at the Lindfors farm, with 18 persons present. Business and program meetings were held at members' homes, but they served merely to bring the wish for a hall of their own. An acre of land was purchased from Lizzie Koski for $25, and a building fund was started. When a sawmill was opened in the community, farmers each took their quota of logs to be milled and brought their share of lumber to the building site. In 1912 the hall was built, but even before it was finished, activity was started there and the first play (of some 50 plays in all) was produced that summer. The hall housed a small lending library, now and then a chorus (Laura Wuopio used to come from Hibbing at one time to direct) and a band (Hemming Hautala came from Hibbing to hold rehearsals.) Later, the hall was enlarged, and as the only sizeable meeting place in the community it has served for the most varied of functions, for dances and program evenings, weddings and funerals, welcoming parties and farewell parties, events sponsored by the younger Finns' Booster Club, etc. All this activity, actually, was not under the sponsorship of the workers' society itself, for that came to an end in 1914, and the hall since that time was maintained by the Valo Hall Society, incorporated for that purpose. This society remained intact until 1950, when it proved impossible to continue any longer. Actually, the hall had already been sold for $1.00 to the local cooperative in 1947, and what assets were left in 1950 - $10.85 - were given to the Industrialisti.

During the time Johannes Väänänen was Congregational minister in Hibbing, he established a group in Little Swan, the Saarikoski congregation. A small church was even built, and still stands : the congregation no longer exists, but the building is used by others, for religious services and other kinds of meetings as well.

The Little Swan Cooperative Society, incorporated in 1923, grew out of an informal consumers' club which had been set up ten years earlier. First business manager of the informal venture was Otto J. Mattson, succeeded in 1914 by Evert Kilkkinen, from Canada, who remained in charge for three years and managed to put the enterprise on a sound basis. Kilkkinen recalls that when he took charge the shelves were almost bare, and that a loan of $500 from Lizzie Koski, who frequently helped the society in time of need, made it possible for him to take a trip to Duluth to stock those shelves.

Kilkkinen was appointed business manager a second time, in 1920, and this time he remained with the business for a

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