How the Other Half Lives (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) [NOOK Book]

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Overview

"[A] commanding invitation to join the battle." -- The Boston Times

How the Other Half Lives is a riveting account of life in New York's Lower East Side tenements of the last century written by one of the Progressive Era's preeminent reformers. Drawn from the author's long career as a police reporter and photographer, the book captures the stark realities of life for the destitute and represents one man's campaign to reform society by challenging the social injustices of his times. First published in 1890, the book called attention to the poverty and immorality of New York's toughest neighborhoods, from the sweatshops to the crime-ridden alleys, and the...
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Overview

"[A] commanding invitation to join the battle." -- The Boston Times

How the Other Half Lives is a riveting account of life in New York's Lower East Side tenements of the last century written by one of the Progressive Era's preeminent reformers. Drawn from the author's long career as a police reporter and photographer, the book captures the stark realities of life for the destitute and represents one man's campaign to reform society by challenging the social injustices of his times. First published in 1890, the book called attention to the poverty and immorality of New York's toughest neighborhoods, from the sweatshops to the crime-ridden alleys, and the plight of the marginalized people who lived and worked in the hellish enclaves of tenement slums.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781411429925
  • Publisher: Barnes & Noble
  • Publication date: 9/1/2009
  • Sold by: Sterling Publishers
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 42,466
  • Series: Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading
  • File size: 4 MB

Meet the Author

Born in Ribe, Denmark, the third child of a family of fourteen, Jacob Riis showed promise as a crusader even in childhood. Nicknamed "the Delver" for his habit of mucking around in the sewer and waging war on rats, he once gave his Christmas money to a poor and disreputable family in his village. Riis, with only forty dollars in his pocket, left Denmark to make his mark in America. Jobless and hungry, he soon became the forefront of the urban reform movement.

Introduction

Jacob Riis' How the Other half Lives is a riveting account of life in New York's Lower East Side tenements of the last century written by one of the Progressive Era's preeminent reformers. Drawn from the author's long career as a police reporter, the book captures the stark realities of life for the destitute and represents one man's campaign to reform society by challenging the social injustices of his times. First published in 1890 by Scribner & Sons, the book called attention to the poverty and immorality of New York's toughest neighborhoods, from the sweatshops to the crime-ridden alleys, and the plight of the marginalized people who lived and worked in the hellish enclaves of tenement slums. Although some critics found Riis' depictions of squalor offensive to more refined sensibilities, most reviewers praised the book with rave reviews. The New York Evening Sun called it a "unique and valuable volume." The Boston Times pronounced it a "commanding invitation to join the battle." The Brooklyn Times described it as a book of "immense shuddering interest." It also propelled Jacob Riis, a feisty Danish immigrant, to the forefront of the urban reform movement.

Born in Ribe, Denmark, the third child of a family of fourteen, Jacob Riis showed promise as a crusader even in childhood. Nicknamed "the Delver" for his habit of mucking around in the sewer beneath the family house and waging war on rats, he once gave his Christmas money to a poor and disreputable family in his village. The gift was conditional: The family had to mend their slovenly ways and keep their children presentably clean. Riis left school at the age sixteen to become a carpenter'sapprentice and promptly fell in love with his employer's daughter. Although they would later marry, Elizabeth's family initially discouraged the match. Riis, the spurned suitor, left Denmark to make his mark in America.

With only forty dollars in his pocket, he arrived in New York in 1870. He held a number of temporary jobs, failed to achieve any substantial success and was forced to seek out the hard charities of New York tenement slums. Here, finding a night's "board" meant a wooden board bed which was turned over after each night's lodger. In his autobiography The Making of an American, Riis recalled a night of overpowering desolation which would become a turning point in his life. Jobless, hungry, and drenched in a chilly October rain, he was without hope when a small stray dog befriended him. When Riis sought shelter for the night in one of the charity quarters operated by the local police, the little dog followed him and curled by the door outside to wait for him. During the night, a gold locket keepsake was stolen as he slept and a policeman savagely and inexplicably killed the little dog. Twenty-five years later, when the notorious police lodging houses were closed for good, Riis felt he had finally avenged the death of his dog.

In 1877, as a newly hired reporter for the New York Tribune and Associated Press Bureau, Riis developed an even deeper intimacy with the neighborhood he would eventually immortalize in How the Other Half Lives. Assigned to cover the police beat, his job was to write about crime and human misery in a notorious area of downtown Manhattan that Riis grew to detest. More than half of all the pawnshops and saloons in the entire city of New York could be found in and around Mulberry Street and The Bend, an area more densely populated than Calcutta, India. As Riis soon discovered, the landlords who owned the tenement houses were indifferent to the conditions in which tenants were forced to live. Many lacked heat, water, and sanitation. It was common to find forty families crowded into sunless, airless spaces meant for no more than five or six. Many died in the heat of the summer when families took refuge on top of the roofs and rolled off in their sleep. Or, they died in fires that blazed through buildings without fire escapes; or they perished in the many epidemics that swept through these unwholesome places, such as the one that claimed up to 20 percent of the infants and small children in one building alone. Outraged and deeply troubled by the inhumanity of this indifference, Riis used his talents as a journalist to draw attention to the plight of the tenement poor and arouse public opinion.

Jacob Riis was not alone in his desire to rectify society of its social ills. The Progressive Era, from roughly 1880 to 1920, included various and eclectic groups and movements, among them the Social Progressives, who sought social justice for society's most oppressed and powerless people. Although Riis reserved some of his harshest criticism for the profiteering slum lord who charged inflated rents and were impervious to human suffering, he did not believe in dismantling the apparatus of capitalism or agitating for a more equitable division of wealth.

Although he often gave generously and from his own pocket to the destitute individuals he encountered, he was opposed to direct charity for the poor, believing it would merely encourage a perpetuation of the ingrained habits which the poor had acquired from their degrading environment. He worked instead to bring people together, to humanize the poor, often the immigrant and alien poor, for a society coming to terms with immigration and often fearful of what were called "the dangerous classes." Like other urban social reformers of the Progressive movement, Riis was an advocate of the "nurture" view of the human condition. He embraced a fervently moralistic view based on a strong sense of Christian fairness and sought to elevate impoverished humanity by changing the environment, thus eliminating the brutalizing forces that shaped, or in this case misshaped, the human character.

Many critics and biographers describe Jacob Riis as a man of considerable, if obsessive, concentration and passion, even an idealogue. Yet he was far from being a simple, shrill champion of the poor. His talents as a communicator, fueled by his need to expose the horrors of tenement life for readers who lived a world apart, gave his creativity a compelling momentum. Not only did his popular writing serve the cause, he leapt into the fairly new business of photojournalism to make his case and support his claims. In his single-minded pursuit of more effective ways of stirring the charitable sensibilities of the upper classes, he became America's first photojournalist, mastering the newest techniques of indoor photography. In his quest for better ways to capture the dark interiors of the tenement world, Riis was among the first to utilize a new lighting technique with a highly flammable flash powder. Some of Riis' startled subjects were known to dive out the nearest window in fear and panic. On one occasion, he inadvertently set fire to the lodgings of several blind people.

Riis won recognition for his efforts and his achievements continue to be acknowledged in almost every major history book covering the social reformers of America's Progressive movement. His circle of friends included Theodore Roosevelt, who was New York Police Commissioner when the two men first met. (It was Roosevelt, impressed with Riis and How the Other Half Lives, who was instrumental in closing down the infamous police lodging houses.) Riis also awakened the social conscience of readers and fueled their compassion sufficient to bring about change. He worked to establish wholesome outdoor areas for inner-city children, believing healthful exposure to the natural outdoors would imbue them with finer natures. He became known as the "father" of the small park movement and today many plaques in small New York City parks bear his name. He was also a talented investigative reporter out to expose all manner of wrongs. He has been credited with averting an epidemic when he discovered New York City's water supply was polluted with sewage at its source upstream.

It is equally easy to recognize Jacob Riis as a man of his own times. He had stereotypical and prejudiced views of racial and ethnic groups found in the Lower East Side neighborhoods. According to Riis, blacks were clean and therefore commendable but child-like; the Chinese were clever and treacherous with their opium dens; the Italians seemed to enjoy the filth in which they lived and expressed no desire to change their surroundings. These pronouncements seem curious in light of Riis views on the importance of environment as the determining factor in human behavior. To his credit, he did not demean any of the individual subjects he introduced to his readers but emphasized their humanity.

Jacob Riis was a prodigious writer with hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles to his credit. He was the author of fifteen books including Children of the Poor (1892), Out of Mulberry Street (1898), The Making of an American (1901), Children of the Tenements (1903), and a somewhat fawning biography of his friend Theodore Roosevelt. Despite the moderate successes he enjoyed with his various publications, How the Other Half Lives is Riis' most acclaimed work. With the addition of Riis' brilliant photographic images, taken from 1888 to 1898, the volume acquired even more value and appeal.

Although Riis' original photographic collection of glass plate slides served him well as visual accompaniment to his public lectures, the bulk of his work remained hidden away in a Massachusetts farmhouse from the time of his death to their rediscovery in 1945 and 1946, the result of a lengthy campaign by photographer Alexander Alland, Sr., to track them down. It was Alland's conversion of Riis' positive images to prints that reintroduced the genius of Jacob Riis to an appreciative new audience. His work has since been exhibited in several New York museums including the Museum of New York, which is the permanent home for the Jacob Riis collection.

Ansel Adams found both integrity and intensity in Riis' photographs. In his words, they are "magnificent achievements" of the humanist spirit. And indeed, the subjects, who stare straight at us with their haunting gazes have lost none of their humanity or their power to affect us. How the Other Half Lives is a monument to one's man commitment to a more just and humane society and the timeless value of that impulse.

Dail Murray, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist and a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Marinette, where she teaches sociology and anthropology.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 26 )

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 27 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2006

    Riis' poetry of people and place

    How the Other Half Lives was written over a century ago as an expose¿ of the appalling living conditions in the tenements of New York City. The author speaks with a crusader¿s zeal and with so much detail that the reader can visualize these tenements, these streets, and these people as if they were living today. This is a grim and moving portrayal of the lives of the men, the women and the children that inhabit these loathsome neighborhoods of New York City in the late 1800s. He so graphically describes the filth, the sunless and airless rooms, the crowding, and the starvation that these places palpably exist for the reader and bring a chill to any heart. Riis has a genuine concern for the tenement situation and understands these people¿s plight. His pictures are touching and meant to vividly show their misery. He, for the most part, blames the money-hungry landlords for these crowded conditions: ¿How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man.¿ (p. 266). He laments that the tenement is three quarters responsible for the misery of the poor. Then, after his extensive discourse, he offers three concrete cures for these dreadful conditions, something that many authors forget when they are enlightening readers. Riis states his purpose for writing this book himself on page 297 when he says, ¿If this book shall have borne ever so feeble a hand in garnering a harvest of justice, it has served its purpose.¿ The author apparently succeeded with his purpose, because in the flyleaf of this book the publisher tells us: ¿This book helped bring about new revisions in the housing codes of the major U. S. cities.¿ How does this book relate to adult education? By moving chronologically from the founding of America to the slums of NYC in the 1800s, are we to understand that education took a back seat to the accumulation of money during those hundred years? Certainly Riis posits that education is one of the solutions to this problem while at the same time implying that wealth accumulation and the lack of education has been the cause of this problem. ¿Thus the whole matter resolves itself once more into a question of education, all the more urgent because these people are poor, miserably poor almost to a man.¿ (p. 147). He does not forget that this ¿education¿ is not only for the poor people, but also for the wealthy landlords. ¿Clearly, it is a matter of education on the part of the landlord no less than the tenant.¿ (p. 270). Riis¿ almost missionary language exhorts us to never allow greed to override a compassion for humanity. ¿It is a fight in which eternal vigilance is truly the price of liberty and the preservation of society.¿ (p. 233). The relation of this book to the other units of study in this course could be explained as an example of how low mankind can descend if education is not considered one of the major cornerstones of a society. Although this book was exhaustive in its detail, it was easy to read while at the same time enlightening. I found myself enjoying the ranting tone and the fascinating lists of neighborhoods and the labels that Riis used for the different races. In a sense it reads like a Ginsberg poem constantly hitting the reader with melodious lists of places and people from another era. Read these geographic names out loud and feel their rhythm: Jewtown, Bandit¿s Roost, Double Alley, The Bowery, The Bloody Sixth Ward, The Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Wards, Blindman¿s Alley, The Bend, The Battery, Little Italy, The French Quarter, Hell¿s Kitchen, The West Side, Bottle Alley, Frog Hollow, Poverty Gap, Murderer¿s Alley, Gotham Court, The Old Brewery, Old Africa, Potter¿s Field, Blackwell¿s Island Asylum, Rogues¿ Gallery, Penitentiary Row, Chinatown. The list goes on. To someone reared in rural America, this chant sounds like a song about another country. Riis also has something to say about all the races of people that live in the tenements of New York

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 2, 2006

    Exploitation of thousands by few greedy men

    Christian builder¿s cry: ¿How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man¿ (Riss, J., 1997. p. 198)? This book is written by Jacob A. Riis with introduction and notes by Luc Sante. The main theme of this book is the pervasive exploitation of thousands by a few greedy men. Riis blatantly describes the stark heinous ways and methods by which men prey upon those who are less educated, fortunate, and ignorant. He delves into the naked truth of the depth of depravity by which the lives of thousands are trapped in a hopelessly dark vicious cycle of suffering and struggles for meager wages, and living conditions within the walls of tenement buildings which stand between hell and death. In chapter 3, titled, The Mixed Crowd, Riis also describes the many ethnic groups who quickly learn that the evil they fled from in their native lands, stalks freely unrestrained in America. They are preyed upon for they are easily deceived and hooked by even their own fellow countrymen who slyly make their fortunes without the least acknowledgment of the evilness they perpetuate. Walter Isaacson in Benjamin Franklin An American Life motivates and inspires his readers to take actions to improve the life of the common men. Riis also motivates his readers to acknowledge the wickedness and greed by a few men of power. Riis exposes the plight of those who are uneducated, uninformed, and thus are easily exploited and preyed upon. Riis and Benjamin Franklin both clearly appear to acknowledge the importance of knowledge and the exposing of a few elite men who control the lives of ¿common men¿. The passion to arrest the treachery brought on by greed for money, fame, and control by exposing through print is shared by Riis and Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was motivated to make life better, for the prevalence of freedom and exposition of corruption in government and the elite class. Riis, one could easily claim, had the same utopian mindset that we have studied and discussed thus far in this ¿Adult Education Movement¿ course. Utopian views and goals encompass the importance of equal opportunities and rights of every American to be able to be free to pursue steps to self preservation, self improvement, and success unfettered by all that is evil, unjust, and corrupt. In the introduction, the authors purpose for writing, How the Other Half Lives, is clearly stated: ¿The books immediate mission was to take on the willed ignorance of the middle and upper classes, who knew that there was human misery in their city but preferred to believe that it was deserved, perhaps even chosen, by its victims ¿(Riis, J. & Sante, L., 1997. x). Riis has blatantly described the plight of emigrants who flocked to the shores of New York in the early 18-19 century in hopes of a better life: ¿ the poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and, given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it¿ (Riis, `1997, p. 23). Riis has been very successful in his purpose for writing this vividly exposing book. Like Benjamin Franklin, he too understands the power of ¿printing¿ as an effective way to educate the general public. Riis does not leave the reader with the sense of total helplessness of the state of New York cities tenement residents: In chapter 25, titled, How the Case Stands, Riis presents: Three effective ways of dealing with the tenements in New York: 1. By law, 2. By remodeling and making the most out of the old houses, 3. By building new, model tenements (Riis, 1997, p. 210). These solutions were gradually incorporated in a movement for reform. My personal reaction to this book initially was of immense sadness. Reading about the evil dark actions of men against men did not surprise me. What grieved me the most was the very absence of compassion or kindness, the inhuman living conditions, and the coldhearted exploitation of the poor a

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted April 26, 2011

    Not what I thought!

    I was totally disappointed in this book! I thought it would be written in the 'people of the era's' words and their descriptions! Extremely boring... pushed myself to finish it!

    1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 8, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9781593080082

    First Hand History

    The information is shocking, but the textbook format lacks excitement and makes reading very slow. The pictures are a huge bonus. If you have any interest in the lives of New York's poorest immigrants at the turn of the century, this book is a complete exploration of their existence.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 12, 2006

    How the Other Half Lives

    ADED 5510 Book Review Riis, J. (1890 original, 1997 this edition). How the Other Half Lives. New York, New York: Penguin Classics Introduction How the Other Half Lives was written at a time when none of the social safety nets to contemporary society were in place. As an author, Riis provides us with an observational study of the squalid conditions that existed in urban New York for the working poor during the period near the end of the 19th century. The text is an unvarnished look at the circumstances that existed at the time of writing this observational study, during the urban industrial revolution. The author employs his journalistic abilities to illuminate the facts of the circumstances he was documenting, but avoids employing what we would call contemporary journalistic objectivity inasmuch as his inherent prejudice to the ethnic subjects of the study. A contemporary biologist would recognize the term ¿rookery¿ in terms of animal enclaves, but in the context of this study, the term is used in terms of the horrendous living conditions of the poor, working class. Major Themes The central message of the book is the indifference that contemporaries of the time, operating in capitalist industrial revolution, simple saw and acted upon the financially adventitious actions of harvesting profits based on the living or existing needs of the working poor. This message is outlined in the book by the author¿s historical accounts of the initial evolution of the living conditions during the mid-1800s in New York. The evolution of decay in sanitary and general behavioral conditions due to perennial neglect of the poorer neighborhoods is highlighted by the strong statements of the author in his recount of the efforts around 1869 after the disease outbreaks of cholera and smallpox had hampered the efforts of the 1867 remedial legislation (p. 17). It was interesting that Riis observed that efforts of remediation in dwelling lighting and sanitation was greeted with resistance not only from the profiteers of the squalor, but of the inhabitants themselves. It is also interesting that the initial efforts to correct the most basic health and sanitation issues took over five years of effort. The author¿s description of the inhabitants of the situation as ¿cave dwellers¿ to route the dark, cellar dwelling of circumstances is further evidence of his thesis that behavioral patterning can influence or twist the outlook and expectations of any cultural situation. As previously mentioned, the author does not relinquish his ¿cultural categorization¿ of peoples in the deplorable conditions of the time, he reinforces the challenge of change for the better in examples such as in the chapter The Sweaters of Jewtown where a friend of Riis notes the cost-efficient manufacturing scenario (p. 101) and it is noted that at that time, the ¿gregarious¿ aspect of that culture was not inclined to ¿herding¿ the masses into a farming circumstance outside the present situation. In this same light, the idea of trade schools for manual training could not be something of reality as the implied scenario would be one of ¿who support them while they are training?¿ The theme of ¿no way out¿ in the financial and behavioral circumstance is displayed in the circumstance if there is not an outside intervention. Integration of Themes in Adult Education The broad picture presented by How the Other Half Lives displays a circumstance that can evolve when a mantra of a singular, pure economic and political policy is enabled over decades. The circumstances set forth by Jacob Riis demonstrate what was possible when social constructs were not concerned with such issues as individual potential or environments that can foster looking at potentials beyond the present economic realities. In the timeline of changes in attitudes and outlooks, Eduard Lindeman (1926) provided a philosophical view of what can be done if the social construct looks outside t

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 17, 2006

    How the Other Half Lives

    How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis (1997). As I read this book I became appalled at how the poor were forced to live. As I continued to read it became apparent that the poor just did not know any other way of life and those improvements that were forced upon them failed unless they were taught how to live in improved conditions. I have visited New York City a couple of times, and find it a lively city to visit but not my cup of tea for living. I did not understand how the poor lived until I read this book. Each lived from day to day, etching out a life that somehow was better than the one they left behind when they came to America. The children seem to suffer the most. For most, they have nothing to compare to and it is a matter of the strongest who shall survive. Without time in the day to educate themselves, adult or child, to somehow better their way of life because the overwhelming hunger lurked at their door. As I read this book I became appalled at how the poor were forced to live in New York City when we have clearly read about Benjamin Franklin that life was not that way for everyone. As I continued to read it became apparent that the poor in New York City just did not know any other way of life or want any other way of life. The improvements that were forced upon them failed unless they were taught how to live in improved conditions, educated. As I finished this book I realized that without having this piece of ugliness in our history we may not be were we are today, people began to see that being educated does not always mean a formal education. Education can mean that you need to learn ¿how to live¿ or defend yourself. We have Health Departments that set standards that hold to our values in the way we live today. I think anyone interested in Americas History should read this book. I also think that all our youth should be required to read this book, to understand how an education is so important to the way we live today. An education will keep us from returning to the filth of the poorest of the poor.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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