Fractional Penny Sales Tax Tokens In Illinois.

Sales tax tokens were fractional cent devices used to pay sales tax on very small purchases in many American states during the years of the Great Depression. Tax tokens were created as a means for consumers to avoid being "overcharged" by having to pay a full penny tax on purchases of 5¢ or 10¢. Issued by private firms, by municipalities, and by twelve state governments, sales tax tokens were generally issued in multiples of 1 mill (1/10¢).

Say you bought a dozen eggs for 10¢ and the sales tax was 3%. That would be three-tenths of a penny. So you paid a dime and three 1-mill tokens.

The twelve states that issued these sales tax tokens were Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Washington. Tax tokens were issued in a variety of materials, including cardboard, brass, bronze, aluminum, pressed cotton fiber, and plastic.

Sales tax tokens were generally regarded as a nuisance by consumers and were replaced in fairly short order by the bracket system of sales tax collection, which averaged out the tax on small sales.

By the end of the 1930s, token use was eliminated in most of the issuing states, with sales tax tokens lingering in Missouri until late in the 1940s.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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Sales Tax Tokens to Stay in Circulation. 
Article: Urbana Daily Courier, July 25, 1935

SPRINGFIELD... Sales tax tokens issued by the Illinois department of finance to enable merchants to make change in charging the tax will remain in circulation until the United States treasury issues substitutes, Director K. L. Ames of the state department, said here today. Ames said that he had been informed by Atty. Gen. Otto Kerner that the federal treasury is seeking congressional permission to mint coins of one-half cent and one mill denominations.

Action on the part of the federal treasury, Ames said, will be taken to meet the demands of Illinois and other states having a sales tax law. It will solve the Illinois problem, he said, involving the question of the legality of the aluminum tokens issued by the state department. Several hundred thousands of the state tokens are now in circulation throughout Illinois, according to Ames, and they will continue to circulate pending action by the government toward minting coins of the needed denomination.

Electric Park Amusements, Chicago, Illinois (1895-1901)

Mammoth Dedicatory Festival and 10-Day Carnival.

Electric Park Amusement Association on the corner of Elston, Belmont and California Avenues. The largest and best arranged amusement gardens in the world - fifty acres under 100 Arc Lights.

Electric Park, containing 50 acres of beautiful lawns and charming groves, will be dedicated to Concerts, Amusements, Athletics, etc., on Saturday August 3, 1895. Promptly at 2 o'clock Saturday afternoon the flags will be run to the peak. Company "D" Illinois National Guard will fire a military salute and the gates of Electric Park will be opened to the public for the first time.

Electric Park is only 30 minutes ride from State and Madison Streets. To reach Electric Park take any line of cars running north from center of city, transfer to Belmont Avenue electric and you will be landed at Electric Park...

• or take Milwaukee Avenue cable to Armitage Avenue, transfer at Armitage Avenue to Milwaukee Avenue electric and you will be carried to Electric Park...

• or take Elston Avenue and you will be taken to Electric Park - or take Clybourn Avenue cars and you will ride to within 2 blocks of Electric Park...

• or take C. & N. W. R. R. at Wells Street station to Avondale, leave train at Avondale station and you will be 2 blocks from Electric Park...

• or take Metropolitan 'L' alight at California Avenue station and take Milwaukee Avenue electric, close at hand, and you will reach Electric Park...

• or Belmont Avenue and Elston Avenue electric take you direct to Electric Park.

Single Admission 25¢, Season Tickets, transferable and good for ten admissions $2, for sale at the Grand Entrance on California Avenue.

A Royal Barbeque - An ox will be roasted bodily and served to visitors gratis.

Military Drill - There will be a Military Drill on Electric Park Court.

Bicycle Races - On Electric Park Bicycle Oval. The track measures three laps to the mile and is thirty feet wide. Management has donated $40 in prizes ($1,170 in 2017) and the Clarendon Wheelman will race the opening day. The events are: Quarter mile scratch, half mile scratch, one mile lap race, three mile handicap and five mile handicap races.

Baseball Games - On Electric Park Baseball Grounds.

Football Games - On Electric Park Football Common.

Artistic Dancing - On Electric Park dancing pavilion, the largest dancing pavilion, with one exception, in America.

A Dream of the Civil War - On the evening of the opening day there will be presented the realistic military drama, "A Dream of the Civil War," with nature for a stage.

During the progress of the Carnival there will be a series of Dramas and Tableaux given, included in the series are the following: Camp Lincoln in Repose; The Scottish Chieftain; Ireland As It Is; Doom of the Traitor (Military Execution); An English Pastoral Scene, etc.

Dance of all Nations - A typical dance of all nations will take place on the Electric Park pavilion during the festival.

Fireworks - There will be a magnificent display of fireworks every night during the carnival and good music all the time.

The most gigantic entertainment since the World's Fair. Rivaling the bygone Midway in mirth and jollity.

The Electric Park was foreclosed on December 22, 1901 and portions of the land were auctioned off.

The History of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., inventor of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition Observation Wheel.

The only known photo of
George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., born February 14, 1859 and died on November 22, 1896, was a civil engineer and builder of the Ferris wheel, was born in Galesburg, Illinois, the son of George Washington Gale Ferris and Martha Edgerton Hyde Ferris, farmers. Ferris' grandfather Silvanus Ferris, along with Reverend George W. Gale, founded the village of Galesburg in central Illinois.

In 1864 the Ferris' moved to Carson City, Nevada, where they established a ranch. George's father planted the many trees around the state capitol grounds in Carson City, including American elms and spruces. In 1873 George entered the California Military Academy in Oakland, graduating in 1876. That fall he enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. There he studied civil engineering and engaged in extracurricular activities, including the football, baseball, and rifle teams and the Glee Club. Although required to be reexamined in some courses before passing, he received his engineering degree in February 1881, with a senior thesis titled, "Review of wrought Iron Deck Bridge on the Boston Hoosac Tunnel & western Railway at Schaghticoke, N.Y."

Ferris quickly became an accomplished and active engineer engaged in significant railroad and bridge projects. Following graduation, he worked for General J. H. Ledlie, a railroad contractor in New York City. During his first year, he was sent to Charlestown, West Virginia, as a transitman locating a proposed route of the Baltimore, Cincinnati & Western railway through the valley of the Elk River. He also planned the route of a narrow-gauge track in Putnam County, New York. In 1882 he became an engineer and then general manager for the Queen City Coal Mining Company in West Virginia, where he designed and built a coal trestle over the Kanawha River. He also built three 1,800-foot tunnels. In 1883, on the closing of the Queen City Company, he became assistant engineer of the Louisville Bridge & Iron Company in Louisville, Kentucky. He supervised the concrete work of the pneumatic caissons for the Henderson Bridge across the Ohio River. This work was so dangerous and taxing on his health that he was reassigned to supervise construction of the bridge's superstructure. By the mid-1880s he had become a recognized expert on the properties of structural steel use in bridges and large structures and was also establishing a reputation as an astute businessman. In 1885 he joined the Kentucky and Indiana Bridge Company of Louisville and was placed in charge of testing iron and steel from Pittsburgh steel mills.

In 1886 Ferris married Margaret Ann Beatty of Canton, Ohio, and they moved to Pittsburgh. In partnership with James C. Hallsted, he established the firm of "G.W.G. Ferris & Company, Inspecting Engineers." Soon they opened branch offices in New York and Chicago. The company conducted mill and factory work inspections and testing throughout the United States. While primarily occupied with the organization and administration of this company, he also turned his attention to the promotion and financing of large-scale engineering projects. In 1890, while retaining his ties to G.W.G. Ferris & Company, he founded a second firm, "Ferris, Kaufman and Company," which engineered major bridges across the Ohio River at Wheeling and Cincinnati.

Although engaged in many notable civil engineering projects early in his career, Ferris achieved national celebrity and enduring fame for his conception, design, and building of the Great Ferris wheel that became the signature attraction of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Daniel H. Burnham, director of works of the exposition, in early 1892 challenged U.S. civil engineers to design a "novel" and "daring" structure that would surpass the Eiffel Tower, built for the Exposition Universelle held in Paris, France in 1889 (a World's fair to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution), to engage the public spirit, and symbolize the exposition's emphasis on new technology.

Ferris was immediately inspired and reportedly sketched the idea and plan for the Great wheel in a Chicago restaurant. He assigned design detail and construction responsibility to his partner, William F. Gronau, also a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Ferris himself used his genius as a businessman to secure the concession in late 1892 after a lengthy negotiation with the board of directors of the exposition, to raise the financing during a period of general national depression in 1893 (known as the Panic of 1893), and to organize the manufacture of parts by numerous companies in the East and Midwest.

Despite a brutally cold winter and a spring of ceaseless rain, the wheel was finished on 21 June 1893. Rising 264 feet above the Midway and 825 feet in circumference, it weighed more than 2.6 million pounds, had thirty-six cars, each with a capacity to hold sixty passengers, was powered by two 1,000-horsepower steam engines, and was illuminated by more than 3,000 electric lights. The wheel proved completely safe, as documented in Scientific American in 1893, withstanding gale-force winds and storms, absorbing lightning, and running flawlessly through the duration of the exposition. Ferris' magnificent wheel dominated the exposition by its size and popularity, carrying 1.4 million riders. It is the first example of technology being harnessed purely as a pleasure machine, and it captured the imagination of a nation.

Ferris soon faced patent infringement suits from creators of smaller pleasure wheels, from which he eventually emerged victorious but at great personal and financial cost. Ferris rejected offers from Coney Island, London, and elsewhere to purchase the wheel and instead relocated and reassembled it in a small park in Chicago. The "Ferris Wheel Park" venture was a miserable failure. Ferris' wheel would delight fairgoers once more at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. It came to a most ignominious end when the Great wheel succumbed to a wrecking dynamite charge on May 11, 1906.

Despite such evident early promise, the disastrous financial aftermath of the wheel appears to have broken Ferris. His health may have been somewhat precarious since his early bridge-building projects, and his childless marriage apparently failed when his wife returned to her Canton, Ohio, hometown prior to 1896. In an attempt to meet his financial obligations, Ferris sold most of his interest in G.W.G. Ferris & Company to his partners. He died in Pittsburgh. Typhoid fever was identified on his death certificate as the cause of death, though kidney disease may also have contributed to his decline.

Ferris exemplified the daring entrepreneurship, optimism, and building acumen of the nineteenth-century engineer in the United States. In their published eulogy of Ferris, partners Gustave Kaufman and D.W. McNaugher praised his spirit: "He was always bright, hopeful and full of anticipation of good results from all the ventures he had on hand. These feelings he could always impart to whomever he addressed in a most wonderful degree, and therein lay the key note of his success. In most darkened and troubled times... he was ever looking for the sunshine soon to come... He died a martyr to his ambition for fame and prominence." Ferris contributed significantly to forging the future of steel in large-scale building construction. His leadership was not only technical in nature, through the development of testing and the application of steel in project design, but also cultural, erecting a steel structure in the American imagination. The Ferris wheel's merger of technology and entertainment led the way for social acceptance of powerful new technologies and for the dominance of technology-driven amusement in the century to follow. The feverish pace of his engineering projects and businesses mirrored the accomplishments of U.S. engineers who created a civilization for a new century. Writing in November 1893 about the amazing technology and skill evident in the Ferris wheel, civil engineer Wm. H. Searles found the young Ferris to represent "a good promise for America in the twentieth century."

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.