since "the Finns and Italians living in Minnesota had always enjoyed friendly relations."

On 17 April 1940, representatives from all Finnish groups had been invited to a joint meeting in Duluth to study the question of increasing the scope of the fund drive, since it was now "a question of safe-guarding humanity, the fate and future of the Finnish people." This well-attended meeting, held at the FAAC hall, decided to continue and intensify collections, with Duluth to be the headquarters to which collections would be reported and from where results achieved would be given out for publication.

During Finland's subsequent involvement in the later phases of World War II, the General Relief Committees for Finland remained inactive; it was revived at the end of the war, although it did not regain the scope it had reached during those early months of Finland's Winter War. In 1945 the Committee joined the Help Finland, Inc., which had its headquarters in New York, and all subsequent funds raised were forwarded there. The Committee continued to keep its full membership, with new members regularly appointed to replace those who left or resigned for one reason or another. Thus A. A. Toivonen was elected treasurer to succeed Lauri Lemberg, and A. E. Rajanen and A. W. Havela were elected to the board. Havela, incidentally, served as the last secretary of the Committee, which did not terminate its activities until a couple of years after Finland had quit the war and was well on its way to reconstruction.

The figures which have been indicated in the reports of the General Relief Committee and the Women's Auxiliary, of money and goods sent to Finland over a period of years, nevertheless represent but a fraction of the aid rendered to Finland by the Finnish-Americans of Duluth. It is impossible to even hazard an estimate of the number of gift packages posted to Finland by individuals, whose only motivation was the desire to help those in need, and whose only thanks came in the form of a sense of inner satisfaction.

The so-called Hoover Committee, whose official name locally was the Duluth Committee for Finnish Relief Fund, had its own collection apparatus in the community. President Hoover had asked Mayor C. R. Berghult to take charge of the effort in Duluth, and he began promptly, assisted by an 18-member advisory committee, with Margaret Culkin Banning as chairman. The leading Duluth newspapers, the Duluth Herald and the News-Tribune, furnished office space, and the committee began its work on 26 December 1939, under the direction of St. Louis County Superin

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