...The 1890 book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis, sought out to expose the horrific conditions that over one million immigrant workers and their families faced in the tenements of New York's East Side slum district. A citizen's movement prompted by the guilty consciouses of the middle class resulted in the creation of the Board Of Health, that passed the 1867 "Tenement House Act". The act mandated the cutting of 46,000 windows into interior rooms solely for ventilation purposes. These renovations were met with opposition from tenement owners as well as by tenants.In many accounts tenants had to be physically dragged out from cellar apartments by police officials. In spite of the Tenement House Act, many renovated buildings had no apparent improvements . New tenements that were constructed after the act still had floor plans that left rooms dark and dank and, over crowding was still permitted. The air inside the tenements were described as " ...fouler than...
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... How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis is an emotional picture book that has and still is shocking middle and upper class Americans . Riis created a sensation when he revealed to the world, combining detailed written descriptions with graphic photographs, the horrific conditions of New York City’s tenement housing. How the Other Half Lives raised many questions, such as how and why the poor are subjected to such terrible living conditions and how that environment affects them. Riis also reveals his fears and prejudices toward certain ethnic groups as he investigates each tenement in order to find some kind of solution. The miserable surroundings Riis discusses throughout the length of his entire document focus on the tenement. The tenement is a building, which due to the immigration boom was modified by its landlord to create as many rooms as possible, therefore sacrificing the human necessities of air and light. Riis says, “Large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation.”(Pg. 69) These rooms were too small to house one family and too dark and stagnant too live in, yet it was common to have as many as three or four families in one “apartment”! Tenements are the pit of filth, hot, dank and disease ridden. It was very common for a whole building...
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...David Terrick II Gist 2 12/03/13 Mirror With A Memory Throughout the early 1900’s, poverty was a great problem among many immigrants in The United States. Immigrants were forced to live in deplorable conditions, many of which, were in the slums of urban centers across the nation. This plague was relatively unknown to the middle class and rich who lived in the surrounding areas of urban centers. While reading “Mirror With A Memory”, Davidson and Lytle explain the work of journalist Jacob Riis and his effect on bringing the conditions of the impoverished to the rest of the country. Riis is viewed as both a great photographer, and as an upstanding citizen for his fight against poverty. Jacob Riis published “How the Other Half Lives”, a collection of photos and articles explaining and showing visual evidence of poverty in American slums. He explains the filthy, crammed, living conditions as well as the serious spread of disease. He talks of personal encounters as he would sneak shots of 13 men and women packed tight into a room only 13 feet across. Riis had the mindset that it was his personal duty to bring light to the rest of the public about the poor. I personally view Jacob Riis as an unsung hero. I do not believe he received nearly enough credit for what he had done. Riis devoted his life to changing the way the poor immigrants lived. Bringing visual evidence of the matter forced the public to become aware of the deplorable conditions, and make a...
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...cost of the general population. This economic and social inequality is what led to the terrible living conditions as described in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. In his pioneering work of photojournalism, Jacob Riis draws attention to the horrifying living conditions in the poor slums of New York. Although there were many reasons for the terrible living conditions, three of the most influential...
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...system all contributed to the rapid industrialization of America throughout this time. What’s more, significant contributions were made to the field of photography. The advent of magnesium flash powder allowed photographers to more reliably capture photographs at night than they had ever been able to. Before, subjects had to be well lit in order to be photographed. Jacob Riis, a Danish born, American immigrant, used this flash powder to great effect during the gilded age. In 1870 Riis arrived in New York amid an economic depression. For several years he battled poverty and unemployment before...
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...during this time period were Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair. Jacob Riis was famous for his photographs and book How the Other Half Lives. His photographs and novel depicted literally, how the other half lives, the other half being the poor immigrants and working class of society. After publishing this, Riis gained the attention of not only millions of people but also the members of government including President Roosevelt, which inspired many reforms of the working-class housing, working conditions, child labor laws, and more. Upton Sinclair, another writer of the time, published a very famous novel called The Jungle which also inspired reform. His book exposed the meatpacking industry and how unsanitary the prepping of the meat was, as well as how horrible the working conditions were. Sinclair’s book, much like Riis’, made it all the way to the white house making more reform possible including the passing of the Food and Drug Act and The Meat Inspection Act. Another important member of this social reform was Jane Addams who founded the Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. This settlement house, along with many other she created, offered day care services, libraries, classes, and employment to impoverished citizens of the time, provided by upper class citizens willing to volunteer in the houses. The main objective of these settlement houses was to allow the rich and poor people of society to live closer together and learn to depend on each other. With the help of these Progressives...
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...During the Progressive Era, the Progressives created reforms because they believed in the improvement of society. Many reforms had different outcomes. Some reforms were noticed and were solved, while others were neglected. There was a variety of reforms created such as urban life problems, racism, and the lack of women’s rights. Overall, I believe that the progressives deserve a B+ from the events that took place during this era. For most of the issues that they faced, they handled it appropriately, but there were a few issues that they didn’t control properly. Some reforms were addressed while others weren’t focused on and were left unsolved. One very significant part to the movement was woman suffrage. A famous leading figure in the women’s...
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...Question: Describe the social and political conditions that existed in America just prior to the Progressive Movement. Discuss how the Progressives informed their audiences of these conditions, and explain the extent to which they were successful in reforming several of the problems they addressed. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America was in a time of major reform. Citizens of the United States were tired of the neglected situations of poor working conditions, overcrowding of cities, political corruption, and abuses by industrialists. A reform group, known as the Progressives took it upon themselves to rally for change. Using many different resources of media, combined with many different organized protests and petitions,...
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...Jacob Riis exemplified what it means to be a photographer. He used his talent of taking dramatic photographs along with his courageous spirit to show the ordinary people what it would be like to live with horrible living conditions. He came from poverty and showcased the worst of it from the Lower East Side of New York. His book called How the Other Half Lives showed what life was like for the people living in Tenements in New York and the destitute way they went about their lives. It struck a cord with people as most journalism did when portrayed in such a blunt way. Mark Twain, a man who used his writing skills for less of a muckraking purpose and more for a humorous way. He showed life in the Progressive Era as in his novels about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He gave America humor and a way of looking at life through the eyes of a boy to entertain and show them that not everything has to be so serious. To bring about serious change, someone must take matters sternly. Ida Tarbell...
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...factors of each other. The growth of the industry, immigration, and cities all had positive and negative results within society including, the poor workers pay and working conditions but also the new types of industries, immigrants coming to the United States with their culture, the discrimination against certain people who were immigrants, overcrowding and the building of some of the most powerful cities in the world. With the growth of the industry...
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...Chicago police advanced on the protest of alleged brutalities by the authorities. Unexpectedly, a sudden dynamite bomb was thrown that killed or injured several dozen people. Ultimately, the Haymarket Square bomb was mistakenly associated with the Knights of Labor in the public’s mind which was a huge setback for the cause. Shortly after, the American Federation of Labor, organized in 1886, under the leadership of Samuel Gompers was an association of self-governing national unions in which no individual laborer could join the central organization. Furthermore, Samuel Gompers sought better wages, hours and working conditions unlike the Knights of Labor. In the early 1900's journalist and photographer Jacob Riis exposed the social and political evils in the U.S. with his novel "How The Other...
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...Swidler and Kim Voss (1996) Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fromm, Erich and Michael Maccoby (1970) Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Socio-Psychoanalytic Study. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gottfredson, Michael R. and Travis Hirschi (1990) A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hagedorn, John (1988) People and Folks: Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rust-Belt City. Chicago, IL: Lake View Press. Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Social Class in American Life. New York: Free Press. Hirschi, Travis and Michael J. Hindelang (1977) ‘Intelligence and Delinquency: A Revisionist Review’, American Sociological Review 42(4): 571–87. Horowitz, Ruth (1983) Honor and the American Dream: Culture and Identity in a Chicano Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ianni, Francisco (1974) Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime. New York: Simon & Schuster. Irwin, John (1980) Prisons in Turmoil. Boston, MA: Little-Brown. Joselit, Jenna Weissman (1983) Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900–1940. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Joyeaux, Carl [pseud.] (1960) Out of the Burning: The Story of a Boy Gang Leader. New York: Crown. Kasarda, John E. (1990) ‘Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science...
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...overseas. They overpopulated cities and struggled to find jobs and housing. Settlement Houses established by middle class women helped assimilate immigrants to American culture. The first Settlement House was established by Jane Addams in Chicago. They provided English classes, childcare and healthcare for immigrant families. Nonetheless, cities were still very crowded, which caused several other problems across the country. Overpopulation created very bad living conditions for those that lived in large cities, such a New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. Residents of these cities lived in very tight, unclean quarters that had almost no plumbing. City streets were lined with feces from both animals and humans, which caused people to get sick from the amount of waste. Everything was filthy because there were no sanitation standards. Jacob Riis, a photographer from New York City, captured the plight of the city through images that show people starving, living in cramped homes and stricken by illness. He titled these images “How the Other Half Lives,” in order to show the show the rest of the country how impoverished New Yorkers lived. Eventually, a New Yorker named George Waring gathered a group of men to help rid the streets of all the refuse and waste. He also helped New York City create a garbage and underground sewage system so the waste wouldn’t cover the streets and so people wouldn’t get sick. This created a much better environment for families and the well-being of the common...
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...because of them were very real. They were able to make an impact socially, economically and politically in the United States. The works of the muckrakers spoke volumes in creating reform for the social welfare of American society. Perhaps, one of the most significant muckrakers of this time was Upton Sinclair, a member of a Socialist Party, who wrote a book called “The Jungle”. The book depicted the horrible, unhygienic conditions and the struggles in which the laborers of the Chicago meat packing industry had to deal with. In the story, Sinclair talks about the laborers having to work in a damp, dark place, where “tuberculosis might live for two years”, their hands going numb from working so long and even their fingers being eaten away by acid. Sinclair’s intention was to draw attention to the plight of immigrant workers. However, the imagery about how the food was prepared was...
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...five military districts and stationed federal troops throughout the region. * Black Codes: Southern state laws passed after the Civil War to limit the rights and actions of newly liberated African Americans. * Freedmen’s Bureau: Federal agency created by Congress in March 1865 and disbanded in 1869. Its purposes were to provide relief for Southerners who had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, to support black elementary schools, and to oversee annual labor contracts between landowners and field hands. * Ku Klux Klan: A group of Tennessee war veterans who became a white supremacist terrorist organization promoting violence and intimidation against freed people who dared to resist the demands of white planters and other employees. * 1877 Compromise: Informal, unwritten agreement made by members of Congress that ended the era of Reconstruction. * “Redeemers”: White, post-Reconstruction Democrats in the...
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