A Social Study of the Russian German 45 
limits at various periods of the municipality’s history is necessary. 
In 1905, the Nebraska Legislature passed a model Vital Statis- 
tics law which was first properly put into effect in Lincoln upon 
the reorganization of its Board of Healthin1912.1° There are now 
on record, therefore, three years of fairly accurate and fairly 
complete birth and death certificates for the city, although there 
would have been nine if the law had been promptly enforced. 
The state, however, is still included (1914) in the list of common- 
wealths where “ good birth registration laws have been enacted— 
although their enforcement does not yet meet the census require- 
ments.’”** In 1909 the State Registrar of Vital Statistics was 
made the depositary of data on marriage and divorce, to whom 
annual reports are to be made by the county judge and Clerk of 
the District Court respectively.2 This law has resulted in no 
more complete statistics in Lancaster County than were available 
before. Elaborate blanks containing between thirty and forty 
items are provided, but only such items are filled in as the marriage 
license or the petition for divorce happen to record. The divorce 
statistics are woefully deficient, not more than half the items 
being filled out, because attorneys have not been in the habit of 
including many of the points asked for, and the clerk’s office has 
not taken the trouble to secure the information from the litigants. 
9 These corrections have been made in the figures used for the tables 
which follow. 
10 Laws of Nebraska, 1905, 466-471. The salient features of this act 
are (1) that the registration area covers the entire state, (2) that the 
birth and death certificates are made out according to the standard blanks 
adopted by the United States Census Bureau, (3) that all local registrars 
must make a report to the State Registrar, who makes a permanent record 
of the certificate, and (4) physicians and undertakers failing to report 
births and deaths are subject to a fine of $10 to $100, or to sixty days 
imprisonment, or to both. 
11“ Birth Registration, an Aid in Protecting the Lives and Rights of 
Children,” United States Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, Mono- 
graph, number 1, 16. See also map of the United States on page 2, show- 
ing adequacy and inadequacy of birth registration laws in the various 
states. The Bureau of the Census, however, included the cities of Omaha 
and Lincoln in its registration area in 1911. Department of Commerce and 
Labor, Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1911, 10. 
12 Laws of Nebraska, 1900, 347. 
171 
