As long as I'm apparently the self-appointed keeper of the really wildly
off-topic stuff, such as the deep meaning hidden in the movie, "2001," let me
also add this "deep meaning" posting concerning the "Wizard of Oz", where Oz
is as in "ounces" of gold.

Yesterday as you may have heard was the 100th anniversary of the publication
of the "Wizard of Oz" by Frank L. Baum. In case it escaped you, the book is
widely regarded as a parable about the populism that spread through the
farming communities of the American mid-west in the 1890's and its ardent
adoption of a bi-metallic monetary system, silver in addition to gold, as a
method of freeing up both money and water for farmers.

Although there are a large number of sites on the web devoted to the
interpretation of the "Wizard of Oz," I've chosen the short one below
(http://www.iup.edu/ec/alspr98.htm) as the one that I found that I tend to
agree with the most, even though there's much more to say on the subject.

Wirt Atmar

========================================

The Wizard of Oz Was

by Willard W. Radell, Jr.

Imagine an entertaining book with characters built around real figures like
Michael Milken, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Jesse Jackson, Donald Trump,
Alice Rivlin, and Bill Gates. I don't know of any such contemporary book, but
I do know of one written almost 100 years ago. The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, by
Frank Baum was an economic/political allegory that included many of the
leading figures of the last turn of a century. Those of you who have had
Professor Cross' course in monetary economics, or my course in U.S. economic
history, know much of what is to follow. But since enough of you haven't, the
story is worth retelling.

The late 19th century was a time of debate over monetary policy. More
specifically, there was a struggle going on over whether the money supply
should be expanded with free coinage of silver and liberal minting of paper,
or restricted to the money available as gold.

Remember that unexpected inflations damage creditors because they are repaid
in dollars with less purchasing power than those that they loaned. Similarly,
debtors win because the inflation lowers the real, purchasing-power value of
what they owe. Bankers, being creditors, wanted deflation driven by tight
money (a gold standard), and workers and farmers as debtors, wanted inflation
driven by loose money (greenbacks and silver). The years between the Civil
War and the Wizard of Oz were years of deflation punctuated by periodic
economic crises and expansions. Without macroeconomic data, it was hard for
people at that time to look past the periodic crises to see the strong
economic growth that was trending upward over the course of the business
cycle.

My first encounter with the economic content in the Wonderful Wizard of OZ
came in 1963, when my zany Teaching Assistant introduced it as a story about
monetary policy. Later I tracked down the first published work on the nature
of the allegory, written by Martin Gardner, who did the mathematical games
section in Scientific American for many years. In the past decade articles
have appeared in the Journal of Economic Education and the Journal of
Political Economy that explore the allegory for those who want to read more
about this.

What does it really mean?

The yellow brick road refers to a gold standard (yellow bricks) measured in
ounces (OZ). The Wizard is an orator (a "windbag") born in Omaha, Nebraska
who intimidates his subjects by explosive bursts of hot air, and arrives in
and departs from OZ in a "hot air" balloon without ever using the gold
(yellow brick) road. William Jennings Bryan was born in Omaha, Nebraska. In
one of his unsuccessful attempts to become President on a loose money
platform, he made his famous anti-gold standard speech, "you shall not
crucify humanity on a cross of gold."

In Baum's book, OZ city, the capital of the Land of OZ, is a prosperous,
gleaming, white city, that seems to be green because everyone wears "green"
glasses backed with a little bit of gold (a gold buckle locked in with a gold
key). In OZ city there are numerous references to things green that have a
little gold in or on them (perhaps a reference to a greenback paper currency,
fractionally backed by gold.)

Dorothy is swept up by an economic storm (tornado) that causes her to lose
her house. But with the fall of her house, the wicked witch of the east is
also destroyed, much as major eastern banks and mortgage companies were
forced into default by waves of default and foreclosure of western farms and
businesses in the panic of 1893.

Dorothy's reward for killing the wicked witch of the east who rules over the
little people, Munchkins, is the pair silver slippers worn by the witch of
the east, who withers away. Hollywood eliminated the silver slippers in the
movie version because color movies were a novelty and the color silver was an
exact match for movie white in black and white films. Although Hollywood
changed the slippers to red to zing up the screen color, if you read the
book, you will find that they are silver slippers.

The wicked witch of the west is interesting in that she has but one eye,
lives in a land where there are no roads, is an enemy to water, won't let
Dorothy and her friends cross a river on a raft, and wears a silver whistle
around her neck that she blows on to summon her stooges. She rules over the
Winkies, "small yellow people," and steals a silver slipper from Dorothy by
causing her to trip over a solid iron bar. It is clear to me that the wicked
witch of the west is the railroads run by the likes of Hill, Gould, Fisk, and
Stanford. By 1900 the western railroads were empires with vast ownership of
land, mines, energy resources, and financial assets. Railroads were so
powerful in the late 19th century that they ran many state legislatures.
Frank Norris wrote a famous novel of similar vintage as The Wonderful Wizard
of OZ about the struggle between farmers and railroads titled, The Octopus.
Upon Norris's untimely death, he was working on two other books in the
trilogy of economic conflict, one titled The Pit, about the Chicago commodity
exchanges and another, The Wolves, about big eastern financial interests.
Railroad power and economic conflict were hot topics around the time Baum
wrote his books. A locomotive has one lantern in the center, "one eye," has a
whistle "around it's neck," lays down iron bars, and operates in parts of the
country "without roads." That sounds much like Baum's description of the
Wicked Witch of the West.

Time does not allow a complete discussion of all the allegory, but the big
picture that emerges is that Dorothy could have always gone back to a
prosperous Kansas before the depression of '93 (the cyclone), if, after the
destruction of the power of eastern finance and western railroads, she had
expanded the money supply by more liberal coinage of silver. Ultimately,
electing a windbag as Wizard could not save Dorothy. She could not follow the
yellow brick road back to prosperity. Dorothy's ultimate path to salvation
was her silver slippers. The odyssey of gold and green stuff backed with gold
had been unnecessary. She could always have gone back with free use of
silver, one way to increase the stock of money.

While all writers on the economic allegory see a similar picture, there are
differences of opinion about who is what. Let me give you some of the
alternative interpretations in a summary form:

Scarecrow: The Grange, farmers
Toto: alcohol prohibitionists, Teetotalers (Toto was not put to sleep by the
poppies)
Tin Woodsman: Industry, industrial workers
Cowardly Lion: William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley
Wizard: William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, Marcus Hanna (Republican
Chairman)
Witch of the East: Grover Cleveland, Eastern Financial Interests
Witch of the West: William McKinley, Western Railroads


This short article just scratches the surface. If you are interested in
reading more about it, or getting a slightly different interpretation, you
might find the following readings useful:

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of OZ;

Gardner, Martin, and Nye, Russel B., The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1957;

Littlefield, Henry M., "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism," American
Quarterly, Spring 1964, pp. 47-58;

Rockoff, Hugh, "The Wizard of Oz as a Monetary Allegory," Journal of
Political Economy, August 1990, pp. 739-760;

Watts, Michael, and Smith, Robert F., "Economics in Literature and Drama,"
Journal of Economic Education, Summer 1989,
pp. 291-306.

========================================