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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

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Monroe himself, however, suggested another reason for the decline of Collinsville during the 1920s. "The miners were all patriotically mining like hell during the war because they were making huge amounts of money," he said, "and when the war ended the employment fell off too, and by 1926 the mines nationwide were in terrible shape. ... They had a nationwide mineworkers' strike in 1926 that lasted a long time, and the miners here never really recovered. We had mines until 1954, I think it was, 1958 when Lumaghi closed."14

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Irving Dilliard, another retired newspaperman from Collinsville, also made a study of the lynching. Dilliard, the one-time editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was brought to Collinsville as a child by his banker father. When he was interviewed, he was in his middle eighties, and his memories were impressionistic. Although his father took him to the latter part of the trial when he was about fourteen, by his estimate, he did not recall any of the testimony, or mention the often-repeated and well-documented story that the band played The Star-Spangled Banner at the end of the summation for the defense. Dilliard's one personal recollection of the Prager case suggests the atmosphere in Collinsville after the lynching:

I did have a view of Prager that not everybody had. ... Herr's undertaking place was on Main Street [and] ... I walked along there, [in] late afternoon. ... I was going home and I might have walked home from high school. Anyway, I was going by this place and there was a line-up of people out of the front door of the undertaking establishment out onto the street, and I asked somebody what it was all this about, and they said that's where the fellow is that was hanged ... and there had been some references to this at the high school by a teacher we had, so I knew this had happened, and what not, so I thought I might just as well see what happens here, so I got in the line. ...

I remember hearing this remark-was a crazy remark-but somebody in line ahead of me said to somebody else in line, "They say take a good look at his neck because they say that the rope that hanged him left his neck red, white and blue." ... I didn't see red, white and blue. I saw some red, I think.

Dilliard's understanding of the reason for Prager's lynching was that "he had some kind of disagreements in connection with the union or the miners or whatever ... and then having the German connection." Prager "wasn't picked out to be hanged," but "one thing leads to another." Prager might have been saved, but Mayor John Siegel had "let things get out of hand. I think he should never have allowed them to turn the prisoner over to them. He could have held them off."

Prager's alleged socialist views seem not to have had any part in the lynching, and the fact that he was a German was more pretext than cause. The root of the event was that Prager "was in a disagreement of some kind with the union. Now whether that resulted from a political attitude in life, I just don't know, but he was in trouble with the union, and the whole thing began with union activity."

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

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