the wizard of oz Allegory

The Wizard of Oz was released August 25, 1939. In this story Dorothy, her little dog Toto, a Man of tin, a Scarecrow, and a cowardly lion all travel down a “yellow brick” road (a symbol for gold and a value to our currency) to find the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz. After a long journey, they finally get to him and find out that he is nothing more than a man behind a curtain speaking through a microphone and operating levers, knobs and switches to keep the illusion alive. Frank Baum, the writer of this tale was an editor of a small newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Baum had written on politics and current events in the late 1880s and early 1890s, a period that coincided with the formation of the Populist Party. Baum was sympathetic to the Populist movement, supported William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896, and consistently voted for Democratic candidates. The author himself, who was very close to his mother-in-law, was the secretary of his local women’s suffrage club and edited a newspaper that made women’s rights its key issue. At that time woman did not have the same rights as men.
This popular reading sees The Wizard of Oz as being about the collapse of the Populist Movement in the United States in the twentieth century. In this scenario, Dorothy represents the common citizen, the Tin Man is the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is a stand-in for farmers, and the Cowardly Lion is politician William Jennings Bryan who is known to be all talk and no action. They travel along the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard) to see the Wizard, who could represent President Grover Cleveland or William McKinley. “Oz” itself is the abbreviation for ounce, which is the standard for measuring gold. The green of the Emerald City represents the dollar. The Wicked Witch of the East represents bankers, and the Wicked Witch of the West, who during the story gets killed by water, is drought. This theory was an essay that was first put forth in the sixties by a