Is it true that The Wizard of Oz was written as a political tract?
Nope. Baum was not very active in politics, and none of his other stories could be considered political works. The connection between The Wizard of Oz and the contemporary political landscape was not even raised until 1963, when a summer school teacher named Henry Littlefield, while trying to teach the 1896 Presidential election and the turn-of-the-century Populist movement to bored history students, stumbled upon the idea of using the characters and events of The Wizard of Oz as metaphors to teach the concepts. He and his students made a number of connections — the Scarecrow represented the farmers, the Tin Woodman the factory workers, the Wizard was President Grover Cleveland or Republican presidential candidate William McKinley, the Cowardly Lion was Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the silver shoes were the silver standard, the yellow brick road the gold standard, and so on — and Littlefield eventually wrote an article, “The Wizard of Oz: A Parable on Popul
