both the 1940 and 1950 census statistics. In the latter year, for example, in addition to the 1,161 Finns, there were 687 Swedes, 296 Norwegians and 194 Canadians.

The Centenary of Carlton County was celebrated in 1957, in Carlton. In connection with this celebration, a large strongbox full of documents, souvenirs, etc., was buried, not to be opened for another hundred years. Among the papers enclosed were a centenary song, written by Matt Pelkonen, and a history of the Finns in Cloquet.

- Among the official documents preserved in St. Paul, there are some which show census information collected by the state in 1870 from numerous areas of proven Finnish pioneer settlement. In perusing these documents, if all the even slightly doubtful names are dropped from consideration, there still remains a listing of 46 families, representing, it is safe to assume, about half of the land holdings of Finns in Minnesota at that time. The cleared land that these 46 families possessed varied from 20 to 200 acres in amount. The total was 4,386 acres, or an average holding of 95.3 acres per family. Only one of these landowners, incidentally, was not farming his land himself.

For tax purposes, estimates of the farm values were also given. The total came to $29,765 or an average of $675 per family. Four pioneer families had no cattle, but the rest had a total of 237 head between them. Also, 18 oxen and 16 horses were listed. Such was one aspect of the life of the Finnish immigrant farmers, a few years after their pioneering efforts had begun. What the situation was 70 years later becomes clear from the study A. A. Parviainen made of 1940 Census information, "that the Finns own 11,176 farms in Minnesota, and that these include 1,117,600 acres of cleared land, or an area twice the size of Carlton County."

- Nevins and Commager make the following statement in their history of the United States

"What did the immigrants contribute? Most of all, themselves - their strength, their work, their faith. They owed much to their adopted country, but that country owed much to them. They did the hard, grueling work that

had to be done if the resources of the nation were to be developed rapidly and cheaply. They broke the prairie sod; they laid down the tracks for the transcontinentals; they dug the iron ore, coal, copper; they felled the lumber of the Northwest forests. But their contribution was not only that of unskilled labor. They gave richness and color to American life and in some fields added

greatly to her cultural heritage." (6)

6. Nevins, Alland and Commager, Henry Steele. A Short History of the United States. (New enlarged edition.) New York, 1956. P. 306.

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