Radical Astoria

Radical Astoria

I picked up this ca. 1915 postcard photograph at an antiques store in, of all places, Astoria. It shows the staff of Toveri, the Astoria Finnish-language daily newspaper that was the voice of the western district of the Finnish Socialist Federation from 1907 to 1931. They are posed outside their Taylor Street offices which also housed the newspaper’s book publishing arm, the Pacific Development Society. The convoluted history of Toveri was tracked in “Ethnicity and Radicalism: The Finns of Astoria and the Toveri, 1890-1930,” by the late P. George Hummasti  (Oregon Historical Quarterly 96:4).

%d bloggers like this: