A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court by Mark Twain Chapter 26 Page 8

each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic’s average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national government’s expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day.

Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king’s-evil day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day’s national expense into the bargain — a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source — the wisdom of my boyhood — for the true