ABSTRACT
Mr. Erikson is planning a unit on industrialization, immigration, and urbanization for his 11th grade U.S. history course. He realizes that statistical records allow historians to explore the past using unique tools and methods. He wants to introduce students to some of these techniques. As he discusses his ideas with one of the other history teachers, his colleague recommends that he look at a census from the early 1900s. She is quite certain that he’ll be able to fi nd census fi gures that have to do with immigration. As Mr. Erikson explores, he fi nds a table from the 1910 census showing the number of foreign-born people living in the United States (Durand & Harris, 1913). The table breaks down the number of immigrants by their native country and region or state of residence. Students can fi nd, for example, how many German immigrants lived in New York in 1910 and whether that number had increased or decreased since 1900 or 1890. Browsing the table, he realizes that there are a nearly limitless number of possible comparisons that his students could make to explore immigration trends (see Figure 11.1).
