>>2773 The Silver Slippers: The Populist Solution to the Money Question
The Greenback Party was later absorbed into the Populist Party, which took up the cause against tight money in the 1890s. Like the Greenbackers, the Populists argued that money should be issued by the government rather than by private banks. William Jennings Bryan, the Populists’ loquacious leader, gave such a stirring speech at the Democratic convention that he won the Democratic nomination for President in 1896. Outgoing President Grover Cleveland was also a Democrat, but he was an agent of J. P. Morgan and the Wall Street banking interests. Cleveland favored money that was issued by the banks, and he backed the bankers’ gold standard. Bryan was opposed to both. He argued in his winning nomination speech: "We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business. ...[W]hen we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and . . . until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished." He concluded with these famous lines: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
Since the Greenbackers’ push for government-issued paper money had failed, Bryan and the “Silverites” proposed solving the liquidity problem in another way. The money supply could be supplemented with coins made of silver, a precious metal that was cheaper and more readily available than gold. Silver was considered to be “the money of the Constitution.” The Constitution referred only to the “dollar,” but the dollar was understood to be a reference to the Spanish milled silver dollar coin then in common use. The slogan of the Silverites was “16 to 1”: 16 ounces of silver would be the monetary equivalent of 1 ounce of gold. Ounces is abbreviated oz, hence “Oz.” The Wizard of the Gold Ounce (Oz) in Washington was identified by later commentators as Marcus Hanna, the power behind the Republican Party, who controlled the mechanisms of finance in the administration of President William McKinley. (Karl Rove, political adviser to President George Bush Jr., reportedly took Hanna for a role model.)
Frank Baum, the journalist who turned the politics of his day into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, marched with the Populist Party in support of Bryan in 1896. Baum is said to have had a deep distrust of big-city financiers; but when his dry goods business failed, he bought a Republican newspaper, which had to have a Republican message to retain its readership. That may have been why the Populist message was so deeply buried in symbolism in his famous fairytale. Like Lewis Carroll, who began his career writing uninspiring tracts about mathematics and politics and wound up satirizing Victorian society in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Baum was able to suggest in a children’s story what he could not say in his editorials. His book contained many subtle allusions to the political and financial issues of the day. The story’s inspirational message was a product of the times as well. Commentators trace it to the theosophical movement, another popular trend of which Baum was an active member. Newly imported from India, it held that reality is a construct of the mind. What you want is already yours; you need only to believe it, to “realize” it or “make it real.” Looking at the plot of this familiar fairytale, then, through the lens of the contemporary movements that inspired it...