Transitional social organizations were formed which helped immigrants maintain their homeland roots while they acclimated to American life. They included cooperative stores, halls, boarding houses, churches, temperance societies and saloons.
Salons and brothels were usually the first community centers to emerge due to the predominantly male working force needs. Often they were the only social centers available when a mine location opened. Often the saloon keeper was a labor agent, banker and general adviser. Connected with the saloons were boarding houses, pool halls, card rooms and dance halls.
In 1909, the Immigration Commission counted 356 saloons in 15 towns on the Mesabi and Vermillion Ranges. Of these, 59 were run by Finns, 48 by Slovenes, 34 by Croatians, 8 by Montenegrins, and 1 by a Serbian.
Temperance societies were the next institution to be formed in the Finnish communities, even before churches. The Pohjan Leimu (Northern Light) society was established in 1886 in Soudan two years after the mine opened. The hall was erected on land donated by the mining company. Temperance societies quickly evolved into complete social, cultural and fraternal institutions. One third of the adult Finns (1,177) in Virginia were members of the Valontuote (Producer of Light) Temperance Society in 1903.
From the temperance societies, churches and socialist organizations emerged. The Socialist organizations offered the best choice. These were modeled after the organizations in Finland from the Finnish national awakening which established workers’ clubs and night schools to promote education. They also allowed for card playing and dances.
In Finland, cooperatives had played an important historical role in all the major societal changes occurring as it evolved from an agrarian to an industrial nation.
Co-ops were geographically based and involved with the everyday lives of the people who had reasonable access to each other. Cooperative members consider themselves helped by the other members. As a community based place of exchange, co-ops are socially centered market places. Here individuals negotiate buying food, clothing, farming implements, and even selling goods. They also became a way to preserve social ties in a geographical area experiencing rapid industrialization.
When economic gain and success over shadowed the daily courtesies of respect for each individual, coops facilitated an alternative system where each member was known by name. Their opinions always affected the Coops business directions. With the one-member, one vote principle, they facilitated and required a communal respect for all. Without the support of its members, a cooperative was destined to failure.
The Finnish American cooperative movement arose in response to the economic insecurity experienced by immigrants, many of whom were unskilled wage earners in the lumber and mining industries and backwoods farmers. They reacted to monopolistic practices which were seen as the excesses of capitalism. Cooperativism was identified as one avenue to a more socially responsive economy. Although the Finnish American consumers’ cooperative movement embraced all segments of the Finnish community, it had been started largely by and had received considerable impetus from Finnish Socialists, who viewed cooperativism as an economic adjunct to the working class movement.
The first generation immigrants began forming local consumers’ cooperatives, often with little or no business experience on the part of the members. Yet most of the ventures thrived. Toward the end of the 1910s, local cooperative stores began to join with other Finnish co-ops in the respective areas to form regional cooperative associations. In the New England area, for example, eight Finnish cooperatives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire formed the United Cooperative Society in 1919.
For many members of the Finnish American first generation the cooperative movement represented a way of life, providing not only for their material, but social and cultural needs as well. This was particularly true of rural areas where Co-op halls were also built. They became the sites of dances, concerts, evening socials, lectures, and plays. In the 1920s women’s guilds, mostly Finnish, sprung up as auxiliaries to the stores. They sponsored locally produced vaudeville musicals that toured the Midwest promoting coops and their products in the 1930s.
Bruce Mine Incident 