Frances Benjamin Johnston, circa 1900
Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection,
Library of Congress
Jacob Riis (1849-1914)
How the Other Half Lives: studies
among the tenements of New York
New York: Dover, 1971
[Originally published by C. Scribners Sons, 1890]
Jacob Riis chronicled a life of poverty, despair, and filth among the working class in New York City in the 1890s in his classic work, "How the Other Half Lives." His experience as a police reporter exposed him to the horrible living conditions in New York's Lower East Side and convinced him to become a spokeman for the rights of the poor. How the Other Half Lives, not only told the story of the poor in New York, but also contained photographs by Riis, many of which were only possible because of recent technological innovations in photography that allowed images to be captured in dark interiors and alleyways at night as well as in daylight.
Although this work was published over 15 years before Theodore Roosevelt
labeled progessive American writers as "muckrakers," its influence
on the movement is evident. Riis was a friend of both Roosevelt, whom
he knew when Roosevelt served as New York's police commissioner, as well
as Lincoln Steffens. He was important to the muckraking movement as a
mentor to a young Steffens, who would later become one of the most influential
muckrakers as both the editor of McClure's and a writer who exposed
political corruption in America's cities. Steffens later recalled the
influence of Riis upon him as a reformer who "worked through despair
to set the wrong right" and "not only got the news, he cared
about the news."
Sources:
Cross, Robert D. "Riis, Jacob August." American National Biography. Edited by John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Everett, George. "Jacob
Riis." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 23: American
Newspaper Journalists, 1873-1900. Edited by Perry J. Ashley. Detroit:
Gale Group, 1983.
|
