Facts & Findings - Today's NY Times

Two items of note in today's New York Times:

Beginning today, join the discussion on contemporary immigration on the Times' Room for Debate blog. Today's post focuses on education. Also check out their interactive map, which charts where new immigrants have settled from 1880 to today.

Also starting today, and for the next 12 weeks, photographer Richard Perry will explore the City's remaining manufacturing industry. Like many American cities, New York's economy once rested on the backs of laborers in factories and workshops. The Lower East Side was the center of the garment industry: by 1880 New York produced more garments than its four closest urban competitors combined, and by 1900 the value and output of the clothing trade was three times that of sugar refining, the city’s second largest industry. By 1910, 70% of the nation’s women’s clothing and 40% of men’s was produced here. Even today, the needle trade accounts for up to a third of the City's remaining manufacturing jobs. According to the Asian American Federation, 246 garment factories employed an estimated 13,308 workers in Chinatown prior to the September 11 attack.