Sean's Reviews > How the Other Half Lives

“One half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” This statement is as true today as it was in 1890, when Jacob Riis wrote his groundbreaking work about the abhorrent living conditions in and around New York City tenements. In the same vein as Upton Sinclair and his book “The Jungle,” Riis airs the dirty laundry of the Public Health Department of the United States and its treatment (or lack thereof) of the tenement population in true muckraker fashion. Using his own research, which mainly consisted of personal visits to the tenements in question coupled with statistics produced by the Registrar of Vital Statistics, Dr. Roger S. Tracy, Riis begins his exposé. He approaches nearly activist levels with his searing synopsis of the tenement landlords and in his calling for government intervention on behalf of the impoverished tenement residents.
Though this expository work of non-fiction was written in the late 19th century, its over-arching questions are still valid today: Why, in this day and age, must our fellow human beings be forced to live in such squalor, filth and poverty and what can or ought to be done about it? Jacob Riis delves deeply into the less-than-satisfactory living standards of New York tenements. Leaving no stone unturned, he vividly describes the horrific housing of some of the most notoriously bad residences. The book is a bit outdated and Riis’ constant references to certain New York City district and street names are not at all relatable to modern readers. Indeed the overall purpose of this book, improving the lives and living conditions of those tenement dwellers has been fulfilled ten-fold, and in most cases, eradicated entirely.
Every chapter in this acidic indictment is essentially a very long and descriptive list of offenses against the immigrant population of the tenement districts. Rather than structure the book with a presentment of the problem, citing a few examples (emphasis on “few”), and then a proposed solution, Riis merely describes example after example after example of the horrendous living conditions and their risks. This is followed up at the very end of the book, in the very last chapter with a few statements about how the government needs to step in and do something about the issue at hand. He certainly has a gift for clearly illustrating (both literally and figuratively) what he is witnessing with colorful diction supplemented with sketches of photographs taken by the author himself. He adds to this with his research with consisted entirely of personal observations and photographs by the author, statistics from the Registrar of Vital Statistics in New York, and talking to the local Chief of Police and President of the Board of Health in New York City. In the end however, after all of the mudslinging to the side of the tenement landlords is done, the reader finds himself or herself asking: so what? What could I possibly do (or have done?)
Despite its subtle flaws and archaic expressions, this work stands, along with Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” as one of the many stalwart pillars supporting the Equal Rights Movement and the ERA. In their broadest sense, The Movement and the ERA were about granting equal rights to all people everywhere in the United States. How the Other Half Lives deals with the largely unnoticed and forgotten silent majority, the “unwashed masses,” the poor. Truthfully it was not until the 1960’s with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his “Great Society” programs that the issue of the poor and impoverished was dealt with head-on. Having been written nearly a century before the modern Civil Rights Movements, Riis’ book truly was ahead of its time and wholly groundbreaking for its day. These reasons alone should warrant a hearty recommendation from all its readers, past and present. It could reasonably be argued that this book, along with others like it, were the reasons for the establishment of housing and living condition and public health standards that still persist today.
Perhaps the most telling and compelling line in this tenement treatise is from chapter one. With its description of the appalling lack of fresh, outside light and air in tenement rooms: “Crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, Christian city.”
Jacob Riis reasonably examines the effects of tenement living on the surrounding community: increased crime, disease, and death. His proposed answer, found in the final two chapters, is government intervention on the side of “public sentiment.” While this appears a decent proposal, it provokes the questions of government authority in the everyday lives of American citizenry. Perhaps the seemingly unsolvable question of how much authority to give the local or federal governments to govern the everyday lives of their subject peoples could be addressed. While it is true that the poor living (indeed if it can be called living) conditions within tenements were very real, why did the supposed afflicted occupants not move elsewhere? If it really was so difficult to live a tenement, why stay? Is it the role of government to improve the lives of its people if they will not or cannot improve them themselves? There may be no right or wrong answers to any of these queries, or any solution to them at all.
In summation, Riis’ thesis and purpose in writing can be stated thus: hopelessly horrific circumstances were found in American tenement living and the government with its various departments and bureaucracies needed to step in and forcefully improve the lives of the struggling poor class and bring the “robber-baron” tenement landlords to justice for crimes against humanity. Only in this way can equality for all be assured, at least in New York City. With all opinions, short comings of the book and criticisms aside, this work strongly calls in to questions mankind’s treatment of its own. Though the suffering of the thousands of people trapped in dark, airless tenements has been assuaged, there yet exists similar suffering of millions of others around the world. Though they may not live in tenements, the shameful treatment of others of the human race around the world has long been a problem at the forefront of mankind’s struggle for peace, prosperity and equality. The effects on society of these terrible standards of living, found in many third world countries are still prevalent today. One need only read in any newspaper or watch any news report on TV to see a testament of its destructiveness. Though humankind has come a long way in equality of treatment of our brothers and sisters, when and how will the final solutions to this infinite struggle be achieved? There may be no answers to these questions.