meetings so crowded that the Workers' Hall had to be hired to take care of the throngs - all this for five days on end.

The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church got its start in 1894, and its first pastor, G. Bauruus, served the congregation for a monthly salary of $7.00. Successors were J. K. Nikander and then K. Sahlberg, until the congregation almost died at the turn of the century. But in 1901 there were 28 members left, who founded the so-called Bergstad Church, which has continued to grow and which in 1953 had more than two hundred members. It participated in 1917 in setting up a "Minneapolis Parish" which included the French Lake and Kingston churches, as well as the Minnesota and Almenon-Owen congregations in Wisconsin. The latter two congregations quit the parish in 1939, and in 1951 KingstonFrench Lake formed an independent parish of their own, leaving Minneapolis alone once again. These parishes have been served by pastors H. Sarvela, N. Saastamoinen, T. Samanen, Antti O. Kuusisto, Carl Tamminen, Arne J. Juntunen, John Wargelin, Edward J. Isaac, C. Heikkinen, C. Jennings, and then C. Heikkinen again, who in 1954 returned to the Minneapolis church.

In 1908 a group of 60 Minneapolis Finns petitioned Methodist Bishop Luther B. Wilson to send M. Lehtonen, a Methodist pastor, to serve them, but since Virginia City also sent a petition, with 101 names, Lehtonen was assigned there, and the Finnish Methodists of Minneapolis have had to join other Finnish churches or else Methodist churches with English services. A National Lutheran Church was established in 1925, and the congregation has its own church, with a membership in 1951 of 59. Pastors have been S. A. Krankkala, W. W. Wilen, H. P. Esala, Erick Erickson and J. Aho.

The Women's Club: The first organized, non-church activity among the Finns in Minneapolis was a women's club. Its inception can be traced back, perhaps, to a suggestion in the Uusi Kotimaa in 1881 that the Minneapolis Finns "ought to hold a bazaar to raise money for a library." A few weeks later the paper returned to the theme and amplified it: "We should do something along civic lines. As a start it would be excellent if a reading circle were set up, in such a way that we would get together to raise money with which to buy moral, instructive and diverting books, to be housed in suitable quarters. We could even print any books we like here in America, if readers and buyers are interested. The women would be the ones to spur on such an idea, but unfortunately many of them run around to utterly useless dances." Actually, it took more than ten years for the Uusi Kotimaa pro

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