Wizard of Oz Silver-Gold Metaphors

The History of Money by Jack Weatherford, 1997, Excerpt

The most memorable work of literature to come from the debate over gold and silver in the United States was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, by journalist L. Frank Baum, who greatly distrusted the power of the city financiers and who supported a bimetallic dollar based on both gold and silver.

After the cyclone violently rips Dorothy and her dog out of Kansas and drops them in the East, Dorothy sets out on the gold road to fairyland, which Baum calls Oz, where the wicked witches and wizards of banking operate. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, who represents the American farmer; the Tin Woodman, who represents the American factory worker; and the Cowardly Lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan.

Marcus Hanna, the power behind the Republican Party and the McKinley administration, was the wizard controlling the mechanisms of finance in the Emerald City. He was the Wizard of the Gold Ounce - abbreviated, of course to Wizard of Oz - and the Munchkins were the simpleminded people of the East who did not understand how the wizard and his fellow financiers pulled the levers and strings that controlled the money, the economy, and the government.

In the end, all the American citizens had to do was expose the wizard and his witches for the frauds they were, and all would be well in the bimetal monetary world of silver and gold.

In the book, Dorothy’s magic silver slippers got her back to Kansas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7933175.stm

Elite Propaganda

Power Elite Series

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, 1956, Excerpts

The rise of the power elite rests upon the transformation of the publics of America into a mass society. Life in a society of masses implants insecurity and furthers impotence; it makes men uneasy and vaguely anxious; it isolates the individual from the solid group; it destroys firm group standards. Acting without goals, the man in the mass just feels pointless.

As the scale of institutions has become larger and more centralized, so has the range and intensity of the opinion-makers’ efforts. The means of opinion-making have paralleled in range and efficiency of the other institutions that cradle the modern society of masses. The mass media, especially television, encroach upon the small-scale discussion, and destroy the chance for the reasonable and leisurely and human interchange of opinion.

Alongside the elite, there is the propagandist, the publicity expert, the public-relations man, [Edward Bernays] who controls the very formation of public opinion. The greatest kind of propaganda with which America is beset, the greatest at least in terms of volume and loudness, is commercial propaganda for soap and cigarettes and automobiles; it is to such things or rather to Their Names, that this society most frequently sings its loudest praises.

[1] The media tell the man in the mass who he is – they give him identity.

[2] They tell him what he wants to be – they give him aspirations.

[3] They tell him how to get that way – they give him technique.

[4] They tell him how to feel that he is that way even when he is not – they give him escape.

Mammon Portrait

Mammon by George Frederick Watts, 1884: This is one of a series of paintings in which Watts questioned the purpose of modern commerce and its dehumanizing effects on the nation. Mammon, the God of money, is represented as a tyrant on a throne, nursing money bags on his lap. Two naked youths are crushed by the power of this monster. Watts subtitled the picture "Dedicated to his Worshippers".

Various ‘Mammon’ Mentions:

No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. [Matthew 6:24]

And the devil of Avarice and Riches is called Mammon [Malleus Maleficarum - The Witches Hammer - by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, 1489]

“I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.” [E.V Debs, 1918, Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act]

“Let us be frank in acknowledgement of the truth that many amongst us have made obeisance to Mammon, that the profits of speculation, the easy road without toil, have lured us from the old barricades. To return to higher standard of living we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.” [President Franklin Roosevelt, 1943-1945]

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God. [Logan P. Smith]

Mammon - - god of the world's leading religion. [Ambrose Bierce]

Peasants accused one another of accepting help from various demons, such as Lucifer, Cadaver, Mammon, Exterminator, and many others. The Evil Ones surely picked only those who had already displayed a sufficient supply of inner hatred and maliciousness. [The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, 1965]

And so here we are, the richest of the rich, all sub-species of American Mammon, each one, no doubt, wondering from time to time, how to become great – since we are already rich. [The Devil Tree by Jerzy Kosinski, 1973]

Proving that one could serve God and Mammon at the same time, the church paid his wages in untaxable cash. [The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2017]

The Worship of Mammon - Evelyn de Morgan (British, 1850-1919)