When restrictions on immigration began to have their effect, Finnish-American organizations and societies found their activities, including their dramatics, beginning a steady decline. World War II brought activity almost to a dead stop. It no longer paid to import plays from Finland, and Lemberg resigned as representative of the League and terminated his play rental service in 1946.

Regardless of what opinion one might hold of the dramatic qualities of Finnish-American productions, one can note throughout an attempt to open up distant horizons, to transport an audience to some new, strange locale. Palm has written that "the artistic merit of a play or its lack of merit was rarely a factor in its being chosen for performance or being rejected. Naturally, the workers' societies avoided plays ridiculing their beliefs, just as the temperance societies did, too, but on the whole any play was deemed acceptable if it was felt that it would interest an audience." If some plays had to be rejected because they demanded too much in the way of costumes or scenery, no play was rejected because it was felt a miner or a struggling farmer could not stand on the boards to portray a heroic Swedish Renaissance king, for example. Often there was no distinction made between the sublime and the everyday, and many a romantic drama received a naturalistic interpretation. The best results, of course, were achieved with what were almost Finnish folk plays, with Alexis Kivi's Nummisuutarit (The Heath Cobblers) or Teuvo Pakkala's Tukkijoella (The Loggers.) Even in these plays, however, characterization remained scant, and the Finnish amateur was content to play himself while speaking the words of another.

Classical drama remained untouched, Shakespeare largely ignored, although most of his plays have been available in translation. Schiller's youthful Robbers was produced on several stages, and Gerhart Hauptmann's naturalistic drama, The Weavers, was acted quite widely. Strindberg's searing and realistic Father, as well as Ibsen's Ghosts, The Doll House and other dramas were given but Peer Gynt ignored. Björnson and Holberg were wellknown in the earlier years; Tolstoi and Gogol and other Russian authors were tried on some stages. Shaw was scantily represented, Eugene O'Neill almost not at all, but Hungarian comedies with music, gypsies and wild dances were very popuar. When some drama groups reported that they had given over sixty plays, not counting short and one-act plays, it is possible to imagine what a variety of fare must have been included.

Naturally the dramas of Finland's own writers formed the mainstay of Finnish-American productions, for they were naturally

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