The Secret Of Oz Page #8

In 1888 L. Frank Baum moved his family to Aberdeen Dakota territory to open a general store.

Baum sympathized with the local farmers hard hit by the combination of scarce money and severe drought.

Unfortunately he got so deeply in debt that the bank foreclosed on the store.

In 1890 Baum at age 34 started a local newspaper. It was an election year and politics was a hot topic in the mid west.

The 1890 congressional elections were a landslide for democratic party; only 3 miles south of Aberdeen South Dakota in Omaha, Nebraska, one of the newly elected congressmen was William Jennings Bryan, the man who would become known as the lion of the Free Silver movement.

A few years later L. Frank Baum would closely follow the mediocre career of Bryan and even create the character of the cowardly Lion to symbolize his political career.

The year of 1890 saw no economic relief in Dakota territory, so Baum's newspaper folded at the end of the year.

In 1891 Baum moved his family to Chicago where he took a job at the Chicago Evening post.

Meanwhile back on the national front the bankers were ready to unleash additional monetary restrictions: their methods and motives were laid out with shocking clarity in a memo sent out by the American Bankers Association, the ABA, in 1891.

Notice that this memo calls for bankers to create a depression on a certain date three years in the future. Here's how it read in part. Note the telling reference to England, home of the mother bank:

"On Sept. 1, 1894 we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On Sept. 1st we will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well at our own price. Then the farmers will become tenants as in England."

The next year a leaflet known as "The panic circular" was issued by the American Bankers Association, and was subsequently published in many newspapers...

it urged all national banks throughout the United States to help deepen the money panic:

"Silver, silver certificates, and treasury bonds (that is so easy to say, all the Government's money) must be retired and [interest bearing] National Bank Notes made the only money. You will at once retire one-third of your circulation (your paper money) and call in one-half of your loans. Be careful to make a monetary [emergency] among your patrons, especially among influential businessmen. The future [of our debt-based money system] depends upon immediate action, as there is an increasing sentiment in favor of Government legal-tender notes and silver coinage."

The depression actually began in 1893 with what historians now call "The Panic of 1893".

It all started when European investors demanded payment only in gold, draining gold reserves in the US.

Again, america was being forced by the Europeans into a gold-only money system. The results were as inevitable as before: a deep depression quickly set in as the major holders of gold in Europe choked the life out of the American economy.

In total over 15,000 companies and 500 banks failed, most of them in the west.

Unemployment sky-rocketed, 600% up to over 18% nation-wide by 1894.

Farmers in the mid-west were mad and the first of many significant marches on Washington to come, farmers assembled in Ohio and marched peacefully to the nation's Capitol.

Called Coxey's Army, after the leader Jacob Coxey, they demanded a return to the system of debt-free government-issued greenback money.

With the winter of 1894 coming on thousands of farms were foreclosed on. As a result many families had to walk away from recently built homes.

It's sad that the image of the vacant victorian house originated from this era.

These depressions could be controlled fairly easily with america on the gold-standard and the banks own most of the gold.

Since gold is scarce it's one of the easiest commodities to manipulate.

People wanted silver money legalized so they could escape the stranglehold the money changers on gold-backed money.

People wanted silver money re-instated, reversing Mr. Syed's act of 1873 by then called "The Crime of '73".

Bankers and financial institutions tended to oppose silver as part of the backing of the currency, they didn't have control over the mining and production of silver in the west, and without that control they couldn't have the overall control they liked over the currency.

Most monetary reform advocates today argue that the solution to our current economic woes is a return to a gold standard.

This would require that our money be backed by a certain percentage of gold. Interestingly they use the same term that bankers of the late 19th century used, they call gold-backed money "honest money" and "constitutional money".

I worked for a gold either for a short time, and I would sit there in a room with forty people calling and trying to sell gold all day long, on the phone, and everyone was telling them: "get rid of that worthless money and buy the good money". Then it comes into the mountain everyone who had walked into the office wanted the bad money for their pay.

As the depression deepened and big banks continued to buy up farmers' foreclosed properties, a lion emerged out of Nebraska to try to break their deadly chokehold on the American economy.

When he was home he was writing his first children story.

On the political front the presidential campaign of 1896 would see the explosive money issue dominate the election.

The farmers of the west were sick and tired of the bankers not lending out their gold money. In fact most of the money that was still in circulation was about 300 million dollars worth of Lincoln's old greenbacks.

A virtually unknown former congressman from Nebraska, William Jennings Brian, ran for president as a democrat and embraced the free silver issue which the populist party had unsuccessfully tried earlier. Bryan's father had been an ardent greenbacker.

The New York bankers were well aware of the anger and tried to control the 1896 democratic convention.

An article said to have been published in a bankers' magazine in 1892 shows not only their attempts to manipulate the politics of the day but also their deep contempt for the average american voter, whom they referred to as the inferior social stratum of society:

"We must go forward cautiously and consolidate each acquired position, because already the inferior social stratum of society is giving unceasing signs of agitation. Let us make use of the courts. When, through the law's intervention, the common people shall have lost their homes, they will be more easy to control and more easy to govern, and they shall not be able to resist the strong hand of the Government acting in accordance with the leaders of finance."

As the quote continues notice how they try to manipulate the population into focusing on diversionary political issues.

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