 Baum's description of Kansas in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is based on his experiences in drought-ridden South Dakota.During much of this time, Matilda Joslyn Gage was living in the Baum household.While Baum was in South Dakota, he sang in a quartet which included James Kyle, who became one of the first Populist (People's Party) Senators in the U.S.

Baum's newspaper failed in 1891, and he, Maud, and their four sons moved to the Humboldt Park section of Chicago, where Baum took a job reporting for the "Evening Post".