The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-19
M|LLERS, NEVADA
 CITY OF POISON A Strange Spot In Americas Desert RESIDENTS VIEW OF 1T Contains Enough Poison To Kill Every body In the United States-Its
 Citizens Are of All
 Types.
From the Philadelphia Press.

From the Philadelphia Press.
 Enough poison to kill off the entire
 population of the United States is al-
 ways stored up in the town of Millers.
 Nev.
 The town couldn't exist without that
 poison-potassium cyanide. It's popula-
 tion of 500 men depend for the making | of their livelihood on the virulent chem
 ical-which is used in getting precious
 metals out of ores sent from the sur-
 rounding mines.
 Millers Is one of the strangest places
 in the United States-although it's inhab-
 itants sarcastically deny that it is with
 in Uncle Sams domain. Though it holds | 300 men, there are only about 40 women
 and handful of children. In summer
 its heat is intolerable; in winter the cold
 is almost insufferable. With it's rude
 makeshift for law insuring organiza- 1 tion and the cosmopolitan character of
 its population, it is woolier than many of the western towns of the old-time which
 have been made the subject of story and
 drama.
 Just what this town, which depends for
 It's existence on a poison is like, is shown
 very wildly by the following article, pre- i pared by an eastern college man who
 recently took up his abode in Millers:
 People who live in Millers, Nev write
 lots of letters, for postage stamps are
 the only cheap thing in town. It even
 has picture post cards. When this paper
 was planned Millers was a place that had 1 no picture post cards But changes come | quickly in this Nevada Babylon. It now |
 First Court House and Jail, Millers, New"
 Court House In Freight Car.
 That building is such an unconscious
 satire on western life that a steel en- i, graving should be made from the picture
 and hung in the capitol at Washington.
 For court house and jail are in the
 same building, and that building Is a
 freight car jacked up on a piece of track beside the main line.
 1 But justice is just and not overworked l in Millers, for most of the few 'unde-
 sirable citizens who come up before 1 Judge Mcconnell are quickly and cheap | ly dealt with by being given until the | next train comes-a day to leave camp.
 Anyway, there is no lawyer in Millers, l and the judge is engineer at the power l house and umpire of the local ball games.
 The name of Millers describes it's raison | d'etre, though it was not named after
 it's mills, but for a man, Miller's apology l for existence is that ,.4ere are the two l big stamp mills that treat the ore brought l from Tonopah. And .--e reason Millers
 is where it is is because here just un-
 der the surface was found an abundance l of water.
 | Millers is 13 miles from Tonopah and l 1900 feet below it, out on the desert where | it is "as hot as, If not hotter than " i in summer, and correspondingly cold in
 winter and where the sandstorms would
 make a camel homesick for the Soudan,
 and makes every one else homesick for | the United States.
 Mllers' Three Jokes. l That's one of the three Millers' jokes l calling anything outside of Millers the | United otates' another is to speak or | the train as "The Daily Excitement, | but the commonest pleasantly is to ask newcomers, Do you ever expect to go back?"
 When "The Daily Excitement" goes l through, bound out across the desert for | the United States" everyone drops his task and rushes to window or door, shakes his fist at it and says, 'Wnlstle
 damn you! I'll ride you out of here one of these days" Just as, years ago, f'pack
 east" the kids used to "coliect' the
 names of the locomotives, so here Tn Mill CTS 1t is modish to count the number or "hobos" who are escaping on top or the cars or lying on the trucks
 The population of Millers consists or some 800 men, score or two of women, an armful of children, few lilies Of tpe valley who toll not Gas the "Tonopah Bonanza, has it), and coyotes, scorpions, lizards and rattlesnakes beyond the reach
 If logarithms. A town of over 300 work ingmen, in any other part Of the Unlted States, would mean a population ol oVe. oOOO souls Here is town turning out rom it's mills, say, SS0,000 a week and with
 a weekly pay roll of $15,O0o, and less than slo people in the place. Besides the mllts ard trades people, big railroad shops Lave just been finished, for Millers Is to be the bull s-eye of the Tonopah ana Goldfield railroad, the road that paid for
 itself in its first six months or existence.
 Is Town of Young Men. It's queer to live in town that has the air and the institutions of perma- t.ency, yet where a toddling infant IS
 rointed to with pride as the first child
 born in Millers;' where no one apie 10 talk was born; where scarcely any one able to reason expects to stay-except to ..get little stake and pull out" and where a year-old resident feels like h village patriarch. But the patriarch's white beard is lacking, for Millers is d town of young men. Including the va -ious foremen and superintendents, there's scarcely a nldl III 'hiiiciS Who iS o"'
 For it's size, no more cosmopolitan place could be found in the country. Mill men from all over America, Tnen who have worked in cyanide mills in South Africa snd Australia, men trained in the univer- sites of their home countries in Europe, soldiers of misfortune, scores and scores of men who didn't know mill by sight hefore they landed broke in Millers, co., lege men from all parts of America there's university club here), banking house clerks from "back east"-men who never did minutes manual labor in their lves-are now digging pits, pack ing" lime sweeping floors, shoulder to shoulder with the "Bohunks"
 What "Bohunk" Ia. The term "bohunk'' means ignorant foreign laborers. and includes all races in contradistinction to white men," There are some Greeks and Italians among them, but nearly all are Slavonians,
 giants in stature, good natured children in
 intellect. They get $4 for an eight-hour day, which is the minimum wages for any
 kind of work in Millers, and that IS
 about what they used to get for a fort
 nights labor back in Austria. Some of them are pleasure-loving Slavs, whom the ever ready bars and roulette wheels find easy victims, but most of them send money home through branch of bank in Pittsburg