The Lives of Others

How the the other half lives written by Jacob Riis provides a very conflicted but rational scene upon which the development and state of living conditions were on the lower east side in the 19th century. Riis provided photographs of the streets, people, and tenement apartments he encountered, using black and white slides to coincide the text, his powerful images brought public attention to urban conditions giving us a visual understanding of his writing upon how the lower class lived.…

In “How the other half lives” Photography’s speaks a lot just like ones action does. Jacob Riis writes about the living conditions of the tenement houses. Most people in these apartments were poor immigrants who were trying to survive. Riis, a photographer, captured the unhealthy, filthy, and horrible conditions not only through his words, but rather through his pictures. His pictures spoke for the people and the dirty conditions they had to live in. Riis’s journalism (muckrakers) and…

Immigrants and other poor laborers simply could not escape this poverty. They lived hard lives. At work, conditions were poor and wages were low. Many were crowded in overpriced and abysmal housing. In this sense, immigrants, migrants, and low wage earners paid the highest price for rapid industrialization. The slums conjured up by rapid industrialization were eventually exposed. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant, photographed and wrote about the slums in New York City. In his book, How the Other…

the author, Jacob Riis, focused only on the hardships of the poor in his book How The Other Half Lives. Oftentimes poverty was seen as the fault of the poor. In many cases it was not, for they were not given many opportunities because of where they stood in the social rank of society. Ranks were overlooked because it depended on the people’s surroundings and lifestyle. Although rank was often ignored, the lives of women, children, and men were not when you lived in a town of poverty. These…

their homes unannounced and take pictures with a camera from the police department where he worked. He later compiled his photographs along with a narrative in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. Certain chapters consist of different neighborhoods within the tenement districts. Others showcase his opinions on social issues. In its entirety, the book gives an in-depth view into how Riis viewed immigrants in the New York City tenements. While Riis wrote the…

wealthy individuals touring through the lives of individuals who are poor and capturing what it is like to be poor is notorious in American History. Jacobs Riis and James Agree are two interesting authors with different backgrounds, but shared similar motives. The two authors bring the struggled of American poverty to life by inserting themselves among poor families and wrote about their lives. In his book “How the Other Half Lives”, Riis reports on the lives of many ethnic and demographic…

majority of which were uneducated and poor, that swelled the population of many American cities, none more so than New York. Unprepared for such an increase in residents the tenement-housing model was heavily utilized in the city. Referred to as ‘the other half’ the poor, mainly blacks and…

In the very beginning of American society in 1787, a staggering 92% of Americans lived rurally. However, this percentage was steadily declining and would continue to do so, as Jacob Riis accurately predicted in his book How the Other Half Lives: “At the beginning of the century the percentage of our population that lived in cities was as one in twenty-five. In 1880 it was one in four and one-half, and in 1890 the census will in all probability show it to be one in four.” In fact, by 1910, the…

Privacy Worth the Lives of Others? As citizens of the United States, we have freedom of speech and freedom of press. These rights allow us to state our opinions in print without being censored by the government. This is frequently taken advantage of, but when does it become harmful and a threat to others? If people are using press, like social media, to bring harm to other people, then why doesn’t the government intervene? We have our right to privacy, but when it risks the lives of others the…

Not long after, Riis published How the Other Half Lives. This truthfully was an experience to remember for the naive reader. It presented the poverty in New York as statistics that were absolutely shocking. Juxtaposed to that, it contained drawings of the photos from Riis’s crusades of the worst slums of New York City. Having an impact like no other, Theodore Roosevelt (police commissioner at the time) was adamant on improving the quality of…