reading. To meet these requirements, a Finnish-American Literature Society had been established in Calumet, Michigan, in 1878, and the Finns in New York Mills used this a model to establish their Cultural and Literary Society in 1886. With its own lending library, the society served a useful purpose for decades.

In 1887 another society was founded in New York Mills, the Finnish-American Society for the Enlightenment of the People. Here, too, Calumet had served as a prototype with a similar society, which distributed Finnish literature among its members, but which was unable to be of any but local influence. The New York Mills society (with Hugo Almquist, K. A. Jurva, August Nylund, Kustaa Venälä, Isaac Westola and Pekka Westerinen as its first board of directors), independent of any similar organization, had ambitious plans from the very beginning: to publish and distribute instructive and morally constructive literature. In its first year the Society published K. G. Leinberg's Biblian historiaa kansakouluille, (Bible history for the grammar schools), and after that came a history of the Christian martyrs, several pamphlets and four annual calendars, 1887-1890, edited by J. W. Lähde, which contained an almanac section followed by articles on various topics. Although the society welcomed the establishment of subsidiaries, local chapters, not many were formed, and they, together with the New York Mills headquarters, died within a few years.

Finnish presses in New York Mills, however, continued to produce Finnish-language books and pamphlets year after year. The Uusi Kotimaa, for example, published a long list of books in the 1890s, beginning with a handbook for temperance societies, a collection of sermons by Lars Levi Laestadius, hymnals, and going on to a shelf of fiction translated from the English, with such titles as "The Victims of Jealousy, or the Secrets of an Insane Asylum", "King Solomon's Treasure", to detective stories, adventure, romances, "An Adventuress, or Love and Betrayal", "The Poorhouse Princess", "The Prairie Bride" and many more.

In 1935 the presses of the Minnesotan Uutiset brought out J. A. Mattinen's history of the Thomson farming region. Their presses, have, of course, also printed many books, calendars, brochures, etc., that have had no connection with New York Mills as such.

Schools: Very early in their New York Mills days, the Finns even wanted to establish Finnish schools for their children. In 1881, for example, the New York Mills correspondent of the Uusi Kotimaa wrote: "Much has been said about Finnish-language

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