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To the best of my knowledge, Baum never made any claims that the Wizard of Oz was allegorical, although a cottage industry has sprung up creating allegories and attributing them to Baum. Baum died in 1919. The first article making these claims was published in 1964 by Henry Littlefield. In it, he claimed the following:

The Wizard of Oz was a parable of populism. The Tin Woodsman was the industrial worker (in the book, the worker had been a man who continually cut off parts of himself while working, and the parts were replaced until nothing human was left.)

The scarecrow was the midwestern farmer who was wise but naive.

The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan, the populist candidate who wanted to go to a bimetallic (silver and gold rather than just a gold) standard.

The yellow brick road was the gold standard, and the Emerald City was Washington DC.

Dorothy's silver slippers (they were silver in the book, not ruby) represented the inclusion of silver, creating a bimetallic standard.

Others expanded the allegories, claiming the wicked witches were the east coast and west coast corporate trusts, the munchkins were the ordinary citizens, Oz stood for the abbreviation for ounce, and Toto stood for teatotalers (prohibitionists were a significant part of the silver adoption coalition.)

The premise that Baum was a populist and that Oz was written as an allegory ignores the fact that Baum was a Republican. Direct quote from him when he ran the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer: "We are all members of one great family, the family which saved the Union, the family which stands together as the emblem of prosperity among the nations--Republicanism!"