By the close of the nineteenth century, it seemed that Americans had chosen the road to “Oz.” The antimonopolist alternative was defeated politically and economically. Voters trusted William McKinley's promises of industrial prosperity on the gold standard. That trust was rewarded when the world gold supply rose and monetary contraction finally stopped. Further, the assault of the hinterlands on Washington ended with the collapse of Populism, the rise in voter apathy, and Republican hegemony. In America, as in Oz, the rule of gold was secured, sectional divisions were retained, and political dissension dissipated.

The antimonopolist vision – in which equalized investment opportunities and a flexible monetary standard shifted economic development away from geographical and industrial concentration toward a regionally dispersed, mixed agrarian-industrial economy – was lost after the election of 1896.