The Secret Of Oz Page #11

On the track to Oz the cowardly lion falls asleep in a field of poppies. But why poppies?

The poppies were representative of the opium words Bryan was opposed to.

"Poppies are a source of opium, and falling asleep in the field of poppies symbolizes the populist fear that Bryan would fall asleep in the midst of these new issues."

The Lion was rescued from this field where he was sleeping by a bunch of little field mice who, it's said in the book, alone of course they wouldn't have been able to move this giant lion but when they got together they were able to move him together. So this is like an excellent image of the populist movement, how a lot of people who had no power in themselves, if they knew the direction in which they wanted to go, could move mountains, you know, could actually have a major impact.

There's a great deal of symbolism in the book that was lost in the movie that there's just so much of it that there's just so much of it that there's just no way that it couldn't have been reflective of this monetary reform movement. And some of it is just very pointed, like it couldn't mean anything else:

for instance there's one passage, it's when they get to Oz and she's shown through a room in a palace, she goes through seven passages and up three flights of stairs;

well it just means nothing unless it means the Crime of '73 which to all populists meant...this act which had revoked the ability of the people to bring their own silver to the mint:

"It is not surprising that the layout of the Emerald Palace should reflect the numbers seven and three. The Crime of '73 was a crucial event in populist monetary history."

The two wicked witches were the east and the west, the two banking powers at that time were Rockefeller and Morgan and J.P. Morgan headed the wall-street bankers in New York and ultimately got his funding from Europe.

The wicked witches of the west could represent the Rockefeller interest based in Cleveland Rockefeller dominant in the west and Morgan's dominant in the east.

So when Dorothy first lands in her house and kills the witch she gets the slippers which are the power; actually the power of the witch.

"They're no used to you! Give them back to me! Give them back! Keep staying inside of them! Their magic must be powerful! Or she wouldn't want them so badly!"

So the power of the witch is the power to create money, Dorothy doesn't realize that she now has that power in her own feet, the power to create money.

Dorothy and her troop are then told that they must go kill the wicked witch of the west. "Bring me the broom stick of the witch of the west! But if we do that we'll have to kill her to get it!"

She hurls near biblical plagues with the group: wolves, and crows, and black bees, all of which they defeat.

Finally she's forced to use her golden cap, another symbol of the gold standard to call the winged monkeys which capture the group.

Dorothy eventually kills the witch by pouring a bucket of water on her, suggesting the liquidity that silver money would add to the economy, breaking the stranglehold of the gold money system.

With additional liquidity the economic fortune of those people could be improved.

People wanted government-issued money, silver in this case. The banks had forced america onto a gold money standard, then they could cause a depression any time they wanted to merely by reducing the supply of gold money.

When they return victorious to the wizard Dorothy is asked to sew the wizard's getway balloon out of green cloth. Then the wizard accidentally leaves without her.

Fortunately Dorothy is able to seek out Glenda, the good witch of the north: "Oh will you help me? Can you help me?"

Dorothy is then told that the power to solve the problems has been with her all along, she only needs to click the heels of her silver shoes together three times.

Like Dorothy america itself had the power to solve its problems simply by expanding the money supply government-issued silver money.

When Dorothy finally gets back to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Kansas, she finds that the silver shoes have fallen off her feet just as the silver issue was vanishing in the late 1890s.

and Balm was right: the silver cause would become a distant memory once the United States became firmly committed to the gold standard with the passage of the gold standard act in 1900, the same year the wonderful wizard of oz was published.

L. Frank Baum never admitted embedding the symbols of monetary reform in "The Wizard of Oz", consequently some fans vehemently denied that there is any connection.

However the period immediately after the book's release may offer some help for clues regarding his motives: references to current affairs appear in a number of Baum's later works.

In 1901 Baum worked on a comic opera "The octopus or the tidal trust", this was why he was still trying to break away from writing any additional Oz books.

However, the public pressure became too great as "The Wizard of Oz" continued to grow in popularity. Eventually Baum appeared to lose all interest in politics as he became wealthy from having written what would become the most popular children's story in history.

So what can we do about this?

There are several alternatives that fall into two general categories: actions at the federal level, and actions at the state level.

There are three basic federal level solutions all of which have at their core that government should issue and control the quantity of money, and commercial banks can only lend out the money they actually have.

British citizen James Roberston splits up the money power between two competing governmental bodies: the british government would publish monetary objectives approved by parliament - for example an inflation range of 2 to 3 percent - then the bank of england would create just enough debt-free money to achieve those objectives; it would then give this money to the government to spend in the economy by the normal budgetary process:

"This is an agency of society, it's a public agency acting in the public interest, and it's acting in the public interest to achieve objectives given to it by the elected government. And it should be at professional arms-legs from the elected people themselves, because the legislators are going to as much money as they can into that local economy, and if it's a question of a national election they will want to manipulate decisions about the money supply in favor of keeping them in power. It seems to me you can't ignore that. It's a fact, a fact of life."

Commercial banks would still be in operation but could only lend out the money they have, then they would have to compete for additional money on the open market just as other corporations have to compete in the market to buy the materials they use.

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