486 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
shoving our boat into the water, “there is so much more to see. Come 
again soon!” 
We were not always so welcome that day, however. Woe to 
him who is in such a hurry that he must travel the Finnish country 
roads by automobile! On this particular July morning', when the 
American visitors set out with their Finnish hosts for their inspection 
of the Karelian wilderness, we enjoyed the use of a touring car loaned 
for the occasion by some unknown friend, and I regret to suspect 
but firmly believe that he was the richest capitalist in Sortavala. It 
was Saturday, and the peasants were coming to market in their high- 
seated, ridiculously rickety two-wheeled chariots drawn each by a 
Finnish pony with a yoke arched over his flowing, shaggy mane. 
Apparently it was the first time that these animals had seen an auto¬ 
mobile. Several young women in an approaching cart became so 
terrified fully a hundred yards before they reached us that they drove 
their wheels off into the steep ditch, while their horse rolled over 
on his back entangled in his ropes and kicking his heels in the air. 
Our driver and the co-operative engineer of our party went forward 
laughing to extricate them. But the fun was all on our side. One 
of the women, not willing to wait, started off on foot for town, and 
as she passed our car she relieved her mind of the following maledic¬ 
tion: “Why do you rich people not drive horses? Your machine 
brings dismay to beasts and misfortune to man.” 
Whatever Iwana owns is a co-operative product. He buys his 
plough from one co-operative society; he buys his coffee from an¬ 
other. He is a co-operator; he does not bother about capitalism; he 
has no use for communism. Doubtless there are other developments 
of the tenacity of the Finnish people which they may exhibit to the 
community of nations as typical achievements, but to me, at this 
writing, most astonishing seems the harmonious national system which 
they have built up of co-operative societies. 
There are places in this world where a great deal of money goes 
only a little way. Millions may produce only a battleship or equip 
a gas regiment or even be dissipated in projecting some gigantic re¬ 
ligious inflation. There are other places where a very little money 
sets the world right and well on its way toward the millennium. So 
it is with whatever is implanted in the frugal system of the Finnish 
co-operative rural banks. It yields at once two-fold and in the end 
twenty-fold in the hard but hopeful toil and the joyous vitality of 
a people. 
