Summary Of Riis How The Other Half Lives

Riis How the Other Half Lives is constructed of 25 chapters that mainly talk about the problems in faced mainly in New York tenements. The chapters are each focused on a varying topic or of different types of people. Riis focus as a muckraker is to expose the living conditions of those living in the tenements concentrated mainly in lower New York. Most of these tenements are home to a diversity of people that are usually segregated by national origin, ethnicity, or race. Some of the chapters that show the contrast in places and people he visited include “THE SWEATERS OF JEWTOWN” and “THE ITALIAN IN NEW YORK”. In both chapters, he views both the Italians and the Jews personality and their ways of living. Being a muckraker, Riis is on a mission to unveil the social, economic and political problems that society was facing in the 1870-90’s. Riis sticks mainly to what he sees but does not solely stick to a set of problems; instead, he ventures out to several corners of New York. The author provides the readers with many first-hand experiences of what Riis saw on a day to day basis. This book was mainly intended for people living during that time since the author is trying to let the public glimpse at the problems that flooded the city they lived in. Many would feel shocked at the descriptions of the conditions …show more content…
He would see these things on his own while in the slums of New York. He did however use many statistics like census at the end of the book. These statistics included the population, density, and death rate in many places, mainly New York. Reasons for including this data could be to show just how crowded the tenements got or to show how high the death rate would get in some places. Some other data included by Riis is the prices of the tenements. It includes the rent for the whites and the colored and shows how much it contrasts. The whites would only have to pay $127 a year while colored tenements would pay a total of