The Dollar

United States dollars are the world's most widely traded currency and generally the standard by which all the world's currencies are judged, even if it does not happen to be the most stable at any given time. It was established as the nation's monetary unit in 1785. At the time, the United States was the first country to adopt a monetary system based on decimal units.

Most early dollars were coins that contained a significant amount of silver or gold. The country began printing paper money during the Civil War, particularly notes that were green in color, earning them the name "greenbacks." These dollars were tied to the value of precious metals, with gold, silver, or both just as the earlier coins were supposed to contain a "dollar's worth" of metal. This practice continued to 1974 under the supposed principle that the notes could be exchanged for the appropriate weight of the precious metal.

Wizard of Oz

It was this binding of the dollar to a commodity that led to the writing of the story "The Wizard of Oz" and a national controversy over the gold standard in the late 1800s. In the story, which is allegorical, certain characters are led down the "yellow brick road," a reference to gold. The story was supposed to advocate maintaining the dual standard of both silver and gold, which was advocated by Midwestern farm interests and would prompt inflation, supposedly making it easier for farmers to repay their debts.

The tin woodsman is supposed to represent heartless industry, the scarecrow, unthinking agricultural interests and so forth. These characters were being led away to the Wizard of "Oz" -- an abbreviation of "ounce" -- who would solve all their problems. The effort was unsuccessful as the gold standard was retained until 1971.

The Dollar Sign ($)

Another story about American currency with an interesting history is the dollar sign. It is used to denote amounts of American currency and is used by a number of other countries whose currencies are identified as "dollars." One story is that the symbol was a combination of the letters "P" and "S" for Spanish peso that got superimposed with the line of the "P" overlapping the "S."

Another tale is the symbol represents as superimposed "U" and "S." This is used as an explanation for the double lines crossing through the "S" symbol. It is not known definitively which, of either, story is correct.