A Social Study of the Russian German 51 
family were 12 children living. There was a decrease through 
death of 3.3 children per family, or 41.2 per cent. of all who had 
been born. 
The Russian German follows the European trend in natality, 
and in his birth rate and his marriage rate he is more an eigh- 
teenth century product of Germany than of any modern condi- 
tions. Thrown out upon the frontier of Europe a century and 
a half ago, like all pioneers, a part of his service was to multiply 
and replenish the steppes, and his German ancestry fitted him 
admirably for this task. In spite of border warfare, epidemics, 
famine, and slight emigration the population of the German 
colonies in less than a century showed ten times its original 
number.?? They actually increased more rapidly than the native 
population because they were more protected, particularly from 
military service, which meant not merely the loss of individual 
men but of homes as well. 
The birth rate, however, among the German colonists in Russia 
is not so high as it is for Russia as a whole, nor so high as it is 
among their immigrants in Lincoln. For five years (1907 to 
IQ11 inclusive) the birth rate per 1,000 of the total population of 
Russia was 44.5.24 The crude rate for the Protestant German 
colonies was 40.9 births per 1,000 in 1908 and 36.9 in 1912.7> The 
latter shows the effect of three years’ famine and emigration. 
According to this computation, the crude birth rate of the Ger- 
man colonists in Lincoln is about 20 more per 1,000 population 
than in Russia. This phenomenon of a higher crude birth rate 
among immigrants in America than in their native home finds a 
parallel among the inhabitants of the anthracite coal communi- 
ties of Pennsylvania. These are mostly Slavs from Austria and 
Hungary where the birth rate is 38.6 and 44.0 respectively per 
1,000 population. In Pennsylvania, in five parishes the birth rate 
was estimated at from 50.00 to 73.33 per 1,000.76 
23 Bauer, Geschichte der deutschen Ansiedler an der Wolga, 76. 
24 Statesman’s Year Book, 1914. 
25 Computed from data in the Friedensboten Kalender, 1910 and 1914, 
printed in Talowka, Government Saratow, Russia. 
26 Roberts, Anthracite Coal Communities, 69-70. 
177 
