Martin Millarich Hall

The significance of the Martin Millarich Hall/Slovenian National Home lies in the important role it has played in the life of the South Slavic community of Carbon County, Utah; and in the history of the Utah labor movement, having served as a focal point for striking miners during the coal strikes of 1922 and 1933. The Home remains one of various Homes throughout the U.S. It is the only Slovenian Home in Southeastern Utah,

Martin Millarich Hall is located at 4323 North 2000 West (Main Street) in Spring Glen, Utah, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#80003894) on October 31, 1980.

Utah’s coal industry was greatly stimulated by the completion of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad between Denver and Salt Lake City in 1883, and by the discovery in the late 1880s that Southeastern Utah coal would produce a high quality of coke. In order to meet the demand for coal, a large number of foreign miners, especially Finns, Italians, and South Slavs, were encouraged to settle in Utah to meet the need for labor.

South Slavs, that is, Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs lived in the Austrian provinces of Kustenland and Carniola, located in the kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, and in the Vojvodina (all later to become part of Yugoslavia). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries South Slavs, as many other southern and eastern Europeans, were involved in a general population movement their immigration to Utah was but one manifestation of this experience.

The first South Slavic workers arrived into Utah in the late 1890s, laboring in the Carbon County coal fields. Such initial settlements were temporary, in the sense that they were exclusively male, who were highly mobile, willing to move wherever better wages were available. A second wave of immigration occurred during the period prior to World War I. According to the leading authority on South Slavs in Utah, the bulk of Slovenes who came to Utah at this time settled primarily in the Carbon County coal camps. More stable communities were established during this phase.

One of these immigrants was Martin Millarich (Mlinaric). He had first gone to Wyoming in 1900, but by 1903 was residing in Sunnyside, a coal camp in Carbon County, Utah. Around 1906 he settled in Spring Glen, acquiring title to two pieces of land adjacent to the present Slovenian National Home; one to the north in 1907 and one to the west in 1908. The land where the home stands was owned at that time by George Shefflar (Sheffnar), another Slovene. A wooden tavern was built on the site of the home with the cooperation of the Slavonic community, and Martin became the manager. He was Pabst Blue Ribbon distributor for the area, and a railroad spur ending right behind the tavern was used to bring in carloads of beer. He also had an ice cellar on the property directly to the north in order to keep the beer cold.

According to family tradition, the local Mormon Bishop John Thompson Rowley came to call on Martin Millarich soon after the tavern opened. When Bishop Rowley told him that the Mormons didn’t approve of his having a tavern there, he replied, “You know, Mr. Rowley, the road out front runs right past this place, and the door swings open and shut for whoever wishes to enter, but I do not go out into the street and grab people by the arm and force them to come in.”3 He had no problems from any of the community after that. The hall served as a kind of social center for the Slavic miners who had begun to acquire property and build homes in the Spring Glen area and the Slavic miners who lived in the nearby coal camps until it was destroyed by fire in 1919.

In 1922 a strike situation again occurred. Local miners joined the nation-wide coal strike and were forced out of company housing. They set up a “tent city” on Millarich 1 s property and all along the lane to the north and south, and several became his patrons. To pay off their debts and in return for the use of the land, the striking miners aided in the construction of a new brick building on the site of the old wooden one. The passage of Prohibition (1920) precluded opening another tavern, so by 1924 the Spring Glen Bottling Works, owned by Martin Millarich, was bottling soda water in the present brick building. He later added living quarters to the rear, another bottling works was erected to the north, and the brick building was converted back into a tavern called “Martin’s Place” after the repeal of Prohobition in 1933.

In 1923 Martin Millarich acquired half interest in the Spring Glen Bottling Works/Slovenian National Home property, sharing the title with Frances and John Vimpolsek, also of Slovenian descent. The Vimpolseks were killed by a train at a crossing in Carbonville around 1930, and Martin Millarich gained complete title to the present Slovenian National Home.

Being a place of business, “Martin’s Place” was one of the first buildings to have indoor plumbing and a telephone. The bar fixtures presently in use in the Slovenian National Home were purchased and installed by Martin Millarich when he reopened the tavern in the 1930s. The pink “vanity” desk in the ladies rest room was built by Leonard Mahorich, another Slovene, many years before that. Leonard had done quite a bit of carpentry work for many families in the area throughout the 1920s.

The early 1930s were a desperate time for miners. In 1928 began the first in a series of wage reductions, and the lower wages became coupled with fewer days work. Unionizing activity, unsuccessfully tried by the United Mine Workers in 1903-1904 and 1918-1922, was again resumed. The exhausted U.M.W. had abandoned their efforts in Utah, but a rival union, the National Miner’s Union, was gaining strength.

The National Miner’s Union was organized in 1928 by disgruntled United Mine Worker members who claimed they had been sold out by John L. Lewis and the U.M.W. during the 1927-1928 strike in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The National^ Miner’s Union adopted a much more militant and socialistic approach to Unionism than the United Mine Workers. The National Miner’s Union aim, as stated in its fundamental principles, was to organize and lead “. . . the miners’ struggles against the capitalist owners of the mining industry, . and their agents, for better working and living conditions . . to participate in the struggle for abolishing the capitalist system and replace it by socialism.”

During May 1933 National Miner’s Union organizers, Paul Crouch and Charles Guynn, arrived in Carbon County and began organizing activities. The Millarich Hall was rented as headquarters for the union. Miners were encouraged to visit the union leaders at the hall, a women’s auxiliary and youth section were also organized there and the hall was used for some of the Sunday meetings and Saturday night dances sponsored by the National Miner’s Union. At one of the first meetings held in Millarich Hall the Union leaders openly showed their communist sympathies by displaying a red banner with hammer, sickle, and a sheaf of wheat. However, communism was not warmly regarded by most of the community, and the National Miner’s Union members later tried to hide their sympathies.

Millarich Hall served as headquarters for the National Miner’s Union until the first part of August 1933, when a change was made to the Radiant Roller Rink, also in Spring Glen. As the strike progressed, National Miner’s Union militancy increased. In the mean time, upon learning of the National Miner’s Union presence in Carbon County, John L. Lewis ordered an immediate organizing campaign by the United Mine Workers.

Coal operators found the more moderate approach by the United Mine Workers much more acceptable and within a short time the United Mine Workers and coal operators had formed an alliance aimed at driving the National Miner’s Union out of Carbon County. They were ultimately successful but not until a summer of tension, fights, and near riots had passed.

During the late 1920s and early 1930s the Millarich Hall was often used for purposes other than unionizing. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (L.D.S. or Mormons) of whom Martin’s second wife was one, would hold meetings there. The church members would bring chairs from the church or school and meet in the then vacant front part of the present Slovenian National Home. In addition, dances were held for the various “lodges” of the S.N.P.J. (Slovenian National Benefit Society). The band would perform on a raised platform by the front windows, or perhaps there would just be an accordianist, such as the popular “Matika.” Slovenes from all over the area would attend, and everyone had a good time.

In 1963 the National Slovenian Home in Spring Glen was privately purchased from Martin Millarich’s daughter, Dorothy Losik, by some of the local Slovenian Community. These included the Tomsics, John and Charlie Bezyack, and Valentine Vouk and his family. It is unaffiliated with any of the National Slovenian organizations, but is used by several of the nationally affiliated local lodges to hold parties and dances. The participating lodges are the S.N.P.J. (Slovenian National Benefit Society), the Western Slavonic Association and the Croatian Fraternal Union. The lodges continue to provide the insurance and death benefits for which they were organized at the beginning of this century, and the Martin Millarich Hall/National Slovenian Home continues to serve as a meeting place for the Slavic community, foster the preservation of Slavic customs and provide the social and recreational activity that it always did in Carbon County.