meet in a camp hastily erected by August Standinger. This first meeting revealed that many members had broken their temperance pledges during the fire, when they had tried to quench the thirst caused by the heat of the flames by drinking beer! As soon as more and more new buildings began to rise again, the society rented, according to Josephine Rauma, the hall belonging to Victor Peltas, until a lot was purchased from shoemaker John Johnson for $300, and on that land a home for the society was built in 1895. With membership continuing to grow, the building proved too small, and it was sold and removed from the land, on which a new and larger hall was built in 1906.

After considerable discussion, the society joined the temperance league, the Brotherhood, becoming Chapter 61. With the help of temperance speakers sent out by the league, support for the battle against `King Alcohol' was forthcoming, but it was not an easy battle to win. From time to time even members of the society suffered relapses, and at one meeting in 1893 even the chairman of the society had been forced to confess "he had had something to drink as medicine for an upset stomach." With a vote of 10 to 2, the chairman was forgiven his relapse, on condition it not occur again. Another complicated issue was made out of dancing, which was forbidden early in 1896 - partly, it was assumed, because the league was meeting in convention that summer and the meeting was to be held in Virginia. Many Finns began to feel that the Valon Tuote temperance society was becoming too reactionary, and so a new one, called Nuori Suomi (Young Finland) was started in 1895.5 This split caused a re-evaluation of the various measures which had been taken, and when the extreme rules were abandoned, and Valon Tuote also quit the league, a reconciliation became possible, and the two societies merged in 1897.

Temperance work procedures were approximately the same here as elsewhere. Lectures were given, and indoctrination courses were held regularly up to 1933, when Heikki Moilanen and Mrs. John Wäyrynen held the last classes. The Finnish temperance group was largely responsible for the strong stand that City Manager M. L. Fay took on the question of saloons in the community: the Virginia Enterprise reported in August 1904 that the saloons had been given closing hours, which were being enforced, on the grounds that all-night carousing was against state laws and was also detrimental to the efficiency of many promising

5. Ilmonen, S. Raittiusliikkeen Historia. p. 86.. Also, Raittiuslehti. 20 May 1895.

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