in spite of competition from private power companies, in 1954 there were 4,082 members and a property worth $2,824,775.

In Cromwell the beginnings of cooperation were even more tentative than in Kettle River and go back to the frustration of farmers in marketing their dairy products. One specific incident is supposed to have been crucial in Peter Kärkkäinen's urging his fellow farmers to see the importance of cooperative action for themselves, although it took him several years to do so. It was in 1906, in the days when butter was churned at home, carried in a knapsack on one's back to a marketing center, to be sold to local grocers for 10 or 12c the pound. When Kärkkäinen took some to Cromwell as usual one warm July day he found the shopkeepers all refusing to take the butter to hold over, because it was so warm and because the stores were to be closed the next day which was the Fourth. And because the butter was rapidly melting, there was nothing left for him but to throw it away in disgust. It was not until several years later, however, that a farmers' dairy materialized, in 1913, with 4 Finnish farmers and 3 Swedes signing the incorporation papers. About ten years later still, a more modern, up-to-date building was put up, and the cooperative dairy, backed by its farming areas, has remained in business successfully.

Cromwell's more general cooperative was established in 1917, and this consumers' venture joined the Cooperative Central in 1922. For the first two decades this was a purely Finnish-directed enterprise, and even in more recent years there have still been Finns on its board of directors and serving as its business managers.

This part of Carlton County has also seen individual Finnish businessmen in numbers, and they have, also, played leading roles in the various local governments and administrative functions. The listing of a few Finnish postmasters follows : in Automba, Matti Reed (Riiti), J. A. Kerttu, Robert Kreteri, Jack Niemi and Gust Tikka; in Kettle River, Otto and Joseph Winquist; in Sawyer, Oskar Johnson. County officials have been sheriffs Emil Luukkonen and Oscar Juntunen.

- The population of Carlton County in the year 1900 was 10,017, and of these 882 were Finnish-born. While the population of the county has subsequently more than doubled, the statistics on the Finns alone indicate their numbers to be 2,135 in 1910; up to their peak of 2,140 in 1920; then a downward trend, to 1,828 in 1930; to 1,615 in 1940; only 1,161 in 1950. Approximately 9% of Minnesota's Finns have lived in Carlton County, and they have been the leading foreign nationality element in

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