[326] These biographies are numerous in the many county histories which appeared between 1880 and 1890 as the work of a syndicate of publishers; they are also the staple of the latter half of such works as Johnson and Peterson, _Svenskarne i Illinois_, and Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, and II. All the Scandinavian newspapers print many similar sketches, biographical, autobiographical, and obituary. Closely connected with this immigration of so many young, unmarried girls of the servant class, is the question of sex morality and illegitimacy. The statistics relating to this question are particularly unsatisfactory so far as the United States is concerned, even for a land where the scientific statistician is a recent product, and where the collection of social statistics, left mainly to the States and to local authorities, is very loosely carried on. The motives for concealment and for prevarication are obvious, and the records of municipal courts, even if closely inspected, would not give much more than a scant minimum of information applicable to an estimate of the Scandinavian element in the population. To judge from the figures given for certain cities in Norway and Sweden, it would be natural to expect a much higher percentage of illegitimate births among the immigrants from those countries than among persons of American ancestry. The United States Consul at Stockholm reported for 1884 for the whole of Sweden that 10.2% of all births were illegitimate; for the city of Stockholm alone, 29.3%.[327] Twelve years later the figure for the whole kingdom was 11%.[328] For Norway, the figure for the kingdom was 7.2% for 1896; in the city of Christiania, 15.4% of the 5,349 births in 1895 were illegitimate.[329] [327] _U. S. Consular Reports_ (_1887_), No. 76, 151; Young, _Labor in Europe_, 689. C. C. Andrews, U. S. Minister to Sweden, 1873, states: "The proportion of illegitimate births, including the whole kingdom was 5.85%, but including only cities, the proportion of illegitimates was 14.32%." [328] _Statesman's Year Book, 1900_, 1048. [329] _Ibid._, 1062; _Folkebladet_, Feb. 5, 1896.