How The Other Half Lives

How the Other Half Lives is an 1890 work by Jacob Riis that uses photographs and accompanying descriptions to shed light on the poverty and squalor that developed within metropolitan America–and especially New York City–around the turn of the twentieth century. The Second Industrial Revolution saw the beginning of the Gilded Age, as tycoons and business oligarchs sought to use their capital to influence domestic policy and led to one of the great wealth disparities in American history. During this period many immigrants and others from the surrounding country flocked to cities to work in the factories in the hope of earning higher wages than were possible elsewhere. This rapid influx of population, however, strained the resources of the cities and frequently led to people living in cramped, unhygenic situations.

The photographs Riis assembled in this work shocked Americans with its raw depictions of urban slums. Young men sharing an apartment with eight other people, lax building codes and regulations, dirt, grime, individuals sleeping on street corners, and other staples of a city slum were commonplace in these areas, making the photography of Jacob Riis particularly striking. “In New York… the boundary line of the Other Half lives through the tenements.… To-day three-fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.”¹

His work highlighted the greed of factory owners and managers, and the cultural neglect of the slums that led to immigrants and laborers living in such conditions. The ways in which immigrants lived were completely alien to those living on the top of society as denoted by the phrase “How the Other Half Lives,” and captured the attention of many reformers of the period, including then-Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who promptly met with Riis after reading his work. This groundbreaking piece of literature remains another example of the way in which investigative journalism can change the aspect of how societies function. The Gilded Age is known for rich industrialists, railroads, and new inventions. The shock the public experienced helped spread awareness of how immigrants and other poor communities were treated and helped push calls for reforms.

Sources

1. Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890).

Photographs from “The American Yawp” – https://www.americanyawp.com/text/how-the-other-half-lived-photographs-of-jacob-riis/

Entry contributed by Isaac Baker – Theodore Roosevelt Center Student Employee