紙の上のエメラルド・シティ――<i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i>と紙幣制度――

<p>Since 1964, when Henry M. Littlefield argued the case for seeing it an allegory of the political and economic situation at the time Frank Baum was writing, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been discussed by many succeeding critics as a story depicting the monetary debate between gold standard and bimetallism. The last decade of 19th century saw a furious political debate concerning which metal should be the standard of American money: gold alone or both gold and silver. Baum’s Oz, which is full of references to many gold and silver articles, can be read, as Littlefield and other critics do, as an allegory of the conflict between the case for the gold standard and that for bimetallism. Taking these readings into account, however, this paper tries to present another monetary allegorical reading of Oz: Oz as an allegory of paper money.</p><p>Dorothy and her three companions travel to the Emerald City, where everything appears green, the color that United States bank notes have borne since the first Demand Note issued in 1862. There they met the wizard Oz, who turns out to be just a human and not a wizard at all. They call Oz a “humbug” and this term reminds us of paper money because in an earlier age it was used to mock people who supported the use of paper money. Rather than just granting their wishes for free, Oz demands that Dorothy and her friends kill the Wicked Witch of the West in return. This transaction is based on the logic of economy, involving as it does an exchange of equivalents.</p><p>Oz cannot give the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion what each of them wants. Being just a human, not a wizard, it is beyond him. While he is unable to supply their wants in a concrete sense, he does indirectly furnish them with an approximation of their desires. He gives them not what they want but “what they think they want,” and he “makes them believe” they get what they want. This is similar to the mechanism through which paper money works. Paper money, which does not have any intrinsic value, encourage people suspend their disbelief, and makes them willing to accept it as something valuable. Just as in the Emerald City where everything falsely appears green thanks to the green glasses people wear, paper money, which lacks intrinsic value, is accepted as something valuable, thanks to its ‘wizardly power.’</p><p>Before Oz, Baum foreshadows this device in an essay written earlier in his career in which horses are equipped with green goggles so that their grass can be replaced with shavings. This episode has an idea in common with a famous illustration by Thomas Nast. David Wells’ Robinson Crusoe’s Money warned of the potential inflation associated with paper money and depicted how useless paper money not backed by real metal would be in the end. However, the famous illustration by Thomas Nast, entitled “Milk-Tickets for Babies, in Place of Milk,” that appears in Wells’ work and is intended to lend support to his theory, unintentionally exposes the limit of Wells’ theory. Distinct from any other commodities, what is expected of money is to work as a medium of exchange, a scale of value and a means of saving, and its value is not based on consumption or use. Therefore, at least in this respect, whether it has intrinsic value or not is somewhat irrelevant. Money is the representation of value, and it is the only medium whose work is representation itself.</p><p>It draws further suggestive parallels to examine the contemporary paper money of the 19th century.</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>