Finns in Minnesota

Cooperatives and the Common Good

the Finns  61 strong New Deal advocates. Nowhere was Finnish exuberance for FarmerLabor causes more evident than at Mesaba Cooperative Park, which left-wing Finns developed in 1929 on a 160-acre property located eight miles east of Hibbing. Until the outbreak of World War II, thousands of people attended the park’s annual summer “festivals of struggle,” where political speeches, athletic competitions, plays, musical performances , and dances were featured. Among the park’s strongest supporters were numerous second-generation Finns, some of whom assisted in organizing a successful timber workers strike in 1937 and in unionizing steel and mine workers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Thus, after years of effort , politically progressive Finnish Minnesotans had finally moved “into the mainstream of American labor organization and political life with opportunities to influence their destinies far beyond their ethnic community.”105 Cooperatives and the Common Good Despite their differences, Finns representing a full range of political views— left, right, independent, and indifferent—often found reconciliation and agreement in an institution based on the common good: the cooperative. While Finns engaged in forming various types of cooperatives—boardinghouses, creameries and cheese factories, grain mills and elevators , automobile service stations and fuel distributorships, ViennaPasanenJohnson(thedaughterofIda Pasanen—aprominent Finnish Socialist and IWWorganizer fromTwo Harbors)wagedan unsuccessfulcampaign as the1934FarmerLaborcandidate fora state senate seaton Duluth’s wealthyeast side.Anaccomplished musicianand tirelessadvocate forprogressive causes,Johnsonheld numerousFarmerLaborParty leadershippositionsduringthe 1930sand 1940s and was involvedin negotiationsthatresultedin themergerandcreationof theDemocratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party in1944.Thestampsonboth sidesof theimage read “Union Made.” 62  people oF minnesota telephone and electric companies, insurance associations and burial societies—the retail store was their most important and ubiquitous enterprise. “The Finns have learned,” stated one commentator in 1930, “that the co-operative store is equally as important to each and every member as, if not more important than,their homes and farms.”106 Minnesota’s first Finnish cooperative store appeared in Menahga in 1903. The Menahga Cooperative Sampo and several similar stores that appeared shortly thereafter were typically developed to avoid exploitation by local merchants who monopolized economic activities in small communities . The concept received further attention in 1906 when delegates attending the Hibbing meeting of the FinnishAmerican Socialist Federation identified cooperatives as one way of dealing with working-class economic problems. During the Mesabi strikes of 1907 and 1916,Finns organized cooperative buying clubs when merchants denied them credit and service;some buying clubs later evolved into fullfledged stores.By 1917,Finns had organized thirty-three cooperative stores,thirteen on the Iron Range.107 Finnish cooperators quickly saw the need for a federation that would knit the disparate local societies together. Close totenthousand peopleattendedthesum mer festival held atMesaba Co-op Park overa long JulyFourthweekend in 1936. The eventincluded concerts,plays, athletic competitions , dances, and speechesby several FarmerLaborpoliticians , most notably JohnBernard, a Socialist candidate forU.S. Congress who was victorious in theNovember election. the Finns  63 “Why shouldn’t we gather our purchases into one?” they asked. “We could buy sugar, salt fish, and canned fish in quantities of many carloads,” as well as “soap, coffee, and other merchandise.” In 1917, the Cooperative Central Exchange (CCE) was organized in Superior,Wisconsin.Over the next forty-six years, CCE supported its affiliated cooperatives as a centralized purchasing association and by training employees and performing educational work.108 Between 1903 and 1929, Minnesota’s Finns organized seventy-five cooperative stores. Despite their accomplishments , Finnish cooperators throughout the Midwest encountered considerable internal dissension during the 1920s. One group of cooperative activists, including members of the Communist-based Workers Party of America, believed that a movement supported by workers and farmers could not be separated from the “deep economic and social contradictions produced by the present class society .” The other group advocated political neutrality, arguing that cooperative success would be accomplished only by appealing to a broad base of participants interested in achieving economic and social goals.109 Finnish cooperators faced a serious dilemma in 1929 Themanagerand threeemployees oftheVirginia WorkPeople’s Association Cooperative stand in front ofthestore;the sideawningdisplays theFinnish word forcooperative store: osuskauppa. On thestreetis the association’s early1920s International deliverytruck. 64  people oF minnesota when national WPA leaders demanded access to the $1.5 million of annual sales generated by the CCE. When CCE delegates gathered for a contentious annual meeting in April 1930, the Communists’ request was voted down 186 to 43, essentially ensuring that a large majority of cooperatives would follow a politically...