Jacob August Riis, born in Denmark on May 3, 1849, came to the United States in 1870 with only the clothes he was wearing and the $40 lent to him in his pocket. His initial years as an immigrant in America opened his eyes to the trials and tribulations of life in lower-class neighborhoods, with days spent begging for food and taking on a variety of transitory jobs ranging from farming to working with iron and bricks. Struggling to find a long-lasting occupation and living in overcrowded tenements of horrendous condition surrounded by maladies and criminal activity, Riis was eventually granted the opportunity to expose the hardships of being an immigrant living in destitution. With great effort and an innate capacity for photography, Riis got a job as a police reporter for the New York Evening Sun and the New York Tribune and gained a deeper insight into the injustices occurring right under his nose. He subsequently resolved to take a stance on protecting the lower class, assuming the position of a muckraker.
During the late 18th century, the industrial revolution was beginning in America. Factories were being created in areas of centralized space since there would be a vacant area to create large factories. These factories produced a significant number of jobs and many came to these areas to get money. When these businesses were created, the government did not create any regulations for them. As a result, the business owners were given the liberty to do whatever they pleased. They made workers stay for long hours while being paid the absolute minimum. Additionally, they had to live in tenements which were packed with other families. It was unsanitary because there wasn’t any plumbing system. Their excess waste was dumped outside the windows or even on the floors of the apartment. When the tenements walked around, this would spread the dirt and diseases would contract easily. The environment also had an impact on the health of the lower class. A large amount of carbon and soot was being emitted from the factories which caused lung diseases and cancer. The rivers were also polluted with waste which limited the water supply that the lower class had to use. Many died during this time period due to the poor conditions that they faced. These injustices and unethical decisions caused by business owners were bringing negative results to the lower class and Jacob Riis wanted to bring attention to these issues through his pictures.
Jacob August Riis, Lodgers in a Bayard Street Tenement, Five Cents a Spot (1889)
One of the main issues that Riis saw was the lack of social justice between the two main classes, the bourgeoisie, more commonly called capitalists, and the proletariat, which was the working class. The capitalists were able to flourish with the wealth gained from the exploitation of the working class, taking advantage of anything they could think of, including paying minimum wage, enforcing long hours for adults as well as their children, and hazardous working conditions. Their only concern was to have the best results—obtaining the greatest possible wealth—for themselves. However, this egocentric goal was a demonstration of unethical behavior characteristic of business owners, given that they were ruining their relationship and reputation with the working class for their own gain.
Riis saw another issue with the tenements and how there were no regulations for a safer and cleaner environment. The business owners had no preference about the lifestyle of the poor and just wanted to make profit. Riis wanted to portray the despair that the working class faced through photography. In the first photograph, Riis captures the stuffed area where the residents are living. You are able to clearly identify how uncomfortable it must have been for them since a majority are taking a break on the messy floor to sleep, with one of the workers sleeping while sitting up. This says a lot about the type of room they resided in. It was compacted with so many other residents that he could not lie down to sleep. The second picture exhibits three children who are huddling together for warmth during the winter. Life for children in this society was particularly harsh. Their parents needed to work for long hours to make a decent amount to survive and weren’t able to nurture them. The children were lacking many necessities including shoes. Walking around barefoot would have been especially difficult in the cold temperatures of the winter. Riis was able to use these images to evoke sympathy for those to whom he was writing. Those viewing the images would not want to live their lives in horrible conditions like those captured by Riis, which encouraged the movement for reform.
Jacob August Riis, Street Arabs in sleeping quarters (ca. 1890)
Among Riis’ works, his initial publication How the Other Half Lives was perhaps the most influential in ameliorating the living conditions of the lower class. Released in 1890, this social criticism detailed the sordid state of the accommodations for immigrants who endured toxic environments in the workplace as well as the slums they called home. Riis acknowledged the benefits of building public parks to alleviate the overcrowding and fostering of crime, proposing the notion that bad children are a product of bad environments. In an attempt to appeal to the philanthropic higher-class citizens, Riis provided distressing statistics and captured snapshots of the immigrant communities characterized by congested tenements, filthy streets, and criminal activity. The book’s overwhelming success was a turning point for the lower-class, arresting the attention of New Yorkers who were appalled at the inadequate living conditions, as well as police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. According to Roosevelt, Riis employed his “great gift of making others see what he saw and feel what he felt.” Moved by the severity of the unembellished truth, the future president shut down the lowest quality residences and prompted the city officials to implement refined housing policies.
Jacob August Riis, Homeless Children (c.a. 1890)
As a pioneer of contemporary photojournalism, Jacob Riis employed his photography skills to encapsulate the negative aspects of society’s industrial progress. Utilizing his platform as a medium between the lower-class and those of higher socioeconomic status, Riis sought to expose the affluent societies to the deplorable living conditions of their poverty-stricken counterpart. His telling depictions of immigrants’ substandard environment served as a social commentary, invoking sympathy from the wealthy citizens and appealing to their sense of justice. In raising public awareness of the indigent families’ atrocious quality of life, Jacob Riis effectively nudged society into action toward a better life for immigrants during the Progressive Movement.
Works Cited
Bentley, J. H., Ziegler, H. F., & Streets-Salter, H. (2016). Traditions & encounters: A brief global history.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Jacob Riis.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 22 June 2017. Web.
History.com Staff. “Tenements.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web.
“Jacob Riis (1849–1914).” Open Collections Program: Immigration to the US, Jacob Riis (1849-1914). N.p., n.d. Web.
“Jacob Riis Biography.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web.
Kay Davis, M.A., University of Virginia. “Jacob Riis.” Documenting “The Other Half”: The Social Reform Photography of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. N.p., n.d. Web.
Moore, Tony. “Jacob Riis.” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 06 Nov. 2015. Web.
Stamp, Jimmy. “Pioneering Social Reformer Jacob Riis Revealed “How The Other Half Lives” in America.” Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, 27 May 2014. Web.
-Joyce Chan and Stephanie Tam
December 14, 2017 at 6:40 pm
You establish a well-rounded historical context of the time. Jacob Riis was one of the many muckrakers at the time, a term coined for people who exposed the social ills of corrupt industries and factories. Riis’ work was so much more than himself; it led to actual change. When Roosevelt became president, he passed numerous laws such as The Pure Food and Drug Act, which still exist today and have led to monumental health and safety reform. I knew the historical aspects of Riis’ work, but not the artistic side that went into it. You bring to light his true talent as a photographer and his ability to accurately and starkly present these social problems. He put a lot of work into his photography, spending hours in one place in the snow, as you mentioned. He was quite a remarkably talented, humble, and dedicated man to the well being of society.
December 19, 2017 at 12:30 am
The urban reform of Jacob Riis was pivotal to higher quality of life we witness today in NYC. Before his reforms, New Yorkers lived in tightly packed tenements with the lack of safety regulations. In addition, proper ventilation and sanitation systems were unheard of at the time for tenements. Riis’ efforts helped to pass numerous reforms, such as the Tenement Housing Act of 1901, which put heavily regulations on ventilation, fire escapes, as well as proper sewage systems. The reforms were only part of his legacy. One important aspect of his reforms was the photographic technique he used to expose those living conditions. Even today, we use realistic photography to reveal and expose what we believe is unjust.
December 19, 2017 at 1:35 am
This biography of Jacob Riis was done very well. Before reading this, I thought I knew some things about Jacob Riis and his work, however, there were many things I learned. For instance, I knew the residents of tenements did not live luxuriously, however, I did not realize how bad the conditions were at the time, like how the children didn’t even own shoes. This post made me reminisce about the time our class traveled to the Tenement Museum and I remembered the individual experiences of each of the immigrant families who lived there at the time. Overall, this is a well thought out biography of Riis and his work.
December 22, 2017 at 3:21 am
I really like how you covered Jacob Riis’s involvement in social justice, which was a big impact in his career and in his life. You also mentioned his connection to President Theodore Roosevelt, which is definitely an important thing to mention. You also include the ever-important mention of Jacob Riis’s pivotal text How the Other Half Lives. The pictures you provide and place alongside the tales of destitute families in dire circumstances help to formulate the idea of a world in which a journalist goes through his life looking for people like them, in order to report back to the masses as well as someone who would later go on to become a president the hardships of the indigent.
December 25, 2017 at 10:41 pm
I think you did a great job of showing us the background of Jacob Riis. We always learned about Jacob Riis in school as someone who exposed the terrible conditions of the lower class. I didn’t know thought that Riis himself was a victim of the terrible conditions of poverty himself. It also shows us the disparity of social classes and the terrible conditions in which people at the time had to live.