Jacob Riis Book Report

The author of this source is Jacob A. Riis, who was an immigrant from Denmark migrated to the United States, New York in 1870 to seek a better future. It was at this period of time, where vast numbers of immigrants enter the country. Riis life in New York initially was challenging as he experienced working odd jobs as well as being financially unstable however, that soon changed after he became a famous journalist in the late 18th century. Being an advocate for the poor immigrants, he began to write about the plight of the immigrants living in the United States.
This document is from a book that Riis has compiled about the immigrant’s horrid living experiences by illustrating the poor living conditions in the slums of New York City in the time period between the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. As there were more immigrants entering the United States the population increases has led to the growing concerns over the shortage of housing. With the
Riis used lots of descriptive words such as “clammy cellars”, “mouldering” and “water-rotted roofs” that allows his audiences to fully understand the severity of the tenement housing. The language in the source is bias to a certain extent, considering that Riis himself had lived briefly in the slum area in New York, he was able understand the environment and depict the awful conditions of the tenement housing quite realistically. In addition, due to Riis’s occupation as a journalist, he might have exaggerated certain parts of the tenement housing, but this has worked to Riis advantage seeing that his book was able to raise concerns over the immigrants lifestyle within his intended audiences which surely assisted in the progress in improving the living conditions for the lower class of the