The Wizard of OZ, Hidden Meaning?

I'm just going to copy and paste this from Wikipedia. From what I have learned for other sources, this Wikipedia piece is accurate. I learned about it and was intrigued because The Wizard of OZ is one of my favorite movies of all time! What I didn't see in the article was what The Tin Man and The Scarecrow represent. From what I heard, they symbolize Minors and Farmers. 
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In a 1964 article, educator and historian Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book of the late 19th-century debate regarding monetary policy. According to this view, for instance, the "Yellow Brick Road" represents the gold standard, and the silver slippers (ruby in the 1939 film version) represent the Silverite sixteen to one silver ratio (dancing down the road).

The thesis achieved considerable popular interest and elaboration by many scholars in history, economics and other fields, but is not universally accepted. Certainly the 1901 musical version of "Oz", written by Baum, was for an adult audience and had numerous explicit references to contemporary politics, though in these references Baum seems just to have been "playing for laughs." The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned, by name, President Theodore Roosevelt and other political celebrities. For example, the Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller," the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened."

Littlefield's knowledge of the 1890s was thin, and he made numerous errors, but since his article was published, scholars in history, political science and economics have asserted that the images and characters used by Baum closely resemble political images that were well known in the 1890s. Quentin Taylor, for example, claimed that many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities, events and ideas of the 1890s. Dorothy—naïve, young and simple—represents the American people. She is Everyman, led astray and seeking the way back home. Moreover, following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which may symbolize the fraudulent world of greenback paper money that only pretends to have value. It is ruled by a scheming politician (the Wizard) who uses publicity devices and tricks to fool the people (and even the Good Witches) into believing he is benevolent, wise and powerful when really he is selfish and cruel. He sends Dorothy into severe danger hoping she will rid him of his enemy the Wicked Witch of the West. He is powerless and, as he admits to Dorothy, "I'm a very bad Wizard."

Littlefield and other historians have suggested that Baum modeled the Cowardly Lion after politician William Jennings Bryan, or politicians in general. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or a coward, which became the basis of the character.

Taylor also claimed a sort of iconography for the cyclone: it was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. It was also used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval.

Other putative allegorical devices of the book include the Wicked Witch of the West as a figure for the actual American West; if this is true, then the monkeys could represent another western danger: Native Americans. Baum even displayed an early sympathy for Native Americans of the plains, symbolized in the story of the winged monkeys in the West, whose leader tells Dorothy, "Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land."

Other writers have used the same evidence to lead to precisely opposite allegorical interpretations.

Apart from intentional symbolism, scholars have speculated on the sources of Baum's ideas and imagery. The "man behind the curtain" could be a reference to automated store window displays of the sort famous at Christmas season in big city department stores; many people watching the fancy clockwork motions of animals and mannequins thought there must be an operator behind the curtain pulling the levers to make them move (Baum was the editor of the trade magazine read by window dressers).

Additional allegories have been developed, without claims that they were originally intended by Baum. The text has been treated as a theosophical allegory. In 1993 W. Geoffrey Seeley recast the story as an exercise in treachery, suggesting the supposed "Good Witch Glinda" used an innocent, ignorant patsy (Dorothy) to overthrow both her own sister witch (Witch of the West) and the Wizard of Oz, leaving herself as undisputed master of all four corners of Oz: North, East, West and (presumably Oz being) South. "She even showed her truest Machiavellian genius by allowing the story to be entitled after the weakest of her three opponents." Glinda could have told Dorothy that the "ruby slippers would easily do the job [of returning Dorothy to her beloved home] but decided that a destabilizing force such as Dorothy might be just the thing to shake up her other rival [The West Witch]." Kassinger, in her book Gold: From Greek Myth to Computer Chips, purports that "The Wizard symbolizes bankers who support the gold standard and oppose adding silver to it... Only Dorothy's silver slippers can take her home to Kansas", meaning that by Dorothy not realizing that she had the silver slippers the whole time, Dorothy, or "the westerners", never realized they already had a viable currency of the people.