What I learned today 12/01

You may not have heard this, but there's a theory that the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written as a political commentary on the Populist movement for a bimetallic monetary standard. Today, I researched this theory, and I came up with this: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written by L. Frank Baum as a children's book. Baum did not indicate that the book was a political commentary, and neither did anybody else, until 1964. High school teacher Henry Littlefield wrote an article in American Quarterly about this book, claiming that the the yellow brick road represented the gold standard, the silver slippers represented the silver standard, and the scarecrow, tin man, and the cowardly lion represented the farmer, the worker dehumanized by industrialization, and William Jennings Bryan respectively. While this all sounds well and good, Mr. Littlefield's theory is not recognized by literary historians, and is unlikely to have been Mr. Baum's intentions. 

So, next time your know-it-all friend tries to pull out "The Wizard of Oz is actually a political satire," you can totally tell them off.

Thank you Wikipedia.