Have a Mill?

[W. Gray]

One mill is supposed to be one-tenth of one penny. I have heard some say that gasoline is so many dollars, cents, and nine mills per gallon.

I do not know if this was ever applicable to Kansas but some of the older timers on the forum might recall something similar.

Missouri began a sales tax sometime prior to WWII. The sales tax was in mills. I do not know if the word mill is a federal monetary term. Somehow, I do not think so.

Accompanying my mother shopping in Independence, Missouri, she would pay 75 cents for something at Woolworth's dime store. The clerk would ask for 75 cents plus three mills for sales tax. Mom would look in her purse pocket and come up with three quarters and three mill coins. If she had no mill coins or did not have enough, she would give the clerk a penny and receive seven mills in change: two one-mill coins and a five-mill coin.

At one time, a one-mill piece was made of lead. By the time we moved to Missouri, a one-mill coin was red and approached the size of a quarter. It was wafer thin and made of plastic. A five-mill coin was the same size but was green or blue. What government entity produced mill coins I could not say.

This practice in Missouri seemed to have died out in the early 1950s.

[kdfrawg]

From bnd.com:

If you think pennies are a pain in the neck as I do, imagine running around with a pocket full of coins worth a half-cent or even 1/10 of a cent. That was the nightmare Missouri residents began facing in 1935 when the state's legislature imposed a 1 percent sales tax.

These days, we hardly give it a second thought when they tack the sales tax onto your bill. If you buy an item for a dollar and the tax is 7.25 percent, you pay your 7 pennies without thinking that you're cheating the state out of a quarter cent.

But back in the 30s, pennies were more like real money (as Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen supposedly once sarcastically joked about the billions Congress threw around). That's one reason you still see the archaic pricing at gas stations with that extra 9/10 of a cent per gallon.

(My dream is to one day be as gutsy as filmmaker Michael Moore. I'll drive into a station, pump EXACTLY one gallon of gas and ask for my tenth of a cent in change. I'd just love to videotape their reaction.)

In any case, when the Missouri lawmakers imposed the new sales tax in '35, they decided they didn't want either the customer or businesses to get shortchanged when tax on an item turned out to be, say, 3.8 cents. So, instead of rounding the amount up to 4 cents or down to 3, they devised a new coin -- the "mill" (short for "millidollar," I suppose) worth a thousandth of a dollar or 1/10 of a cent.

At first, Forrest Smith, the state's auditor, petitioned the U.S. Treasury Department to help the state by minting one- and five-mill coins, according to a Time magazine article from Sept. 9, 1935. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau thought it was a wonderful idea, and President Roosevelt himself even drew his concept of how the coins should look.

But common sense prevailed -- nationally, at least -- when a bill authorizing the new coins died in Congress. "I suggest that the president, the secretary of the treasury and each member of Congress should be required to carry a pound of shingle nails in his pocket for 30 days before acting on this bill," Iowa Rep. Lloyd Thurston complained.

Missouri, however, didn't let that stand in its way. Shortly afterward, the tax became law, and Missouri banks began selling milk bottle caps inscribed with the state seal and labeled "Missouri Retailers Sales Tax Receipt." Those with blue circles were worth one mill in taxes; those with orange circles, five mills.

In theory, the Time article said, citizens paid their sales tax in advance by buying the bottle caps -- which were reportedly made of lead (to boost the state's lead industry) until 1939, when they were issued in red and blue plastic. But in practice, customers and store owners began exchanging the tokens during each transaction.

Soon, Time reported, "Missourians found their pockets bulging with caps enough to start dairies." Storekeepers with rubber stamps began to advertise on the back of the tokens. Republican wags would scribble, "Pendergast Money (in reference to Kansas City's Democratic political boss)" and "Vote GOP and End the Sales Tax."

Missourians, however, weren't alone. Similar tokens (or paper scrip) were issued in at least a dozen other states, including square tokens in Illinois that couldn't be confused with other coins used for telephones and other devices. One and five mills were the most common, but individual states offered a range of other denominations.

As you might imagine, people detested the tokens -- especially when states wouldn't accept each other's coins. They were discontinued in 1961 when Missouri finally revoked the last sales tax token law. Now, most are so common (or so poorly esteemed) that they're worth little as collector's items, although a few rare pieces, such as the New Mexico 5-mill black fiber, may fetch $100 or more.

[W. Gray]

Thanks Kermit,

Those mill coins are one of several things cemented into my mind from childhood.

I have never met anyone else from Missouri, including my high school classmates, that remembers those coins. I recently asked my Mom and she could not recall them.

I started working when in high school in 1954 and even at that time I don't remember personally using mills. However, I do remember driving several miles to another gas station to get a dollars worth at 15.9 per gallon rather than 16.9.

[Diane Amberg]

  I may have a couple of those and didn't know what they were.It seems to me they were dark red and said "tax token" or some such on them. I'll have to figure out where I might have stashed them.... Maybe in with my brass merry go round ring.

[kfclark]

I lived in Italy for about a year and half from July of 1982 to November of 1983 (LDS Mission, yes I am a Mormon, yes it was hard proselyting in a country that is 99.99% Catholic, yes I still speak the language and yes I love the Italian people with all my heart) At that time 1000 Lire was worth less than a dollar so often at the grocery if your change came up to a few lire, they would sometimes give you a couple of pieces of hard candy instead of coins.  This first time it happened it was before I was very fluent and I remember being both shocked and amazed at this practice.