Mill (currency)

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The mill or mille (₥) (sometimes mil in the UK, when discussing property taxes in the United States, or previously in Cyprus and Malta) is a now abstract unit of currency used sometimes in accounting. In the United States, it is equivalent to 1/1000 of a United States dollar (a tenth of a cent). In the United Kingdom it was proposed during the decades of discussion on the decimalization of the pound as a 1/1000th division of the pound sterling. Several other currencies used the mill, such as the Maltese lira.

The term comes from the Latin "mille", meaning "1,000".

[edit] Usage

[edit] United States

Missouri mill token

In the United States, the term was first used by the Continental Congress in 1786, being described as the "lowest money of account, of which 1000 shall be equal to the federal dollar."^[1]

The Coinage Act (1792) describes milles and other subdivisions of the dollar:

Tokens in this denomination were issued by some states and local governments (and by some private interests) for such uses as payment of sales tax.^{[citation needed]} These were of inexpensive material such as tin, aluminum, plastic or paper. Rising inflation depreciated the value of these tokens in relation to the value of their constituent materials; this depreciation led to their eventual abandonment. (Virtually none were made after the 1960s.)

Nowadays, most Americans are familiar with the concept of a "mill", if only peripherally. The price of gasoline is almost always (in the US) in tenths of a cent, such as "$3.699 per gallon". Discount coupons, such as those for grocery items, usually include in their fine print a statement such as "Cash value less than 1/10 of 1 cent." There are also common occurrences of "half cent" (a coin struck until 1857) discounts on goods bought in quantity. The term "mill" is also still used when discussing billing in the electric power industry as short-hand for the lengthier "1/1000 of a dollar per kilowatt hour". The term is commonly used when discussing stock prices and the issuance of founder's stock of a company. Despite the commonness of such fractions of cents, the term "mill" remains widely unknown. Property taxes are also expressed in terms of mills per dollar assessed (a mill levy, known more widely in the US as a "mill rate"), although most Americans are unaware of the term's derivation^{[citation needed]}. For instance, with a millage rate of 5.753 mills, a $100,000 house would be taxed 575,300 mills, or $575.30. The term is often spelled "mil" when used in this context.^[3]

Mark Twain introduced a fictional elaboration of the mill in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. When Hank Morgan, the American time traveler, introduces decimal currency to Arthurian Britain, he has it denominated in cents, mills, and "milrays", or tenths of a mill (the name perhaps suggested by "myriad", meaning ten thousand or by the Portuguese and Brazilian milreis).

[edit] United Kingdom

Proposed on several occasions as a division of the British pound under the "Pound and Mil" system, the mill was occasionally used in accounting. The 1862 report from the Select Committee on Weights and Measures^[4] noted that the Equitable Insurance Company had been keeping accounts in mills (rather than in shillings and pence) for such purposes for over 100 years. Such a unit of a thousandth of a pound would have been similar in value to the then-existing farthing coin (1/960 of a pound).

[edit] Malta

Maltese lira coinage included 2 mil, 3 mil, and 5 mil coins from 1972 to 1994, with 10 mils being equal to one cent. Prices could still be marked using mils until the country switched to the Euro in 2008, however these were then rounded up for accounting purposes.

[edit] Republic of Rose Island

The short-lived and unrecognized Republic of Rose Island (a micronation off the Italian coast) had the mill as its official currency (milo in the official language Esperanto).

[edit] Mandatory Palestine, Israel, Jordan

The Palestine pound, used as the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1927 to 1948, was divided into 1000 mils. Its successor currencies, the Israeli lira and the Jordanian dinar were also divided into 1/1000 units, respectively named peruta and fils. The Israeli peruta lasted until 1960, and the Jordanian fils until 1992.

[edit] Similar units

• The Egyptian pound was formerly divided into 1000 milliemes, and 10 millimes equals 1 piaster.
• The Tunisian dinar is divided into 1000 millimes (10 millimes is the smallest currently-minted coin)
• The national currencies which are divided into 1000 fils are the Kuwaiti dinar (5 fils is the smallest currently-minted coin), Bahraini dinar (1 fill) , Iraqi dinar (25 dinars). But as with the case of the United Arab Emirates dirham and the Yemeni rial, they are divided into 100 subunits.
• The Omani rial is divided into 1000 baisa.
• The Libyan dinar is divided into 1000 dirham since 1971.
• The Japanese yen was formerly divided into 100 sen or 1000 rin. An early proposed (but not accepted) design for the 1-rin coin used "1 mill" in the Romanized text

[edit] References

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