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lynching of Robert Prager, the United Mine Workers, and the problems of patriotism in 1918, The
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Winter 2003 by Schwartz, E A
Even as Jenkins and his men were being tried, the miners were get- ting their first increased paycheck, based on an increase in the price of coal granted, at last, by the fuel administrator. The threat of mine strikes in southern Illinois had finally been blunted.46
The conflict over the organization of smelter workers was not the only occasion for labor solidarity in Collinsville as winter approached. In November, five telephone operators walked out on the Central Union Telephone Company. The tactic chosen in this case was a boycott. Union men made "a systematic canvass of the business district" and convinced fifty merchants to remove their Bell telephones, the Herald would report at the beginning of the following February. Only eight merchants refused to join the boycott.47
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One of the effects of the constant labor/management clashes in and around Collinsville beginning in the summer of 1917 was the neutralization of the conservative influence of Moses Johnson. He was drawn into a militant stance through the trades council's support of the smelter workers and then, faced with a general rebellion of the miners, declined to assert whatever authority he still possessed. He was up for re-election in December and although he held on to his post as district board member, he won only by what the Herald called a "small majority."48
The smelter strike demonstrated the ability of organized labor in Collinsville to exercise political influence in the form of the faithful support provided by Sheriff Jenkin Jenkins, and the telephone boycott showed that local businessmen could also be made to fall into line.
The most significant effect of the labor unrest around Collinsville, however, may have been a widespread fear of being accused of disloyalty. The miners had been told repeatedly that their actions sabotaged the war effort. From the beginning, dissidents such as Joe Riegel had been accused by implication of working for the Germans. At the same time, a muscular and unforgiving approach to the question of loyalty was on the rise.
That dark underside of the demand for loyalty, so unlike the sunny, flag-waving unity of the registration day parade, showed itself in a letter Mayor Siegel received from an organization calling itself the American Defense Society. The letter was printed in the Herald on 7 December. It called for the organization of "a small American Vigilance Corps in every city and town" that would classify all residents into four groups according to their loyalty and make note of whether they were alien enemies, pro-German, or anti-Government. Such people would be watched, and lists of their names would be sent to the police and any representatives of the Department of Justice and military intelligence services who happened to be in the area.49
In February 1918, the local "Vigilance Corps" in a nearby town demonstrated what could happen to unionists accused of disloyalty. The town was Staunton, about thirty miles north of Collinsville. The occasion was provided by a conflict within the local UMW union over a one hundred dollar contribution to the defense fund of Severino Oberdan. St. Louis Labor said Oberdan had been jailed for a time in September for disloyalty and sympathy with the IWW, and faced a new charge after having sworn out a warrant against the local superintendent of the Nokomis Coal Company related to unsafe conditions. St. Louis Labor did not say what the new charge was. The Post-Dispatch said it was bootlegging.50
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