In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

π 17 C H A P T E R 2 Finnish Immigrant Cultural Organizations and the “Finn Hall” As throngs of Finnish immigrants entered the United States, they looked for familiar or recognizable social activities to supplement their mundane work lives. While they most often sought a new life in the New World, they also sought to maintain cultural identity, possibly to ease the transition to life in America. Finnish immigrants founded cultural organizations that nurtured and supported their unfamiliar existence in America; thus, organizational societies became very popular and Finnish immigrants became great “joiners.” In this chapter, we will look at Finnish immigrant cultural organizations. We will examine how tangible aspects of those organizational societies cultivated a rigorous and effective response to conditions in the industrial setting, with specific analysis of secular Finnish immigrant cultural organizations in the Copper Country. An important tangible aspect of Finnish immigrant cultural organizations was the highly valued “Finn hall.” Finn halls were an important social aspect in the Finnish immigrant’s life for many reasons. Combating individual, cultural, and geographic isolation in remote industrial areas, where Lake Superior Finns tended to settle and work in the booming extractive industries, was certainly 18 π chapter two a large reason for the popularity of Finn halls. Finn halls were often homes or incubators for a unique, concerted response to a new life in America. From these halls, Finnish immigrants responded to their conditions in a proactive manner. Finnish American historian Michael G. Karni hypothesized that Finns were hoping to maintain and disseminate their values in America: “Most Finns were determined not to be passive recipients of American culture. Whether associated with the church, the temperance movement, the cooperative movement or the radical labor movement, they believed they could shape the American environment and shape it into what it was not.”1 Finnish immigrants aimed to challenge, influence, and shape undesirable aspects of American culture using a distinctive response, their cultural organizations. A Response to Industrial Life in the Lake Superior Region In the booming mining districts of the Lake Superior region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Finnish immigrants’ organizational responses aimed directly at the problems associated with living and working in industrial America. For Finnish immigrants, problems within industrial America around the “big lake” often depended on how the individual viewed their surroundings; thus, joining like-minded groups that addressed the problems of life and work in industrial America varied within different segments of the Finnish immigrant population. Church groups called for piety and adherence to a moral Christian life, temperance groups called for clean living and abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and the socialist-unionist movement called for contemplation of the working class’s plight concerning social, economic, and safety issues. Finnish immigrant churches were the first organizational groups to develop in America. The first secular Finnish immigrant organizational endeavor in America began in the mid-1880s. These “groups” were actually cooperative boarding houses. The cooperative boarding house was a Finnish immigrant discovery in America, as none existed in Finland. As Helen K. Leiviska remembers, the cooperative boarding house operated economically as such: Cultural Organizations and the “Finn Hall” π 19 Well you see what they did was that they would buy—so many people would join together and they would build an apartment. It wasn’t exactly a true cooperative in a sense according to Rochdale’s principles. But these people would jointly own the house and they would pay the mortgage monthly—the rent consisted of mortgage payments, the taxes and so forth.2 The cooperative boarding house was more than a place to lay a body down. Leaders in the Finnish immigrant community recognized that the young men streaming into American industrial centers lacked moral direction. These young men spent more time in saloons than in wholesome, enlightening activities. Into this debauchery-laden void came the operators of cooperative boarding houses, which provided comfort, familiarity, and education to newly industrialized workers. In these boarding houses, education was a priority; young men began to read various types of literature, but especially sociological and economic explanations of life.3 From this embryonic institution, the rise of other prominent secular cultural organizations took shape. Temperance societies, workingmen’s groups, cooperatives, women’s auxiliaries, gymnastics societies, debate forums, drama groups, and publishing associations took hold within the Finnish immigrant communities. While there were many different groups and institutions within the Finnish immigrant cultural organizations, they all had one major consideration: they needed a...

Share