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But when POTUS mentioned McKinley it made me wonder if McKinley was the first president assassinated by the Deep State...
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You may know more about economics than you think.
One of the biggest issues of both the 1896 and 1900 Presidential elections (won by McKinley, assassinated 1901) was whether the USA should start minting silver coins in addition to gold.
The WIZARD OF OZ (Baum, 1900) was an allegory of this. Baum was in favor of SILVER. Dorothy's slippers were SILVER, not ruby (in the book).
Wm. Mckinley was was probably none other than the WIZARD.
Here is a summary of a scholarly article decoding all this stuff:
In 1900 L. Frank Baum published a children's tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In it, a little girl from the Midwest plains is transported by a tornado to the Land of Oz and accidentally kills the Wicked Witch of the East, setting the Munchkins free. Yearning to return home, she takes the witch's silver shoes (1) and follows the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, in search of the Wizard who will help her. She and the companions she meets on her way ultimately discover that the wizard is a sham, and that the silver shoes alone could have returned her to Aunt Em. Littlefield (1964) and Rockoff (1990) have decoded Baum's tale as an allegory on the monetary politics of late nineteenth century America. The silver shoes are the silver standard, the witch of the East represents the "monied interest" of the East Coast, the scarecrow and the tin man are the farmers and workers of the Midwest, while the cowardly lion is their unsuccessful champion, William Jennings Bryan. The yellow brick road is the gold standard, whose fallacy is exposed by Dorothy's triumphant return home borne by the silver shoes.
WE NOW RETURN CONTROL OF YOUR TV SET TO Q.
Not exactly. (Mrs. C is a coin colector).
Free silver was a major economic policy issue in late-19th-century America. Its advocates were in favor of an expansionary monetary policy featuring the unlimited coinage of silver into money on demand, as opposed to strict adherence to the more carefully fixed money supply implicit in the gold standard.
But silver coins were always part of the monetary system.
The Morgan dollar was a United States dollar coin minted from 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921. It was the first standard silver dollar minted since production of the previous design, the Seated Liberty dollar, ceased due to the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873, which also ended the free coining of silver. There was only a five year gap in the minting of dollar coins. Other silver coins continued to be minted
It was the free coining of silver that was the issue. Proponents of free silver sought coinage of silver dollars at a fixed weight ratio of 16-to-1 against dollar coins made of gold. Because the actual price ratio of the two metals was substantially higher in favor of gold at the time,(Like now) most economists warned that the less valuable silver coinage would drive the more valuable gold out of circulation.
It's a fascinating subject and the debate went on for decades.
The debate over silver lasted from the passage of the Fourth Coinage Act in 1873, which demonetized silver and was called the "Crime of '73" by opponents, until 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act completely overhauled the U.S. monetary system.
Interesting. Thanks.