Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives Summary

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Towards the end of the 19th century, reformers used many different tactics to encourage the public to advocate for social reforms. Jacob Riis used photographs of New York City’s slum tenements and its inhabitants to shock people with the truth. His book, How the Other Half Lives, provides a clear picture of the dangers that tenement life poses to middle-class values. Because all life is a product of its environment, Riis used pictures to encourage members of the middle class to see the poor’s struggles before it became a problem that undermined society’s ability to function. His approach had on tenement reform and the struggles of life in the tenement houses were detrimental to changing the poor’s way of life Jacob Riis, used a first-person perspective to explore the living conditions of that era. Riis was an immigrant, a photojournalist, a police reporter, and more importantly a social reformer He paints a very clear un-shielded …show more content…

Most of the diseases spread fast within the tenement walls due to the close proximities. Usually the diseased tenants did not live long, and spread plague throughout other city blocks. This led to a citizen movement that resulted in the organization of the Board of Health. The Health Department educated the people more than giving them help. Eventually they ordered tenements to be ventilated with air shafts and ordered windows to be installed. Over time it led to the decline and extinction of the "dark room". The Health Department made more propositions that included getting rid of rear tenement-housing. A more successful idea was tenement housing with ten or more families was assigned a housekeeper. With the attention of the public lacking, a good start to making a difference was neighborhood guilds and philanthropists who invested their time in few tenement buildings to make it more

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