Summary Of How The Other Half Lives By Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis was a Danish born immigrant that arrived to the United States in 1870. As a police reporter, Riis used his interest in tenement life and knowledge of photography to attempt to bring about social change for the impoverished of New York. His crusade against poverty culminated in the publication of his work How the Other Half Lives, in which Riis presents a thorough analysis of the problems faced by the poor of New York as a result of urban expansion, rapid industrialization and large-scale immigration. Despite his clear appointment of blame for the tenements to the wealthy class, Riis' evident biased and, at times racist, views towards his photography subjects shadow his writing throughout How the Other Half Lives, further alienating the poor of New York and perpetuating their state of poverty. …show more content…
Riis states that by 1855, "the tenement-house population had swelled to half a million souls…and on the East Side…it was packed at a rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled." Furthermore, the rooms within the tenement houses themselves were often partitioned into smaller rooms to house greater numbers: "where two families had lived, ten moved in." These rooms were hardly large enough for an individual, let alone a family. For example, one family of three living on West Third Street was forced to confine itself "to a single room…so small that [Riis] was unable to get a photograph of it…Three short steps across either way would have measured its full extent." In addition to being overcrowded, the tenement houses were often filthy and