The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

• A Parable of Populism

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L. Frank Baum - The Writer of Oz
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L. Frank Baum

• L. Frank Baum was born near Syracuse, New York in
  1856 when Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) was
  President and the tension over slavery or
  free-soil for the West was coming to a head.
• With his wife and two sons, he moved to the
  little prairie town of Aberdeen, South Dakota in
  1887, where he edited the local weekly newsletter
  until it failed in 1891.
• Grover Cleveland was president (1885-1889) and
  the Interstate Commerce Act with its Interstate
  Commerce Commission had been passed and
  established to make railroad charges fair and
  reasonable for Western farmers and ranchers
• Benjamin Harrison barely beat Cleveland in the
  election of 1888 and under Harrison the Billion
  Dollar Congress became infamous and the Silver
  Purchase Act allowed for more silver coinage and
  more greenbacks supported by silver its
  failure to increase the money supply and the
  panic of 1893 led to its repeal
• In 1890, the McKinley Tariff Act had boosted the
  surpluses in the Federal Treasury to their
  highest levels in peacetime up to that timeonly
  to be lost to the greed of Congress and the Panic
  of 1893
• In 1891 Baum and his family moved to Chicago,
  Illinois, the new center of industry and Western
  farm goods and cattle in the American Midwest.

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Baum and the Populist Party

• Chicago was hard-hit by the Panic of 1893, and
  this seemed to push Baum into support of the new
  political party whose movement he had seen
  develop in the late 1880s, the Populist Party.
• POPULISM
• The Populist Party was formed in Omaha, Nebraska
  in 1892
• It is no accident that Populism arose from this
  state within which the turmoil of the
  Kansas-Nebraska Act and the theme of Popular
  Sovereignty had shaped the course of American
  history toward Civil War
• The Populist Party was made up of farmers,
  grangers, and former Greenback Party members
• The Greenback Party had supported the increase in
  the supply of greenbacks (the Federal paper
  currency of the Civil War) to lead to a rise in
  prices (inflation) so that farmers could earn
  more money to pay off their debts it attempted
  to get presidents into office in the 1876, 1880,
  and 1884 elections, disappearing into the
  Populist Party
• The Populists Supported the following measures
  increased money supply, free silver, more
  government regulation of business and industry,
  and increased political power for ordinary voters
• The Populist Party would put up presidential
  candidates in 1892 and 1896, and Baum
  participated in the campaigns.

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Baum and Theosophy

• Originally a Methodist, Baum joined the Episcopal
  Church in Aberdeen to participate in community
  theatricals.
• Later, in 1897, he and his wife, encouraged by
  Matilda Joslyn Gage (a radical suffragist who
  argued that women should get the vote not because
  of any superior morality, but because it was a
  natural right she was a critic of the Christian
  Church, but was also deeply religious, helping to
  write Elizabeth Cady Stantons The Womans
  Bible), became Theosophists.
• Theosophists held that all religions are attempts
  by some Spiritual Hierarchy to help humanity in
  evolving to greater perfection, and that each
  religion therefore has a portion of the truth.
• Baum's beliefs are often reflected in his
  writing, though the only mention of a church in
  his Oz books is the porcelin one which the
  Cowardly Lion breaks in the Dainty China Country
  in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
• The Baums also sent their older sons to Ethical
  Culture Sunday School in Chicago, which taught
  morality, not religion.

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Whos Who in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
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Henry M. Littlefields Analysis

• Dorothy represents the good-hearted, always
  hopeful, but also self-sufficient American
  individual of the Midwest.
• Wicked Witch of the East is the representation of
  the rich industrialists and bankers of the East
• Wicked Witch of the West is the representation of
  a cruel, uncaring, but intelligent nature
  enslaving the natives and the newcomers to the
  West
• The Munchkins are the little people under the
  control of these industrialists and bankers
• The Flying Monkeys are the Native Americans of
  the West
• The Scarecrow represents the wise but
  simple-minded or naïve Western Farmers
• The Tin Woodman represents the dehumanized or
  machine-like industrial workers of the North and
  the East
• The Cowardly Lion represents the Democratic
  /Populist presidential candidate of 1896, William
  Jennings Bryan
• The Yellow Brick Road is the representation of
  the Gold Standard supported by the Eastern
  industrialists and bankers
• The Silver Slippers on Dorothys feet are the new
  Silver Standard supported by the Populists and
  their predecessors
• The Emerald City is Washington, D.C. where all
  the golden roads lead
• The Wizard of Oz is any of the Gilded Age
  presidents from Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
  to William McKinley (1897-1901)

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Henry M. Littlefields Dorothy

• In Baums book, the character of Dorothy is not
  much like the character from the film.
• For example, in the film the Lion, the Scarecrow,
  and the Tinman come to her rescue near the end,
  however, it is Dorothy who rescues them from the
  Wicked Witch of the West in the book.
• Dorothy was not a damsel in distress by any
  means.

• The inspiration for this strong-willed Dorothy
  may have been the lecturer, writer, and political
  activist Mary Elizabeth Lease (1850-1933).
• Lease was a Populist who famously advised Kansas
  farmers to "raise less corn and more hell."
• She believed that large business would make the
  people of America slaves
• "Wall street owns the country. It is no longer a
  government of the people, by the people, and for
  the people, but a government of Wall Street, by
  Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great
  common people of this country are slaves, and
  monopoly is the master."

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Henry M. Littlefields Wicked Witch of the East

• Baum identifies the Wicked Witch of the East as
  the industrialists and bankers of Wall Street who
  ran the new mechanized industrial, consumer
  economy developing in the late 1800s.
• As the investors and financiers of the new
  industrial economy, they preferred gold as the
  monetary standard, keeping America in step with
  Europe and much of the rest of the world.

• The richest man on Earth, after he bought out his
  closest competitor, was J.P. Morgan, who would
  later fund the construction of the R.M.S.
  Titanic.
• Ridiculously rich, especially after selling out
  to Morgan, was Andrew Carnegie, who took his
  money and opened up new libraries all over the
  country, especially in the West.
• Last, but not least, was John D. Rockefeller,
  whose Standard Oil Company moved the industrial
  revolution into the modern petroleum-based
  economy of today.

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Henry M. Littlefields Wicked Witch of the West

• In Baums book, the Wicked Witch of the West is
  quite the coward she is afraid of the dark,
  never leaves her castle, and carries an umbrella
  for fear of rain which will kill her.
• In the film, she is the epitome of evil and she
  is also green in the book she is pale from lack
  of blood and is missing an eye.
• The West she rules is rough, hilly, and devoid of
  farms and houses, a wasteland.

• The Wicked Witch of the West is sentient and
  malign nature an intelligent and bad force.
• Afraid of Dorothy at first, because of the mark
  Glinda put on her forehead and the Silver shoes,
  she soon realizes that Dorothy is ignorant of the
  powers she has and can be manipulated into being
  her servant.
• Only in trying to get the shoes off Dorothy by
  tripping her does the Witch end up getting doused
  by Dorothys bucket of water.

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Henry M. Littlefields Munchkins

• The Munchkins are the little people, that is,
  the everyday, ordinary citizens who do not have
  much political power.
• In the film, they are literally depicted as
  little people, although clearly in the book the
  Tinman, being an industrial worker, is a
  Munchkin, too.
• Disempowered by the political power that the
  industrialists and bankers have at their
  fingertips because of their wealth, the
  Munchkins of America begin looking for a savior
  figure who will restore their notions of an
  America of opportunity and wealth.

Workers of the Lollipop Guild

• In Littlefields analysis, with the death of the
  Wicked Witch of the East, crushed under Dorothys
  house, a new hope is possible in the West, if
  only the Wicked Witch out there can be defeated,
  too.
• Dorothy, the self-sufficient, strong-willed
  Midwesterner, and Populist is the potential
  savior the people enslaved by the Eastern
  industrial economy have been looking for.

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Henry M. Littlefields Flying Monkeys

• Summoned by the Wicked Witch of the Wests golden
  cap, the Flying Monkeys are used by her to
  capture Dorothy and dispose of her friends.
• Littlefield asserts that they are a substitute
  for the plains Indians

Once we were a free people, living happily in the
great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating
nuts and fruit, and doing just as we pleased
without calling anybody master.

• Baum makes it clear that the monkeys are not bad,
  they are merely under the control of evil, thus
  they do evil.
• Historically, though, the American missionary
  zeal of converting the Native Americans to
  Christianity and civilizing them was matched
  only by the equally historical approach of
  systematically wiping them out.
• The Dawes Severalty Act of 1877 saw the Federally
  supervised dislocation and destruction of Naïve
  tribal life.

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Henry M. Littlefields Scarecrow

• The Scarecrow is the first character that Dorothy
  meets when she sets out on the Yellow Brick Road.
• Littlefield quotes William Allen Whites 1896
  article, Whats the Matter With Kansas, in which
  he accused Kansas farmers of ignorance,
  irrationality, and general muddle-headedness.

• Baum is clearly influenced by this article, but
  only to turn it upside down and have the
  Scarecrow be the wisest of the bunch.
• The Scarecrow is hitched up on a pole or cross,
  and this was a familiar image for farmers at the
  time.

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Henry M. Littlefields Tin Woodman

• Littlefield asserts that the Tin Woodman was a
  representation of the industrial workers of the
  East who had been dehumanized by the growing
  mechanization of the economy they had to work
  by the rhythm of the machines, not their own
  natural ones.
• In the story, the Tin Woodman was a man once, but
  he kept chopping off his own body parts, having
  them replaced by tin his need for a heart
  symbolizes his dehumanization.

• Baum did not invent the character out of thin
  air, instead, like most of the characters, he
  borrowed it from contemporary society.
• Sapolio, started in 1868 in New York City by
  Enoch Morgan Sons, was a pioneering company in
  the use of mass-marketing the Tinman ad is from
  1900.
• At the Columbia Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago,
  Illinois, an enterprising entrepreneur of the
  handmade car draws attention with his own Tinman.

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Henry M. Littlefields Yellow Brick Road

• The Yellow Brick Road is the symbol of the Gold
  Standard favored by the industrialists and
  bankers of the East.
• The conflict between the Western farmers and
  their Eastern creditors over falling crop prices
  and rising debt led to the formation of the
  Greenback Party in 1874 and then the Populist
  Party in 1892.
• Both parties sought to increase the money supply
  with silver in order to generate inflation to
  bring crop prices back up for the benefit of
  farmers.

In the film, the road begins like the end of a
swirling tornado

• Interestingly, there actually was a yellow brick
  road between Bethlehem and Normansville, New
  York.
• This road was constructed in 1863, but has since
  fallen into disuse, some of it being paved over
  with asphalt.
• An enormous yellow brick road exists today in
  the historic center of Sofia, Bulgaria it was
  constructed in 1917.

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Henry M. Littlefields Silver Slippers

• After the discovery of large silver reserves such
  as the Comstock Lode in the West immediately
  after the Civil War, one faction in American
  politics began to agitate for the federal
  government to allow silver to be minted freely at
  the rate of 1 per troy ounce (the official
  measurement for precious metals).
• The gold standard at the time valued gold at the
  official price of 20 per troy ounce, the result
  of this policy would have been a considerable
  increase in the money supply and inflation.

In the film, slippers are ruby red to contrast
better with the Yellow Brick Road

• The Republican Party opposed Free Silver, arguing
  that the best road to national prosperity was
  "sound money," a policy of attempting to maintain
  or even increase the dollar's value.
• This rewarded those who had accumulated wealth
  and provided them with a strong incentive to
  produce and accumulate even more, which they saw
  as the engine driving industrial economic growth.
  
• Farmers and other debtors wanted free silver to
  increase (161 oz) the money supply for inflation
  of crop prices so they could pay their debts.

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Henry M. Littlefields Emerald City

• Littlefield asserts that the Emerald City of Oz
  is Washington, D.C., the national capitol to
  which all the gold leads and all the wealth
  controls.
• Interestingly, a worry of some delegates to the
  Constitutional Convention in 1787 was that the
  new national capitol would be paved with streets
  of gold.
• The color green (emerald) is symbolic of the
  greenbacks printed by the Federal Treasury.

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Henry M. Littlefields Wizard of Oz

• Coming straight from the fair-grounds of Omaha,
  Nebraska, the Wizard of Oz symbolizes the
  American criterion for leadership he is able to
  be every-thing to everybody which means he is
  ultimately nothing but hot air.
• Littlefield states that he is a little bumbling
  old man who might be any president from Grant
  (1869) to McKinley (1901).
• It is significant that he hides behind all sorts
  of impressive though simplistic special effects
  and commits himself to nothing that he cannot
  deliver.

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William Jennings Bryan - The Cowardly Lion
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William Jennings Bryan

• William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem,
  Illinois the year that Abraham Lincoln won the
  presidential election, 1860.
• His father, Silas, served as a sort of "gentleman
  farmer" and William Jennings Bryan grew up in
  this agricultural setting
• In 1872, Silas left his law practice to run for
  the House of Representatives, with the backing of
  both the Democratic and Greenback parties, but
  lost to a Republican and returned to his law
  practice
• Bryan was religiously home schooled until age 10,
  holding for the rest of his life strong religious
  views like gambling and liquor were evil and
  sinful.
• Following high school, he entered Illinois
  College and graduated as valedictorian in 1881,
  and he then, like Baum, moved to Chicago and
  there studied law at Union Law College.
• Like Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan would become
  known for his exceptional oratorical skills,
  which, unlike his own father, landed him in the
  House of Representatives for Nebraska from 1891
  1895.
• It was in the House of Representatives that he
  advocated the adoption of free silver coinage at
  the fixed rate of 16 oz. to 1 oz. with gold.
• He lost his bid for the Senate in 1894 when
  Republicans swept the elections.

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William Jennings Bryan The Cross of Gold

• At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan
  galvan-ized the silver forces to defeat the
  Bourbon Democrats, who supported incumbent
  President Grover Cleveland (Grover the Bad) and
  who had long controlled the party.
• His famous Cross of Gold speech, delivered
  prior to voting for the presidential nominee,
  lambasted Western monied classes for supporting
  the Gold Standard at the expense of the average
  worker

Having behind us the producing masses of this
nation and the world, supported by the commercial
interests, the laboring interests and the toilers
everywhere, we will answer their demand for a
gold standard by saying to them You shall not
press down upon the brow of labor this crown of
thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a
cross of gold.

• Bryan's stance, directly opposing the
  conservative Cleveland and the Bourbon Democrats,
  united the agrarian and silver factions and won
  him the nomination.

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William Jennings Bryan The Populist Danger

• Republicans ridiculed Bryan as a Populist, mainly
  because they could see the danger that he
  represented, the loss of profits for
  industrialists and bankers.
• The Republicans nominated William McKinley on a
  program of prosperity through industrial growth,
  high tariffs and sound money, i.e., gold.
• However, Republicans discovered that, by August,
  Bryan was solidly ahead in the South and West,
  though far behind in the Northeast however he
  also appeared to be ahead in the Midwest, so the
  Republicans concentrated their efforts there.
• They counter-crusaded against Bryan, warning that
  he was a madman a religious fanatic surrounded
  by anarchists who would wreck the economy.
• By late September, the Republicans felt they were
  ahead in the decisive Midwest and began
  emphasizing that McKinley would bring prosperity
  to every group of Americans.
• McKinley scored solid gains among the middle
  classes, factory and railroad workers, prosperous
  farmers and among the German Americans who
  rejected free silver.

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William Jennings Bryan The Coward

• After the Spanish-American War, Bryan (who served
  in Florida and not in combat) came to denounce
  the imperialism that resulted from it. He, like
  Mark Twain, strongly opposed the annexation of
  the Philippines (though he did support the Treaty
  of Paris that ended the war).
• He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding
  himself in an awkward alliance with Andrew
  Carnegie and other millionaire anti-imperialists,
  forcing him to try to combine anti-imperialism
  with free silver

The nation is of age and it can do what it
pleases it can spurn the traditions of the past
it can repudiate the principles upon which the
nation rests it can employ force instead of
reason it can substitute might for right it can
conquer weaker people it can exploit their
lands, appropriate their property and kill their
people but it cannot repeal the moral law or
escape the punishment decreed for the violation
of human rights.

• Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or even a
  coward for not holding fast to his old themes,
  and it is from this that high school history
  teacher Henry Littlefield claimed that Bryan was
  echoed in the portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in
  Baums The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).

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Littlefields Emerald City Revisited

• Although it is clear that Washington, D.C. is a
  good candidate for the Emerald City, since it was
  the locus of power then as it is now, it is also
  clear that as far as an actual influence on his
  imagination, Chicago, and in particular the
  Columbian Exhibition of 1893 is far more like the
  Emerald City than the nations capitol.

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FIN