34 Hattie Plum Williams 
majority were young men in the twenties who came in the recent 
immigration chiefly to escape military service; and the total num- 
ber, comparatively small as it is, was much larger than usual. 
Most of them are boarded singly, although two groups of four, 
one of three, and six of two each are found. In almost every 
case they must share the sleeping quarters of some members of 
the family although in all but six cases separate rooms are pos- 
sible. As a rule, the families in which these men stay contain 
only small children, so that the bad moral effects are reduced to a 
minimum. 
With the Russian German, the keeping of boarders is often 
not so much a matter of choice as it is governed by a dislike of 
violating the customary rules of hospitality. A woman who lived 
in a comparatively spacious house bemoaned the unexpected 
arrival of her husband’s nephew—a married man who left his 
family in Russia and hurriedly came to America to avoid a 
threatened return to the army. She did not want to board him; 
he made so much work, for he didn’t know how to keep the house 
clean; but “it would be shame for us not to keep him, for he 
is our friend.’ 
IV. Distribution by Families 
The organization of the Russian German family in Lincoln 
shows the transition from the patriarchal to the modern type. 
Hence, the number of families returned in the census is indicative 
of neither the undivided nor the divided family, nor does it agree 
with the number of married couples and of widowed persons with 
unmarried children. There are many families where married 
sons live with their parents and where the housefather controls 
the financial affairs of the entire group. There are other fami- 
lies where married brothers dwell together, sharing some of the 
details of living but with no common financial interests. Finally 
the modern family composed of parents and unmarried children 
is largely represented. 
The number of families of Russian Germans in Lincoln is as 
follows :?8 
28 This includes only those Russian Germans for whom complete data 
160 
