"How the Other Half Lives"

Paper Summary:

"How the other Half lives" is one of the most celebrated books on the subject of deplorable living and working conditions of immigrants at the turn of the century. Jacob Riis's powerful account of life in tenement buildings in New York City was first published in 1890 and took American's largely complacent majority by storm. The paper shows that the book may have been about the poor and the destitute of New York City, but it was meant for the 'other half' that was not portrayed in the book. The readers were those who had little or nothing in common with the real life characters of the book, and this explains the main purpose of the book to us. The paper explains that Riis saw the immigrants' heart-rending life in the tenements from the eye of his camera and then made the middle-class and upper-class Americans see it for themselves through his sharp essays and scathing images.

From the Paper:

"Riis accuses the wealthy and the influential of complacency and apathy and holds them responsible for at least some of the problems that tenement occupants faced. He feels that since the public is kept in dark about the gravity of the situation, the poor immigrants keep suffering and the government is never held accountable. Riis contends that normally the other half, the affluent half of the country, never attempts to get the whole truth and for this reason, a person dying of utter deprivation and starvation is classified as case of "improper nourishment". "

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