in grave difficulties. A special meeting was called to authorize termination of the business altogether, but instead it was decided to sell more shares and borrow more money to meet immediate needs. With the added funds and its bookkeeper John Niemi promoted to business manager, conditions improved considerably. When Niemi joined the Army in 1917 and was succeeded by Ahti Tuohino, sales were already $72,483 per year.

The 1918 fire destroyed the cooperative completely, although Tuohino had managed to put records and papers away in the safe, where they miraculously survived. Insurance covered half the loss suffered, and a week after the fire most of the members of the cooperative, who had taken refuge in Duluth or in Superior, held a special meeting at the Cooperative Central offices in Superior and decided to start operations afresh. Ahti Tuohino and Herman Koski were appointed to see this through, and within a short time the cooperative was again serving its customers.

The workers' society also assisted in this rebirth, for it built its new hall with store space designed specifically for the cooperative on its ground floor. Later, when the cooperative owned the building and the workers' society no longer even used the hall above, it all became a part of the business premises. Long before this expansion, however, reorganization had taken place in 1923 in accordance with state law and the enterprise had been given a new name, Cloquet Cooperative Society.

Another cooperative, the Knife Falls Farmers' Cooperative, also had carried on business in Cloquet. Originally a farmers' purchasing unit for procurement of feed for livestock, etc., it later opened a store on Dunlop Island. This store did not burn in the fire; it was purchased by the Cloquet Cooperative Society and became its second store. Others followed: number three was built in 1927 at Esko's Corner to serve the cooperative's members in Thomson Town, and in 1930 another branch store was opened in Mahtowa, on U.S. Highway No. 61, to serve that area's farmers.

In 1930 other kinds of expansion were also planned, the supply of petroleum products, with a service station on Cloquet's main street. The Trico Cooperative Oil Association started service at the same time, and the Cloquet Cooperative gave it valuable assistance at the start, and when the service station was expanded in 1934 and another building erected for it, Trico's headquarters found space there. In 1936 further expansion brought an automobile repair shop and a salesroom for Plymouth, DeSoto and Chevrolet cars. It was a severe blow when General Motors

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