A Social Study of the Russian German a0) 
a potent influence upon the marriage age. Luther taught that 
“young” marriages were most desirable and recommended from 
sixteen to eighteen years for girls and seventeen to nineteen years 
for boys. The Russian Germans have gone little beyond that, 
since the most of the girls in the colonies marry from seventeen 
to eighteen and the boys from eighteen to nineteen. 
Although the statistics do not clearly show the fact, it is never- 
theless true that the marriage age among the Russian German 
men and women of the higher social class in Lincoln is rising. It 
invariably ranges from 22 to 25 years of age for the women and 
often past 30 for the men.®* This class includes those who go on 
to the high school and the university, and who defer marriage by 
reason of the prevailing sentiment of a different environment, or 
in order to carry out ambitions which have been aroused. The 
same reasons operate upon those who have learned a trade, as 
millinery, dressmaking, bookbinding and the like, or upon those 
who are in business pursuits, as clerking and stenography. Be- 
sides, their rise in the social scale narrows their choice of mates, 
for most of them still prefer to marry within their own nationality 
(or if not choosing it voluntarily, they respect their parents’ 
wishes in the matter) and the number of Russian Germans who 
have risen to the same social level is necessarily limited. 
The tendency of the parents to discourage marriage becausc 
the children are considered an economic asset, is probably more 
enforced with this class than with their inferiors. The higher 
standard of living which they have adopted demands the income 
of the children, and the older ones of the family especially are 
encouraged to share in assisting the parents to meet expenses. 
Any discussion of the matter is ended by the very apparent prop- 
osition that “if you marry so young, how do you ever expect 
us to get back what you have cost us” 76° 
68 The American-born children of Russian German parents show the same 
class difference in marriage age which the foreign-born exhibit. Those 
who have moved outside the settlement respond to the community influ- 
ence and delay marriage; while among those who have remained in the 
settlement, the marriage age has become still lower. 
69 Several instances are known of young men whose fathers, backed 
by their legal rights, demanded the services of their sons until the latter 
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