other activities, Salminen has also served on the board of directors of the Security State Bank.

Another Pine Street enterprise was the grocery store started by Oscar Bay, which was later known as Bay & Mäki. Once in partnership with brothers Gust and Isaac Mäki, Bay gave up the extensive livery stable he had also operated. Another grocery was the Hibbing Supply House, started in 1912 by Randall Niemi, who had moved to Hibbing from Franklin in 1907. Martti Virta, who had begun by running a grocery store called the Trading Post, later operated the Hibbing Warehouse Company, from 1930 to 1947. John R. Erickson kept for years a combined grocery and candy store, while Matti Wilson sold only candy and D. Kiminki sold candy, tobacco and soft drinks. Other groceries have been run by Vesa & Hill and by Gust Järvi. Väinö Helenius had a drugstore. Finally in `old Hibbing' there were at one time 29 Finnish saloons, but Finnish repugnance toward the keepers of such establishments generally has meant that a listing of their proprietors was never made and cannot here be furnished.

Local Cooperatives : Local cooperative activity, which was to grow into a diversified picture, began in the field of groceries, too, largely because of the surrounding Finnish farming area and also thanks to the 1907 strike. When the Finns who took part in that strike were left without their usual pay envelopes and found their credit possibilities dwindling, they decided to start their own food store : the Miners Mercantile Company opened its doors in August 1907. However, because of the strike, it was forced to give out too much on credit and soon found itself in difficulties which led to its eventual termination.

In 1912 a cooperative boarding house, Elanto, was started, with Paul Blomberg as its first business manager. This enterprise flourished, and in time two houses on Lincoln Street belonged to it. When mining operations expanded into that part of town, they were sold to the mining corporation in 1940 and the net assets of the enterprise divided among the surviving members.

Important as the Elanto was, a consumers' cooperative proper was still a need. This need was met by the enterprise begun in 1916 by a dozen or so families banding together as a purchasing unit, ordering their needed supplies direct from wholesalers. Each family put $5 into the fund, and membership in the Cooperative Central was also purchased, and although such a small group could not support a retail store, Elanto furnished them store space (probably in 1917) in one of their buildings. Mike Nyström served as business manager. However, once again a mining

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