How the Other Half Lives

Danielle Mariella

November 17, 2005

Book Report #2

How the Other Half Lives

Introduction

The book How the Other Half lives, is one of those books that definitely affects you as soon as you read it. Jacob Riis the author of the book, wrote it exactly for the purpose, to affect people and get them to realize how bad the conditions were back then in New York City. He goes into full depth, of what the living conditions were like, who lived in them, and how they were affected by them. Mostly how each ethnic group lived in the tenements, and what the city did to improve them.

Genesis of the Tenement

In thirty-five years the city of New York went from less then a hundred thousand people to at least harbor a half a million souls, in which housing had to be found. In the beginning of the tenement housing it came as a blessing to people living there, because with the low income they were getting it was perfect price to buy. There big rooms were all broken up into small ones, and they basically disregarding light and proper ventilation. The rent was lower, with small apartments and the actual floor that you were on. The tenements were never really cared for, unless the people living in them really took care of them. The people who owned them really didn't care. "Neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year; while reckless slovenliness, discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their invariable results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded benath mouldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars(How the Other Half Lives,p.10)." The only thing the landlord was after was the rent that he wanted, and he didn't care about the actual comfort of the tenants. Because of the living conditions of the tenements, the tenants began to die from epidemic diseases. In the year 1815 the general mortality of the city was 1 in 41, in 1855 it went up to 1 in every 27 people. The city was packed out to 290,000 people in the square mile.

The Mixed Crowd

"When once I asked the agent of a notorious Forth Ward alley how many people might be living in it I was told: One hundred and forty families, one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italians, and two the spoke the German tongue(How the Other Half Lives,p.3). There was not one native born american in the court, or in any of the tenements. The irish were the true cosmopolitan immigrant. All-pervadin, he shares his lodging with perfect impartiality with the Italian, the Greek, and the "Dutchman," yielding on to sheer for of numbers, and objects equally to them all. The city maps were colorized for each nationality, if you were to look at a map at that time, Irish were mostly on the West Side and the Germans were mostly on the East Side. Mixed in where Italian, who pushed there way up, where "Little Italy" came to be. The less aggressive, the Russian and Polish Jew, are filling the tenements of the old Seventh Ward to the river front, while disputing with the Italians, over every foot of avaibility on Mulberry St. "The italian and the poor Jew rise only by compulsion. The Chinaman does not rise at all; here, as at home, he simply remains stationary. The Irishman's genius runs to public affairs rather than domestic life; wherever he is mustered in force the saloon is the gorgeous centre of political activity(How the Other half lives,p.25)." The germans made the most out of what they had, once they would save up enough money they would get out of where they were and never look back.

The Problem of the Children

"The problem of the children becomes, in these swarms, to the last degree perplexing(How the Other Half Lives,p.135)." There was a packing of children in the East Side tenements. The playing area that they little ones had were extremely small, and the amount of light that was in the area, was about as much light as there was in a cellar. There was one hundred and twenty eight in forty families. Because being so close to the water children have drowned, sometimes people didn't act like that don't know nothing about this. This then half of the children attended school, the rest learned from the