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that in his pocket he was off to America, just as Matti Maunus was with his cousin Herman Somppi's passport.

Maunus had already been to America and had returned to Finland with every intention of settling down, but one Sunday in the fall of 1902 he had gone to church, and on that particular Sunday Dean Durchman, who had put off the duty for half a year, finally read out the illegal conscription edict to his parishioners. The very next day Maunus went to speak to the Dean, who promised to write out a birth certificate making Maunus out to be older than he really was so that he could apply for a new passport, but then his cousin Somppi, who was already too old for the draft, gave him his. In the village the neighbors were told that Matti was off to the lumbercamps to earn some cash, but by that time his stepfather had taken him one night to another town, where no one knew them, and there the young man had taken the train and was off for America again. Of course Matti was not the only one to leave, for other young men left at the same time, "just to be on the safe side."

In Alavus there was one man, a hired man named Simuna, whose passport was used over and over again. Once the passport control at the point of exit had been successfully passed, the user would mail the passport back to Simuna, and so another young man was able to use it, and another and another, as long as the document was valid. In Jalasjärvi there was quite a similar arrangement, and some forty to fifty young men were able to leave the country: one at a time the Jalasjärvi men would leave, drive to the town of Kristina, and from there they would cross the Gulf of Bothnia in a rowboat, with the passport in their pocket. In Sweden that passport almost became their password to authorities who were well-disposed and to travel agents who were eager to help.

Even the lack of a passport did not need to deter anyone's departure : some who made the trip recall that the agents in Finland who sold steamer tickets would also sell forged passports. In Hanko, there was a "secret activist shop" where passports were made out if there was a birth certificate and a sheriffs certificate to show.

When Emil Huhtala wanted to leave Alavus, the sheriff told him to get his passport in Hanko; he ordered him not to try to get it from the provincial government, because his draft call had already been issued while he was making up his mind to leave. So he left - the Dean wishing him a successful voyage and urging him to return when times were better, and the Sheriff

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