$700. The paper, and its presses, are to be moved to Duluth as soon as circumstances permit. We for our part wish the greatest of success to this newspaper. We have both been born in the same era, one in the East, one in the West." The Suomalainen expired soon after this, but the same fate soon befell its successor.

The other Finnish newspaper of Ely began its career as an organ of the workers : Aatteita, which owed its birth to A. Tanner, was able to continue publication for only some three months.

Sulkanen attributes the failure of these enterprises basically to the fact that the period of political oppression in Finland had brought to America "educated, liberal men, fighting for national freedom, who devoted themselves to the newspaper field and devoted space in their papers to the problems of labor," and in this connection Sulkanen mentions Eero Erkko and his paper, Amerikan Kaiku, which was of relatively high niveau and as such "took the bread out of the mouths of the Ely papers." Looking at local conditions, however, one must conclude that newspapers printed far away in the eastern states were in no way able to influence the situation, however liberal they might have been and no matter and what their quality, and one must find the reason principally in the fact that in 1903-04 Ely and its surrounding area simply did not have enough supporters of the workers' creed, who would have subscribed to these new newspapers, and secondarily to their difficulty in finding advertisers to give them the necessary revenues.

Cooperative Activity and Finnish Businessmen: Cooperative activity in Ely began at a very early stage. The first undertakings were boardinghouses, and the oldest of them, Anila, was in operation from 1899 to the first World War, while a newer one, Junula, was started in 1910. Meanwhile, an article in the Työmies in December 1905 reported that "it has been decided to try out a consumers' circle in Ely and, as is known, this system involves requesting consumers in a given community to patronize one single store for each branch of merchandise. In this way it is possible to bring about socializing changes in production. The lists will be prepared with the heading, `We, the undersigned, join herewith the Ely socialist consumers' group, promising during the months of December, January and February to patronize and to urge others to patronize the following 18 stores exclusively." This endeavor was followed by the founding of a cooperative store proper, the Ely Merchants Grocery, whose first business manager was John Kukko. The founding of the Ely Cooperative Association followed in 1924. The latter joined the Cooperative

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