Mill (currency)
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The mill or mille(₥) (sometimes mil in the UK 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".
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[edit] Usage
[edit] United States
In the United States, the term was first used by the Continental Congress [1] in 1786, being described as the "lowest money of account, of which 1000 shall be equal to the federal dollar."
The Coinage Act (1792) describes milles and other subdivisions of the dollar:
| That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dimes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths, a dime being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar, and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation.[1] |
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. 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.) In some circles, the demise of the mill is regarded as the logical outcome of an "inflation-oriented" economic system (based on stocks, etc.) as opposed to a "deflation-oriented" economic system (based on the availability of tangible assets, specifically gold, silver and other precious metals).
Nowadays, most Americans are familiar with the concept of a "mill", if only peripherally. The price of gasoline being denominated almost universally (in the US) in terms of tenths of a cent (e.g., "$2.699/gallon"). 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". 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), although most Americans aren't aware of the derivation. For instance, with a millage rate of 5.753 mills, a $100,000 house would be taxed 575,300 mills, or $575.30.
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) in anticipation of several centuries of inflation.
[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[2] 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.
[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 can still be marked using mils, however these are then rounded up for accounting purposes.
[edit] Similar units
- The Egyptian pound was formerly divided into 1000 milliemes.
- The Tunisian dinar is divided into 1000 millimes (10 millimes is the smallest currently-minted coin)
- The Kuwaiti dinar is divided into 1000 fils (5 fils is the smallest currently-minted coin)
