In the study of Populism on the Web see also the wonderful site
abusaleh.com, specifically the Wizard of Oz article by Peter Dreier professor at Occidental College. If I could have afforded a private school I definitely should have gone there.
This
Iraq article covers the censorship and propaganda making going on in the occupied territory.
A political allegory of failed American populist movement
Peter Dreier
The Plain Dealer, Sunday, March 5, 1995
Almost all Americans know the characters from “the Wizard of Oz.” But few
are aware that the story originally was written as a political allegory.
It may seem harder to believe than the Emerald City, but the Tin Woodsman
represents the American industrial worker, the Scarecrow the struggling
farmer and the Wizard the president, who is powerful only as long as he
succeeds in deceiving the people.
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written by Lyman Frank Baum in 1900, during
the collapse of the Populist movement. Through the Populist party, Midwestern
farmers, in alliance with some urban workers, had challenged the banks,
railroads and other economic interests that squeezed farmers through low
prices, high freight rates and continued indebtedness.
The Populists advocated government ownership of railroads and the telephone
and telegraph industries. They also wanted silver coinage. Their power grew
during the 1893 depression, the worst in US history until then, as farm
prices sank to new lows and unemployment was widespread.
In 1894, Jacob S. Coxey, a Populist lumber dealer from Massillon, Ohio, led a
mass march of unemployed workers to Washington to demand a federal works
program. That same year, President Grover Cleveland called in federal troops
to put down the nationwide Pullman strike -- at that time, the largest strike
in American history. As the Populists saw things, the monopolies were growing
richer, the workers and farmers, ever poorer.
In the 1894 congressional elections, the Populist party got almost 40% of the
vote, It looked forward to winning the presidency, and the silver standard,
in 1896.
But in that elections, which revolved around the issue of gold vs. silver,
Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan, a congressman, from Nebraska, and a
gifted orator, ran again in 1900, but the Populist strength was gone.
Baum viewed these events from both rural South Dakota, where he edited a
local weekly, and urban Chicago, where he wrote Oz. He mourned the
destruction of the fragile alliance between the Midwestern farmers (The
Scarecrow) and the urban industrial workers (the Tin Woodsman), along with
Bryan (the Cowardly Lion with a roar but little else), they had been taken
down the yellow brick road (the gold standard) that led nowhere. Each
journeyed to Emerald City seeking favors from the Wizard of Oz (the
president), Dorothy, the symbol of Everyman, went along with them, innocent
enough to see the truth before the others.
Along the way they meet the Wicked Witch of the East who, Baum tells us, had
kept the little Mnchkin people “in bondage fro many years, making them slave
for her night and day.” She also had put a spell on the Tin Woodsman, once an
independent and hardworking man, so that each time he swung his axe, it
chopped off a different part of his body. Lacking another trade, he “worked
harder than ever,” becoming like a machine, incapable of love, yearning for a
heart. Another witch, the Wicked Witch of the West, clearly symbolizes the
large industrial corporations.
Like Coxey’s Populist army en route to Washington, the small group heads
toward Emerald City where the Wizard rules from behind a paper-mache facade.
Oz, of course, is the abbreviation for ounce, the standard measure for gold.
Like all good politicians, the Wizard can be all things to all people.
Dorothy sees him as an enormous head. The Scarecrow sees a gossamer fairy.
The Woodsman sees an awful beast, the Cowardly Lion, a ball of fire, so
fierce and glowing he could scarcely bear to gaze upon it”
Later, however, when they confront the Wizard directly, they see he is
nothing more than “a little man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face.”
“I have been making believe,” the Wizard confesses, “I’m just a common
man.” but the Scarecrow adds, “You’re more than that... you’re a humbug.”
“It was a great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room,” admits
the Wizard, a former ventriloquist and circus balloonist from Omaha.
This was Baum’s ultimate Populist message. The powers that be survive by
deception. Only people’s ignorance allows the powerful to manipulate and
control them.
Dorothy returns to Kansas with the magical help of her Silver Shoes (the
silver issue), but when she gets to Kansas she realizes her shoes “had fallen
off in her flight through the air, and were lost forever in the desert.”
Still, she is safe at home with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, simple farmers.
Baum realized perhaps that the silver issue had been lost, but that silver
was not the crucial issue anyway. The Populists had been led astray -- the
real question was that of power. With the Wizard of Oz dethroned, the
Scarecrow (farmers) rules Emerald City, the Tin Woodsman (industrial workers)
rules in the East and the Lion (Bryan) protects smaller beasts in “a small
old forest.” In Baum’s vision farm interests gain political power, industry
moves West, and Bryan, perhaps, returns to Congress.
Baud’s characters resonated with American popular culture at the turn of the
century. He even displayed an early sympathy for American Indians of the
plains, symbolized in the story by the Winged Monkeys in the West, whose
leader tells Dorothy, “Once... we were a free people, living happily in the
great forest... This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of the
clouds to rule over the land.”
Dreier is a professor of politics of Occidental College in Los Angeles
