Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives Essay

The book The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America by Tom Buk-Swienty details the life of photo journalist Jacob Riis. Riis, who started his life in America as a poor immigrant, was a journalist who was prominently known in New York for his work with the tenement housing. Throughout his life, Riis dedicated himself to helping the poor by acting as a voice for them. Through his writing and photographs, Riis was able to inform the public about the wretched lifestyle characterized by the tenements. As a result of his work, the Mulberry Bend tenements were torn down along with numerous other tenement buildings. Overall, the work of Jacob Riis had a significant impact on the lives of the poor and how they were viewed

In the late 1800’s there was many immigrants that to America from all over the world. These immigrants were poor and didn't speak the language. Workers that came from different countries would take the same jobs the Americans had for lower wages, resulting in them not having enough money to live comfortably. They would live in a tenement apartments which was an overcrowded, run down apartment building. Cities had no regulation on garbage pickup and the water they would drink was the same water they would empty out the sewer

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. This work inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society. Vivid imagery and complex syntax establish a sympathetic tone which Riis uses to expose poverty to the general public and calls upon them to take action and make a difference.

Riis covers many aspects of the poverty that has stricken the tenement lodgers but when talking about one end of the spectrum (poor) you also need to discuss the other (rich). With out telling people how the other half of the other half lives he’s leaving out a crucial part of how people live in New York. By avoiding, that topic he’s giving the illusion that all people in New York live in such cramped housing as tenements. When in reality New York was and is presently not composed of strictly tenement housing. There was a ‘rich’ part of town where the thought of not having any money was never even contemplated. In addition, where the industrial revolution only touched higher societies on positive outcomes such as economics the industrial revolution only made it harder for the immigrants to get ahead. By this, meaning, that they worked harder, got paid little to nothing, and still had to compensate for the short comings that where being pressed against them because they were in fact immigrants.

Riis shows how society had long turned a blind eye to this less reality. As he informs the readers in How the other Half Lives, the upper classes had long harbored fear from the poor. This fact proved very useful for Riis as it gave him room to use fear-evoking arguments to convince the higher class that the social reform is essential for everyone’s good. Riis argued that the ever- growing poverty in America posed a high risk not only for immigrants living in the slums. He employed statistical data correlating the ever-growing poverty with the increase the crime rate as well as the rapid expansion of tenement, to warn the middle and high class that poverty is a serious risk for them too. Hi goes on to argue that the cholera epidemic showed Americans how devastating such widespread illness could be, especially in urban areas. He warned the middle and high class that the tenements were the hotbeds for such epidemics and reminded them that such deceases never discriminate but bring death to the rich and poor alike.

In Jacob Riis’s work How the Other Half Lives, he exposes the poor quality of the slums in New York during the late nineteenth century. While speaking about the conditions of the slums Riis writes, “The metropolis is to lots of people like a lighted candle to the moth” (Riis, 66). Through the comparison of the metropolis to the attraction of a moth to a lighted candle, Riis conveys the desire of the masses from all over the world to come to the United States to start their new lives. It is the idea of a fulfillment of the ‘American Dream.’ However, there is often a discrepancy between the expectation and reality of this situation. The discrepancy between the expected and reality of immigrating to the city has a connection to the wider world

crime and alcohol consumption, and some simply fell ill to the unsanitary conditions. The harsh reality of these immigrants and the challenges they would have to overcome in order to succeed were made quite prevalent. In his famous book, How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis dug deeper into the lives of the lower class. While analyzing the relationships between tenement residents and their backgrounds, Riis recognized the global representation beyond simply being ‘American’. He wrote, "The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements” (Riis). Riis works to describe the overall makeup of the tenements in the urban areas. He recognizes how

How the Other Half Lives is hailed as the defining text in promoting awareness and civil action to improve the living conditions of the lower classes. The excerpt and images appeal to the audience’s emotion and sense of Christian service. Riis appeals to his audience through his words and accompanying pictures. He describes the lives of the tenement women and children, the most vulnerable of society. He focuses on the visible negative characteristics of his subjects’ poverty: abuse, hunger, disease, the inability to care for their families, and death. The sensory discretions in the excerpt like the following:

Riis shares his knowledge of how Immigrants, races, or cultures, so called the “other half”, eventually flocked together to try to survive in the city that was controlled by prejudice opinions throughout the late eighteenth century, which then lead to the socially divided industrial metropolis in the late nineteenth century. Created now is a social segregation that was impossible

On my first journal, I asked myself who was the “evil” Riis referred to. I did not know the “Evils” Riss referred to were the landlords. The greedy and heartless landlords of New York City slums. On chapter thirteenth, Riis clearly says that the “evils” are disgusting, careless, and unlawful landlords. “The Negros” as Riis referred were charged higher rents than the white immigrants. However, The Negros was considered cleaner than white European. They maintain their shanty habitation clean. On the contrary, the poor white European people had bad and dirty habits.

Lot’s of immigrants in the tenements would leave their stoves running as a source of heat, which increased risk of fires. Most buildings were built with only one bathroom for the entire floor that could contain many apartments, which increased the risk of disease being created. Sickness was spreading at an extremely high

Infested with experiences and resentment like the rats in the tenements of contemporary New York City, Riis argues that the other half: the good living half; does not care about the struggles of the other half:

The author of "How the Other Half Lives", Jacob Riis, inscribes on the deplorable living conditions of the Progressive Era from a first-person perspective. Riis, an immigrant, police reporter, photojournalist and most importantly: a pioneer and social reformer, tells a very captivating yet appalling experience of the lower class life in New York City beginning in the 19th century. Migration and the standardization of establishments are the attributing factors to overpopulation distribution and overcrowding of living arrangements in the city.

This essay will explore the history, background, extent, social and economic consequences of inadequate housing and strategies in place to address the issue.

He opens the paper with an appealing introduction, which is a typical story to which readers can easily relate themselves to. During the 1980s', homelessness was a long-existing problem that Americans choose to avoid rather than facing it. It was such common to run into strangers with smokey-grey hairs, timeworn faces, and scruffy clothes. For the first time one sees a homeless, an uncomfortable feeling comes when four eyes meet. One quickly looks away and can still feel that someone is watching. To avoid the haunted look in the stranger's eyes, one increases the walking speed and turns in a direction of the nearest crowd. Moreover, the unbalanced ratio between the population and the area makes sidewalks become the main transportation mean;