Jacob Riis

Felts, Brianna

Professor Smith

American History 2020

20 February 2015

Riis was a news reporter for the New York Times, and with this power, he hoped to expose the living conditions of the tenements that “plagued the streets of New York.” The tenements were occupied by families, children, and immigrants-including various races. Riis aimed to capture the true image of how these people were forced to live their day-to-day lives. Although that Riis made it clear that he despised the tenements and saw them as the central problem to the poverty that hovered in the streets of New York. Riis believed that the occupants were the source for all the crime and disease.

“In the tenements all the influences make for evil; because they are the hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts; that through off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half a million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly amoral contagion.”

By publishing his photos, alongside Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, it is said that he is responsible for providing the impetus for reform within the tenements. Helping further the tenement reform to the front of New York’s political agenda, his writing prompted then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to close down the police-run poor houses.

The Upper and Middle class New Yorkers were unaware of the problem because they simply did not care. The half that was at the cared very little for the little struggles that they did face, and even less for the half that was beneath them—just as long as the upper class could keep their own seat.

Riis himself faced struggles throughout his life. He was the third of fifteen children. Only three of...