of employers enjoy all the fruits of life" and ending with the statement that "the historical mission of the working class is to overthrow capitalism." On the basis of this statement, the IWW repudiated all agreements between workers and employers, which had been made by other labor organizations, maintained the right to strike at the least provocation, and outlined the revolutionary aims and goals of all labor in a new form, to be achieved not by political means or armed combat but with a new organization of all workers on the basis of their trades. 8 Ivar Vapaa stated it in Finnish, claiming "the IWW approves the economic theories of Marx but not his political teachings."

The Finns who were immigrants in the United States were by and large unskilled laborers, and almost without exception they were ignorant of the English language, so that they were forced - at least in the beginning - to earn their livelihoods in the heaviest and most poorly paid jobs: in forestry, on the railroads, in the mines, and so forth. Some had already heard of socialism back in Finland; others joined the socialist movement in America, in the first place perhaps because of the social life it offered, but also in the hope that it would help them to a better life.

Since the jobs in which the Finns were employed were at that time almost without exception 'un-organized,' and since none of the labor unions - mining excepted - had made the slightest attempt to organize the workers in these jobs, these unskilled workers felt themselves unprotected, even though they did belong to local chapters of the Socialist Party. It was natural, then, that when the IWW became better known among the Finns, it attracted their interest since its appeal was primarily to those in unskilled labor.

This development came at the time when the Finnish-American socialist movement was at its most flourishing. According to Ilmonen the following statistics are applicable

These figures include, of course, the entire United States. The central area, to which Minnesota belonged, had held its first

8. IWW. Its First 50 Years, p. 6. Also, Gambs, John S., The Decline of the IWW. New York, 1932.

232