Jacob Riis Chapter Summary

1. This book takes place in New York around the year 1855 to about 1889 when many immigrants from all over the world came to North America. In Jacob Riis’s book he breaks down the immigrants in to different race groups. This book is also about the overcrowding and the unhealthy living conditions of the tenement and how there community changes to become a healthy place to live and work.
2. The author Jacob Riis proved that the saying ‘’one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’’ Although we are not talking about the other half of the world but the other half of New York this saying is still true. Mr. Riis opened the eyes of New Yorkers and stood up for others to show how their fellow citizens where living in a dangerous and unhealthy environment. The streets dirtied with trash, swine living in cellars underneath homes with eight to ten loads of manure and five families crowed into one 12 × 12 room awhile the spread of disease.
3.
Jacob Riis uses is own experience has an immigrant that was in poverty plus his research on all the different nationality that lived in the tenements which include Irish, Italian, German, French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese. He also took many photographs of the filthy environment and of people including children in their daily life struggles. The book also included many sketches of his photos and diagram of the different tenements.
Mr. Riis also uses dialog with people he has meant throw this journey of uncovering the truth of how the other half lives to support his
argument.
4. The author does organize each individual chapter in order. He uses data like time, dates and diagrams to support his argument throughout the whole book he also include an appendix stating the statistics bearing on the tenement problem which includes statistics like:
• Number of deaths in tenements in New York, 1869/1888 . 13,285/ 24,842
• Number of tenements in New York, December 1, 1888 . 32,390
• Estimated population of tenements, August 1, 1890 . 1,250,000
• Estimated number of children in tenements under the age of five, 1890 . 163,712
He does state his opinion in this book but in more chapters then other. In the last two chapter you really get to know how he feels about it all and the finally decision.
5. Thanks to Mr. Riis and the help of others such as health officers, the tenements were cleaned up and changes were made for the better. The Health Department believed that just cleaning the tenements and the area near and around them would do no good. Instead they educated the people and landlords on cleanliness and hygiene. It became illegal to construct and live in barracks there for most of them were torn down. As many as one hundred thousand people had to find new homes. Health officers were now able to suspend individual rights to deal with the landlords and the dangers of their property. They also helped them see that they were letting people live in a human death-trap and not loving homes. Businesses then started to contribute to the new environment by creating jobs. Since then Jacob Riis has been horned with a section in the Museum of the City of New York. This book was made to inform New York, the World, and Generations after about the hardship that people had to live in and go throw and what it took to change New York to create a better world for themselves and for us.

Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. New York: Dover, 1971