Jacob Riis

Early Life

• Born in Denmark as the third of fifteen children
• Arrived in United States in 1870
• Unable to find work, he was often forced to spend the night in lodging houses.
• Riis did a variety of menial jobs before finding work in 1873 for New York news organizations.

Newspaper Days

• In 1877 Riis became a police reporter for the New York Tribune.
• Riis was determined to use his journalistic skills to write about poverty. He constantly argued that the "poor were the victims rather than the makers of their fate."
• In 1888 Riis worked as a photo-journalist for the New York Evening Sun.
• Among first photographers to use flash powder, which enabled him to photograph interiors and exteriors of the slums at night. He also became associated with what later became known as muckraking journalism.

Writing about the Poor

• In December 1889, an account of city life, illustrated by photographs, appeared in Scribner's Magazine.
• This article created a great deal of interest and the next year, a full-length version, How the Other Half Lives, was published.
• Theodore Roosevelt, the New York Police Commissioner, had the city police lodging houses that were featured in the book closed down.

Speaking about the Poor

• Over the next 25 years, Riis wrote and lectured on the problems of the poor.
• Riis also wrote over a dozen books, including Children of the Poor (1892), Out of Mulberry Street (1898), The Battle With the Slum (1902) and Children of the Tenement (1903).
• Died May 26, 1914, in Barrie, Massachusetts.

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