Taistelu Osuustoimintarintamalla [Fighting on the Co-operative Front]

Superior, Wi: Central Co-operative Wholesale, 1932. Very good.. 91,[2]pp. Original illustrated wrappers. Minor wear, creasing, and light soiling to wrappers. Varying levels of toning to text block. A fascinating history of co-operative movements in the United States by George Halonen, a leading Finnish-American Communist who was expelled from the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in 1929 for opposing centralization. Born in Helsinki in 1891, Halonen emigrated to Canada in 1912 and wrote for Finnish socialist papers in Ontario and then Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He moved to Superior, Wisconsin in the early-1920s to edit the Finnish radical periodical Tyomies, which had ties to the CPUSA and was closely involved with the Co-operative Central Exchange (CCE), a largely Finnish organization with a major share of consumer retail trade in the Upper Midwest. In 1929 a rift developed in the CCE over centralization (increasingly advocated by CPUSA leadership) and local control (advocated by Halonen and several associates). As a result, Halonen was expelled from the CPUSA, but his successor organization to the CCE, the Central Co-Operative Wholesale maintained its position as the leading co-op organization in the region until the rise of supermarkets after World War II. Interestingly, the front cover of the present work is illustrated with a drawing of three people holding up a large globe labeled "Cooperation." OCLC records just four copies in the United States (Wisconsin Historical, the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, the Hoover Institute, and the Library of Congress), and one each in Canada and Finland.