To get a handle on this, you can read
Money and Politics in the Land of Oz
By Quentin P. Taylor. Below is an excerpt from the Taylor paper:
"Dorothy, the protagonist of the story, represents an individualized
ideal of the American people. She is each of us at our best-kind but
self-respecting, guileless but levelheaded, wholesome but plucky. She is
akin to Everyman, or, in modern parlance, “the girl next door.” Dorothy
lives in Kansas, where virtually everything-the treeless prairie, the
sun-beaten grass, the paint-stripped house, even Aunt Em and Uncle
Henry-is a dull, drab, lifeless gray. This grim depiction reflects the
forlorn condition of Kansas in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when a
combination of scorching droughts, severe winters, and an invasion of
grasshoppers reduced the prairie to an uninhabitable wasteland. The
result for farmers and all who depended on agriculture for their
livelihood was devastating. Many ascribed their misfortune to the
natural elements, called it quits, and moved on. Others blamed the hard
times on bankers, the railroads, and various middlemen who seemed to
profit at the farmers’ expense. Angry victims of the Kansas calamity
also took aim at the politicians, who often appeared indifferent to
their plight. Around these economic and political grievances, the
Populist movement coalesced.
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Populism spread rapidly throughout
the Midwest and into the South, but Kansas was always the site of its
most popular and radical elements. In 1890, Populist candidates began
winning seats in state legislatures and Congress, and two years later
Populists in Kansas gained control of the lower house of the state
assembly, elected a Populist governor, and sent a Populist to the U.S.
Senate. The twister that carries Dorothy to Oz symbolizes the Populist
cyclone that swept across Kansas in the early 1890s. Baum was not the
first to use the metaphor. Mary E. Lease, a fire-breathing Populist
orator, was often referred to as the “Kansas Cyclone,” and the
free-silver movement was often likened to a political whirlwind that had
taken the nation by storm. Although Dorothy does not stand for Lease,
Baum did give her (in the stage version) the last name “Gale”-a further
pun on the cyclone metaphor.
The name of Dorothy’s canine companion, Toto, is also a pun, a play on
teetotaler. Prohibitionists were among the Populists’ most faithful
allies, and the Populist hope William Jennings Bryan was himself a
“dry.” As Dorothy embarks on the Yellow Brick Road, Toto trots “soberly”
behind her, just as the Prohibitionists soberly followed the Populists.
When Dorothy’s twister-tossed house comes to rest in Oz, it lands
squarely on the wicked Witch of the East, killing her instantly. The
startled girl emerges from the abode to find herself in a strange land
of remarkable beauty, whose inhabitants, the diminutive Munchkins,
rejoice at the death of the Witch. The Witch represents eastern
financial-industrial interests and their gold-standard political allies,
the main targets of Populist venom. Midwestern farmers often blamed
their woes on the nefarious practices of Wall Street bankers and the
captains of industry, whom they believed were engaged in a conspiracy to
“enslave” the “little people,” just as the Witch of the East had
enslaved the Munchkins. Populists viewed establishment politicians,
including presidents, as helpless pawns or willing accomplices. Had not
President Cleveland bowed to eastern bankers by repealing the Silver
Purchase Act in 1893, thus further restricting much-needed credit? Had
not McKinley (prompted by the wealthy industrialist Mark Hanna) made the
gold standard the centerpiece of his campaign against Bryan and free
silver?"
Now an excerpt from an economics textbook by Irivin B. Tucker:
"Gold is always a fascinating story: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was
first published in 1900 and this children's tale has been interpreted as
an allegory for political and economic events of the 1890s. For
example, the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard, Oz in the
title is an abbreviation for ounce, Dorothy is the naive public, Emerald
City symbolizes Washington, D.C., the Tin Woodman represents the
industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer, and the Cyclone is a
metaphor for a political revolution. In the end, Dorothy discovers
magical powers in her silver shoes (changed to ruby in the 1939 film) to
find her way home and not the fallacy of the Yellow Brick Road.
Although the author of the story, L. Frank Baum, never stated it was his
intention, it can be argued that the issue of the story concerns the
election of 1896. Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan
(the Cowardly Lion) supported fixing the value of the dollar to both
gold and silver (bimetallism), but Republican William McKinley (the
Wicked Witch) advocated using only the gold standard. Since McKinley
won, the United States remained on the Yellow Brick Road."
But not everyone agrees with this. Economist Bradley Hansen wrote an article titled
The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics in the Journal of Economic Education in 2002. Here is his conclusion:
"Rockoff noted that the empirical evidence that Baum wrote The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz as an allegory was slim, but he compared an allegorical
interpretation to a model and suggested that “economists should not have
any difficulty accepting, at least provisionally, an elegant but
controversial model” (Rockoff 1990, 757). He was right—we did not have
any difficulty accepting it. Despite Rockoff’s warning, we appear to
have accepted the story wholeheartedly rather than provisionally, simply
because of its elegance. It is as difficult to prove that The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz was not a monetary allegory as it is to prove that it was.
In the end, we will never know for certain what Baum was thinking when
he wrote the book. I suggest that the vast majority of the evidence
weighs heavily against the allegorical interpretation. It should be
remembered that no record exists that Baum ever acknowledged any
political meanings in the story and that no one even suggested such an
interpretation until the 1960s. There certainly does not seem to be
sufficient evidence to overwhelm Baum’s explicit statement in the
introduction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that his sole purpose was to
entertain children and not to impress upon them some moral. The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a great story. Telling students that the
Populist movement was like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz does seem to catch
their attention. It may be a useful pedagogical tool to illuminate the
debate on bimetallism, but we should stop telling our students that it
was written for that purpose."
I found a review of the book in the NY Times from 1900 and it does not
mention anything about OZ having political or economic meaning. The book
was also made into a musical a few years later and none of the reviews
of the musical mention any political or economic meaning.
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