bought huge quantities of food produced by Finnish farmers in the vicinity. It was not unusual for a whole sack of flour to be used for baking one day's bread, for according to Kolehmainen, in 1928 there were 338 persons who ate their meals regularly at the Toverila. The women working in the kitchens were very often young or new immigrants themselves, and depending on their ages they were mother-sister-bride images to the lonely men. Love did enter the picture, and it often happened that a boardinghouse would lose a cook and one of its boarders as the newlyweds set forth to start a home of their own - and it often happened, that the new home of their own meant starting a boardinghouse of their own, modest at first, but one sure to grow.

Such a new boardinghouse usually meant a venture where most of the work was done by the wife. John Saarinen has related (Duluth Herald, 26 January 1954) that in the boardinghouses of the early period the wife usually had to get up at four in the morning to start work in the kitchen, because lunch boxes had to be gotten ready for those men who worked too far away to come back to eat at noon. Then there was breakfast before the men left, then lunch to prepare for those who could come home, and then there was dinner, with meat and fish, and potatoes, of course. There were also new foods for the immigrants to eat, strange things like tomatoes, for example, but usually the food was the familiar Finnish fare to which they were accustomed. The men were fed 21 meals a week, and for board and bed the weekly charge (in 1902) came to around $3.50.

Nestor Hill has recalled that on one single block near the Point there were six Finnish boardinghouses. In the communal category there were, in addition to the Toverila (which, having closed its doors in 1942, was bought by Matti Wall and became Matt's Hotel and Bar), 'Rentola' in West Duluth, 'Two-Seventeen' at 217 St. Croix Avenue, and 'Koitto' on Lake Avenue, which was the last to remain open, not closing its doors until the 1950s. Most of them were transformed into ordinary restaurants for a new public or disappeared completely from the scene.

Even after this period of flourishing boardinghouses the Finns have continued to try their luck in the hotel and restaurant field. For example, Jalmar and Anni Laaksonen began by operating a simple restaurant and then bought the Nicollet Hotel in 1921 (with Hurme) and then later still, in 1924, built their own, the First Street Hotel, which they sold in 1947 to Axel E. Dahlberg. Meanwhile, the Nicollet Hotel was taken over by Urpo Richard Kytö together with Hurme in 1924 but later became Kytö's

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