Seen more directly from the Finnish point of view, from material collected in interviews in Hibbing, the local picture showed in one vignette that "Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Finn, Fred Jaakkola and Leo Laukki appeared as speakers at the Workers' Hall. The mines were at a standstill for several weeks, and there were several incidents and clashes. Once, for example, when the strikers were marching along Third Avenue, the police tried to seize the red banner the workers were carrying. In the melee which ensued, the police of course were the victors." 14

The Finns, however, did not play the important role in this strike that they had in the one nine years earlier, but for them the results were similar; once more there was a decisive drop in the number of Finns in the mines, simultaneously with an increase in their numbers in the lumber camps and as farmers on the peripheries of the mining area and throughout all northern Minnesota.

Although the strike did result in many miners moving into the lumber camps just before a big labor battle shaped up on that front, it would be an over-simplification to suggest that the forestry strike was a consequence of the mining strike. The lumberjacks were faced with their own difficulties and abuses, and to correct them they were given an impetus to strike by an example from another field, and in their strike they, too, received leadership from the outside at the opportune moment.

The archives of the Minnesota Historical Society at St. Paul hold interesting documents which indicate, for example, that almost half of the force of 4,000 men employed in forest industry at the period of World War I were Finns. Finnish impressions of their working conditions at the time are included in an interview (22 November 1938) with one A. Koski by a WPA official: "Before the lumberjacks were organized, the pay was low, amounting to about $20 the month, and with board being of the poorest. Two men slept together in each of the hard wooden bunks in the camps, and there was crowding everywhere. There was no ventilation of any kind, and no one could even imagine modern washing or sanitary facilities. It was not until the spring, after a long winter of work, that there was an opportunity to wash oneself clean. The working day lasted from 5 in the morning until 5 in the evening or even later."

Another source recalls that the average pay for a 10-hour day was about $2.00, but that during the winter months it

14. MFAHS, Hibbing Chapter No. 14. Material collected by Edith Koivisto

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