clubhouse socialism." John I. Kolehmainen, a responsible historian, has summed up effectively the workers' movement of that time : "In cultural and educational respects the Finnish organizations in question were significant factors. However, their political activity and their revolutionary significance seem to have been but weak and illusory, like a distant shadow hardly able to obscure the brightness of their everyday activities. The subsequent years have only tended to confirm this ironic truth that the so-called `auxiliary' activities had historically a far greater significance than did the actual political activity."

The next convention was held in 1912 at the Workers' Institute, and with a full nine days of discussion it proved to be the wordiest convention held. Those who seemed to hold the floor were Leo Laukki, Aku Rissanen and Yrjö Sirola, all on the Institute faculty, who forcefully presented the new ideas fostered by the IWW. According to some delegates, developments seemed to be moving in the wrong direction, and since the party supported the Institute with thousands of dollars per year it ought to be able to expect that the Institute would also support the majority views. This did not seem to be the case, and one speaker mentioned his discussion with several students, who had claimed that "they ought to start teaching socialism," so one could ask what had been taught up to the present, especially since, according to those students, their present program should be thrown on the rubbish heap. In spite of the severe criticisms, however, the delegates voted to continue financial support of the Institute, "hoping that instruction in the future would be based on principles approved by the party."

At the same meeting the party newspapers also came in for criticism. In actual fact the Työmies, which on 1 January 1911 had a circulation of 12,632, and which became a daily that year, had written extensively of the new trend, and this had already led to protests that it was no longer a socialist newspaper. This criticism brought into the open did succeed in saving the paper from the IWW but led in turn to the establishment of a new newspaper in Duluth. The victory was not permanent, for a few years later another schism did wrest the Työmies from the socialists, as will be related later.

Those who had remained in the minority in the Duluth convention - the Institute faculty members and other radicals - began to be even more active after the convention. The battle was now joined in many local chapters, particularly in the central region, whose whole organization soon fell into the hands of the

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