JACOB RIIS (D)
JACOB RIIS (D)
Jacob Riis was born in Denmark and arrived in New York as a Danish immigrant
in 1870. Originally a poverty-stricken member of the streets of New
York, Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives (1890), which exposed many of
the hardships that tenement-dwellers faced. His journey upward started
with his hiring at the New York Tribune, where he was a police reporter
(1877-1888). He later served the same purpose at the Evening Sun
(1888-1899). Because the New York’s police headquarters was located
in the center of the Lower East Side slum district, Riis became very familiar
with the territory—including the horrors he saw concerning the lives of
tenement-dwellers. However, Riis felt he could not portray the horror
of the caliginous, tenements forcefully enough without visual aid; it was
not until 1887 and the invention of flash photography that he was able
to obtain optic support for his claims. How the Other Half Lives
was a major breakthrough for the world of tenement reform; it exposed the
adversity of tenement life through direct, informative text coupled with
half-tone photographs. As a result of the book, people would never
think about New York City in the same way again.
Part of the reason Riis’ book was so effective was its matter-of-fact
approach. Facts upon facts pile up to provide the reader with a clear
image of the dreaded tenement life. In one section of How the Other
Half Lives, Riis takes the reader "into" an actual tenement with unedited,
painful detail:
"Be a little careful, please! The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies back there. Not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. They have little else. Here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step, and another, another. A flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot see it. Close? Yes! What would you have? All the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall-door that is forever slamming, and from the windows of dark bedrooms that in turn receive from the stairs their sole supply of the elements God meant to be free, but man deals out with such niggardly hand. That was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant you just bumped up against. The sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access—and all be poisoned alike by their summer stenches. Hear the pump squeak! It is the lullaby of tenement-house babes. In summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this block, it is worked in vain. But the saloon, whose open door you passed in the hall, is always there. The smell of it has fouled you up. Here is a door. Listen! That short hacking cough, that tiny, helpless wail—what do they mean? They mean that the soiled bow of white you saw on the door downstairs will have another story to tell—oh, a sadly familiar story—before the day is at an end. The child is dying with measles. With half a chance it might have lived; but it had none. The dark bedroom killed it." (6)
As you can see from this passage, Riis’ graphic manner was a powerfully effective one. Riis, vividly and clearly, outlined the problem of the tenement and the course of action necessary to solve it at the end of his book:
"What, then, are the bald facts with which we have to deal in New
York?
I. That we have a tremendous,
ever swelling crowd of wage-earners which it is our business to house directly.
II. That it is not housed decently.
III. That it must be so housed here for the present,
and for a long time to come, all schemes of suburban relief being as yet
utopian, impracticable.
IV. That it pays high enough rents to entitle
it to be so housed, as a right.
V. That nothing but our own slothfulness is the way
of so housing it, since "the condition of the tenants is in advance of
the condition of the houses which they occupy" (Report of Tenement-house
Commission)
VI. That the security of the one no less than
of the other half demands, on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds, that
it be decently housed.
VII. That is will pay to do it. As an investment,
I mean, and in hard cash. This I shall immediately proceed to prove.
VIII. That the tenement has come to stay, and must itself
be the solution of the problem with which it confronts us." (7)
Like Lawrence Veiller, E.R.L. Gould, Charles A.L. Reed, and others, Riis was
also concerned about the effect of the harsh conditions of tenements on the
morale of the immigrants who inhabited them. Riis deemed that the immigrants,
who were "left to their own resources," would become the "victims, not the masters,
of their environment." In this regard, Riis equated the milieu of tenement
life to a "bad master." (8)
