Work People's College records

In 1903, leaders of the Finnish National Lutheran Church of America opened the Finnish People's College and Theological Seminary (Suomalainen Kansan Opisto ja Teologinen Seminaari) in Minneapolis, Minnesota to provide training for clergy and a liberal education for Finnish Americans in general. The college in Minneapolis soon failed and was moved to the Duluth suburb of Smithville, Minnesota where more Finnish Americans had settled. Finnish American Socialists were strong supporters of the school and by 1908 had gained control of it. It was renamed the Work People's College (Tyovaen Opisto) and religion was dropped from the curriculum. During the next few years, the school was the pride of the Finnish Socialist Federation but when the Federation split in 1914 over the issue of industrial unionism, the Work People's College became a school for the Industrial Worker's of the World; it continued so until it ceased holding classes in 1940.

In the fall of 1903, leaders of the Finnish National Church of America opened the Finnish People's College and Theological Seminary (Suomalainen Kansan Opisto ja Teologinen Seminaari) in Minneapolis to provide training for Finnish American ministers and a liberal education for Finnish Americans in general. The college was open to all who wished to attend and was financed by the sale of stock shares. The founding ministers, in inviting Finns from all ideological and theological quarters to support the school, were apparently responding to the Social Gospel Movement of the period. The college soon failed in Minneapolis for lack of students and was moved to Smithville, Minnesota, a suburb of Duluth, where the number of Finnish Americans was much greater. Finnish American Socialists were strong supporters of the school and within a few years found themselves in control of the majority of the school's stock -- a development which coincided with the Finnish Socialist Federation's expressed desire to open a workers' college in which to train the future leaders of the Socialist Commonwealth. By 1908, the Socialists had gained total control of the college, renamed it the Work People's College (Tyovaen Opisto) and had dropped religion from the curriculum in favor of Darwinism, Marxist history, economics, sociology, bookkeeping, typing and English. During the next five years, Work People's College became the pride of the Finnish Socialist Federation and the theoretical center for Finnish American leftism. Between 1912 and 1914, however, several influential teachers began to promote syndicalism and urged their students to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). In 1914 the entire Federation split over the issue of industrial unionism and Work People's College became an I.W.W. school, which it continued to be until it ceased holding classes in 1940. The property was finally liquidated in 1962. At its peak in the school year of 1913-1914 Work People's College had a student body of approximately one hundred and fifty. The Work People's College records support research on immigrant labor radicalism, because the school's teachers and students were quite influential in persuading several thousand Finnish American Socialists to leave the Socialist Party and cast their fortunes with the Industrial Workers of the World, especially after the iron ore and copper workers' strikes of 1907 and 1913 in Minnesota and Michigan.

NOTE: School and business records of the Work People's College (Tyovaen Opisto) are held at the University of Minnesota's Immigration History Research Center, Andersen Library. Sometime after the final reorganization of the institution in 1962, the school's records were given for safekeeping to the Workers' Socialist Publishing Company, Duluth, Minnesota, publisher of the Finnish American newspaper, Industrialisti. In 1964 the papers were secured for the IHRC from the editor of Industrialisti through the efforts of a professor and former Director of the Center for Immigration Studies at the University of Minnesota. http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/research/vitrage/all/wo/FINwpc.htm