Syndicate
Inflation, the Farmers Bankers
In the second half of the XIX century, the American farmers in the recently opened West ended up extremely in debt with the bankers in the country as a consequence of the technological revolution motivated by agriculture. The mechanic harvesters, the threshers and other large and expensive agricultural equipment, increased the productivity and production considerably, but the huge increase of demand caused the downfall of the prices in the agricultural products.
The farmers were in trouble, because while they were receiving less for their product, they had to continue making their huge payments for the loans they had received to buy the new equipment. To resolve the problem, most of them decided to support political candidates that were in favor of passing the United States from the gold pattern to a bimetallic standard of silver and gold. The most important of these candidates was the senator of Nebraska and two times democratic candidate to the presidency, William Jennings Bryant. He vigorously defended paper money that was backed with silver and gold, because this way the government could print more money that was backed only with gold. Even though he did not say it directly, it is pretty obvious he was looking for mayor inflation.
This political fight confronted the farmers from the West with the bankers in the East. Finally the bankers won and the United States remained in a pattern of only gold. However, the Americans are left with a great cultural endowment of that political fight over inflation, even though most people are not aware of it.
In 1964 a professor whose name was Henry Littlefield speculated that the site “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was political site that was set out to support opposition of the farmers of the gold pattern. In this story Dorothy is a little farmer girl in Kansas and she is supposed to represent the urban citizens in the United States, the Tin Man is supposed to represent the urban workers, the Lion is supposed to be William Jennings, whom the author thought was a weak leader, and the Scarecrow was supposed to be the American farmers. In this story the four of them travel towards the east following a yellow brick road, which is a road made of gold, so they can go and see The Wizard of Oz, who is supposed to be the evil bankers from the east that manipulated the economy by pulling threads and levers in the back of a curtain. Oz, as you may notice is the abbreviation for ounce, like gold ounce.
After Dorothy and her companions reveal the Wizard and the gold pattern as fraud, things start to work well once again. The Tin Man no longer has to be concerned about becoming oxidized – which means he is never going to lose his job, the Scarecrow is intelligent, the Lion gets his bravery back, and according to the site, Dorothy is able to get back home due to her silver slippers.