Bryan the Democratic nominee for president. He made his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention where he passionately condemned the gold standard.
The theory
In 1964 Henry Littlefield wrote an article in the American Quarterly titled “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism.” According to the article, the story was an elaborate allegory for the Populist movement and a commentary on the ongoing debates over the gold-standard monetary policy of the times. The main and supporting characters, the emerald city, Dorothy’s shoes (they are famously ruby-coloured in the movie, but originally they were made to be silver in the book), the yellow brick road etc. were all metaphors for different political and economic players. Dorothy follows the Yellow-brick road (the gold standard system) to reach the Wizard of Oz (President William McKinley) who turns out to be a useless fraud. Later she discovers that her silver slippers (the silver standard or the bimetallic system) were her true saviours and she uses them to get home.
Hugh Rockoff, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a paper in 1990 titled, ‘The “Wizard of Oz” as a Monetary Allegory,’ where he wrote the following:
“The cyclone that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz represents the economic and political upheaval, the yellow brick road stands for the gold standard, and the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from the Wicked Witch of the East represents the pro-silver movement. When Dorothy is taken to the Emerald Palace before her audience with the Wizard she is led through seven passages and up three flights of stairs, a subtle reference to the Coinage Act of 1873 which started the class conflict in America.”
The symbolism
Dorothy: Everyman American; Scarecrow: Western Farmers; Tin Woodman: Industrial worker; Cowardly Lion: a cowardly politician, perhaps William Jennings Bryan; Toto: Prohibitionist party (also called “Teetotalers”); Wicked Witch of the East: Eastern factory owners and industrialists; Wicked Witch of the West: the trusts, one popular solution to the trust problem was to dissolve them, as Dorothy does; Oz: An abbreviation of ‘ounce’ of gold; Emerald City: Greenback paper money, exposed as fraud OR The national capital; Munchkins: Ordinary citizens; Wizard: President William McKinley; Yellow Brick Road: gold standard; Cyclone: political revolution, the “free silver” movement; Silver Slippers: the free coinage of silver
The veracity of the interpretation
While Baum left no actual evidence to hint towards any deeper meanings to his story, there is circumstantial evidence that supports it. When William J Bryan made his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention where he passionately condemned the gold standard, Baum used to live in Chicago, where the convention was held. He used to frequent the Chicago Press Club where he definitely would have heard a great deal about the battle for the free coinage of silver. In his paper, Rockoff states:
“It is consistent with what we know of Baum’s politics, for although he was not an activist, it is known that he marched in torchlight parades for Bryan and voted Democratic (Baum and MacFall 1961, p. 85). References to current affairs appear in a number of his later works.”
Hence, it might not be too far fetched to claim a deeper meaning to this well-known children’s story.
References
https://economics.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/RockoffWizardofOz.pdf
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