Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives

In 1890 Jacob Riis, a Danish migrant and New York Times reported introduced the immigrant problem to Americans using photojournalism in his book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. This book provided insight into the harsh lives of the immigrants living in the slums of New York by giving photographic evidence that spoke to the hearts of many Americans. At the time many were unaware of the difficult challenges many immigrants faced and Riis brought up this social issue. Riis himself however has some bias and delineates these people into groups of the “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor”. Despite his muckraking skills and attempts to reveal the hostile conditions of immigrants Riis has some racial prejudices

as well. These prejudices stem from his early days in America and the class structure in Ribe, Denmark where he grew up.
Although this novel seems to be one of sympathetic motivation Riis is no hero for the poor. He divides those with less into two groups; the deserved poor which consisted of women and children and the undeserved poor whom were the unemployed and criminals. Riis does not specifically place each ethnic group within these categories, but instead when describing the tenements and ethnic group includes his personal opinions of these peoples. These descriptions were both positive and negative, yet all coincided in the conditions of which they are living in. Riis holds prejudice toward the Jews, Italians, Chinese and the Irish and many other ethnic groups. Riis finds the Chinese to be very clean yet looks down upon them greatly due to their addictive usage of opium. He mimics their accents and in all calls the Chinese non desirable elements of society. As for the Jews Riis only had negative things to say. He begins by discussing his distaste for their dress and insulting the Hebrew women’s beauty calling them “hags and horis”. Next he brings up his main issue with the Jewish community. Riis believes they are greedy because “Money is their God”. He believes they are overly materialistic and bring the condition of their lives on themselves. The Italians he condemns for not knowing much English, their hot head behavior and laziness. The Irish were lousy yet somewhat successful alcoholics and the Arabs lacked respect for authority and were ultimately stubborn useless filths. As for African Americans who are newly freed slaves in most situations he seems to hate the least. He sees hope for them because they were used to the tough laborious situations. In all his opinions are very condescending and each description showed his belief that he is somehow superior to all of these people even though he was an immigrant himself.
This superiority complex which is evident through How the Other Half Lives can be explained best through Jacob Riis’ life experiences.

Riis emigrated from Denmark to New York many years prior to his famous report and having ascended in society we can expect Riis to assume if people do not ascend in society they are lazy and clearly not working hard enough. In addition to this Riis had a victorian mindset of view which can explain his beliefs on class and moral values. In Riis’ early time in New York he faced many challenges. Upon arrival he went straight to finding work and learned quickly the game of making sacrifices. He worked strenuous jobs, but was not too focused on starting a life in America because he desired to return home if the appearance of a war became prevalent. This happen in 1864 when Denmark and Prussia declared war on each other, yet Riis remained in America for the time being. He worked small jobs as a carpenter and slowly began searching for reporter jobs only to be quickly dismissed. Unable to find a journalism job Riis settled temporarily with a salesman job. Soon after he applied and received a position as editor of the Long Island New York newspaper thus beginning his journalism career. Out of the blue another position encompassing Riis’ desire to be a journalism emerged and Riis became the editor of New York News. Slowly but surely opportunities became more frequent and Riis eventually became a refutable journalist within New

York.
With all these events encompassed we can interpret Riis perspective on New York as a whole.

Riis loved New York and the opportunities it provided to him. His autobiography gives us personal view of how he did not have the greatest living conditions, and how he lived directly off his wages never having any surplus. This can illuminate his resentment for many of the immigrants living in the city whom he considered to be lazy. Riis was a man of many different hats; Dane, carpenter, reporter, smelter, architect and a farmer. He experienced tough labor but benefited from his money because he was not working for greed or working to buy alcohol or drugs. Riis had a strong sense of perseverance and compromised often with jobs that were not what he wanted, but would give him proper experience. Riis faced several trials and challenges but always overcame because he was very strategic in how he worked. He elevates himself above the other immigrants in how he made his living. He wasn't rough and feisty like the Italians, a drunk like the Irish, greedy like the jews, or a drug addict like the Chinese. He was a hard worker who focused on the end goal and pursued this goal wholeheartedly. During his years in New York Riis thought often of his home back in Denmark. Desiring to go to war he considered himself noble yet he assimilated to the American culture. To the Bohemians particularly we can see his prejudice due to the Schleswig war which was occurring between his people and theres.

He saw them as lesser due to the war. As for the other immigrants his clear prejudice stems from his Victorian mindset.
When discussing Ribe Denmark where he had grown up Riis gives and example of the class structure. “The people of Ribe were of three classes: the officials, the tradesmen, and the working people. The bishop, the burgomaster, and the rector of the Latin School headed the first class, to which my father belonged as the senior master in the school. Elizabeth’s father easily led the second class. For the third, it had no leaders and nothing to say at that time” Riis states. These distinct class lines he claims rarely had any visible conflict or prejudice. With his father being a part of the top class, and the love of his life being in the second Riis is clearly blinded by the true prejudice of those of the third class. This privilege which he experiences tends to blind those in higher classes of the actual reality of how lower classes live because they are given an advantage from birth. His mindset on class is a Victorian one that believes in the self-made man who’s duty is to the be the father of society. This dream of being a self-made man inspires his trip to America. In regards to class the lower class was lazy because to sum it up they believe that if you work hard there is much to achieve. This however is not always true to to circumstance. Riis acknowledges this in How the Other Half Lives when he talks about the potential for success many classes half, yet this does not change his privileged prejudice towards them.
In all Riis although he did bring much attention attention to immigrant lives was a great photojournalist, but also a hypocrite. He did in fact care for the lower classes within New York, however the racial prejudice he showed and the categories of “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor” create an image of privilege. Riis’ resentment explained best by his success story of moving up in society is understandable, however, these immigrants are facing different trials and challenges because of the density of their population and many racial prejudices held by employers with New York. His Victorian mindset of working hard is not a negative belief, yet his impression of this onto lower society deeming them as failures is a close-minded act. Growing up middle class in a small town where he had the opportunity to be an apprentice, and learn skills he is not as sympathetic as he may appear. To clarify Riis was not wrong in publishing How the Other Half Lives and he was not wrong in desiring that people would ascend in society and pull themselves up by their bootstraps he was just blinded and prejudice in his views against those whom he considered lazy. Riis brought much attention to the immigrant issues within New York and established photojournalism as a successful tactic for informing the masses of what was truly occurring in their homes.