Jacob Riis 'How The Other Half Lives'

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In the late eighteen hundreds to the start of the twentieth century the United States is on the brink of reformation but the remnants of a societal barrier between different classes, and races of people is still very prominent. Jacob Riis the Author of “How the Other half lives” approaches this issue in an expose that literally sheds light on the darkness of poverty as well as the tenements the lower class is forced to live and in most cases die in. Riis can be seen as a forerunner of progressivism as he uses photojournalism and his firsthand personal involvement, to pinpoint causes of problems in lower class housing in the city. There are three significant reasons he believes tenements have become a dilemma, individual action by the poor, …show more content…

He talks in numerous chapters about drinking, drug use, gambling, and lack of hygiene and race of those living in such terrible conditions as to slightly lift the focus off those seemingly responsible (those who provide this housing) to the poor. Riis talks about runaways and labels them as “Street Arabs” then further goes on the blame the poor for their own misfortune when he states “It is a mistake to think that they are helpless little creatures, to be pitied and cried over because they are alone in the world” He references the other half hostilely, he is speaking to the upper and middle class all throughout the book but then in the same breath blames the victim “those who would fight for the poor must fight the poor to do it.” Riis’ negative connotation towards the poor puts a thought in the readers mind that he believes their struggles are their own making. Specifically when he says they are “shiftless, destructive and stupid” and “they are what the tenements have made …show more content…

Focusing mainly on urban sharecropping in sweatshops in Jew town and cigar making factories, the people there were forced to work for low wages in poor conditions, in their homes where their employer was also their landlord. Riis describes this activity in the form of “slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the south.” In conditions such as these it is hard for the poor to ever make anything of themselves and overcome their disadvantages. Riis even goes further and compares the landlords of tenements to The Czar of all Russia. He points the finger at them metaphorically comparing the situation to a color line where “The landlord does the drawing, does it with an absence of pretense, a frankness of despotism that is nothing if not

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