The Populist / Political Allegory Debate

From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Henry Littlefield's 1964 essay launched the famous debate that Oz encodes 1890s Populist politics: yellow brick road (gold), silver shoes (free silver), Scarecrow (farmers), Tin Woodman (industrial labor), Lion (William Jennings Bryan). Baum left no evidence confirming this, and scholars remain divided.
Chapter 2

The silver shoes on the yellow brick road--the foundational image cited by allegorists.

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Chapter 23

Silver shoes lost over the desert when Dorothy returns home--read by Populist critics as the failure of bimetallism.

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