Background
Jacob August Riis was born on May 3, 1849 in Ribe, Denmark, the son of Niels Edward and Caroline B. (Lundholm) Riis.
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
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https://www.amazon.com/Children-Tenements-Jacob-August-Riis-ebook/dp/B07G4LKKKS?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B07G4LKKKS
(This is the collection of COLLECTED WORKS of American aut...)
This is the collection of COLLECTED WORKS of American author Jacob A. Riis. The eBook contains seven books, with more than 150 illustrations. Included Works: 1. The Battle With The Slum 2. The Children Of The Poor 3. Children Of The Tenements 4. Hero Tales Of The Far North 5. Is There A Santa Claus? 6. Neighbors: Life Stories Of The Other Half 7. A Ten Years' War: An Account Of The Battle With The Slum In New York Author: Jacob August Riis ( May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography.
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Jacob August Riis was born on May 3, 1849 in Ribe, Denmark, the son of Niels Edward and Caroline B. (Lundholm) Riis.
He received his education from his father, a teacher in a Latin school, and learned something of journalism from assisting the elder Riis to prepare copy for a weekly paper.
His later career was impressively forecast in an incident of his boyhood. As a lad of thirteen years he discovered in his native town a tenement, built over a sewer, which was infested with rats. Horrified by the conditions under which the inhabitants of this loathsome house were living, the boy began a systematic extermination of the rats; and with whitewash and soap, purchased with a bit of Christmas money, undertook to clean away the dirt, and thus to bring some cleanliness and decency to the homes of the poor.
In Copenhagen, young Riis served for four years as apprentice to a carpenter. Having learned his trade, he came to America to seek his fortune. He landed in New York on Whitsunday, 1870. The usual experience of the immigrant, employed at any kind of job that would keep him alive, carried him into farming, coalmining, brick-making, peddling.
More than once he spent the night in the noisome horror of the police lodging-houses of the day. At a critical moment, his early journalistic experience won him a job on a weekly newspaper published at Hunter's Point, Long Island. When no pay appeared after the second week, he left. But a road had been opened which took him, after several years' wandering, to the New York Tribune (1877 - 88) and later to the Evening Sun (1888 - 99), as a police reporter.
Afterward he supported himself by articles, books, and lectures. His activities at police headquarters led Riis to his life's work, the cleansing of the New York slums. Again and again, in pursuit of stories of accident and crime, the young reporter invaded the tenement districts.
Day and night his keen eyes and sensitive heart were gathering evidence of the physical wretchedness, the moral and spiritual degradation, of these downtown ghettos of the poor; and he declared war upon them. In vivid newspaper and magazine articles, in countless lectures, in widely read books, he pictured the life of the poor, especially of their children, and rallied and organized support for their relief. His energy was tremendous, his achievements were spectacular.
He exposed the contaminated state of the city's water supply, and caused the purchase of the Croton watershed; he abolished police station lodging-houses; he worked for child-labor laws, and for their enforcement; he secured playgrounds for schools and the opening of classrooms to boys' and girls' clubs; he secured a truant school; he forced the destruction of rear-tenements; he demanded light for dark tenement hallways, and revealed to a horrified country long-hidden dens of vice, crime, and filth; he drove bake-shops, with their fatal fires, from tenement basements.
Perhaps nothing in all his victorious career so overjoyed him as the wiping out of Mulberry Bend, the worst tenement block in the city, and the building in its place of Mulberry Bend Park and his own Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood House. Riis's enemies were numerous and powerful, the allied hordes of politicians on the one hand and of landlords on the other. He fought them single-handed for years, till friends and supporters came.
Chief among these was Theodore Roosevelt. The two men might well have been taken for brothers in flesh as well as in spirit. Both as governor and president, Roosevelt offered his friend high office; but Riis insisted he was too busy to enter politics. In his later years Riis enjoyed a fame which overwhelmed him with invitations to write, lecture, lead public movements of reform. Suddenly, in 1904, he was stricken with heart disease which in succeeding years was aggravated by much travel and persistent overwork.
In 1913 he was ordered by his physician to seek rest in a sanitarium at Battle Creek. Here his condition improved, but could not be healed. He died in his country home, at Barre, Massachussets, on May 26, 1914.
He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography. Chief among his writings are: How the Other Half Lives (1890); The Children of the Poor (1892); Out of Mulberry Street (1898); The Making of an American (1901); The Battle with the Slum (1902); Children of the Tenements (1903); Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen (1904); Is There a Santa Claus? (1904); The Old Town (1909).
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(This is the collection of COLLECTED WORKS of American aut...)
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Riis was throughout his life natural, spontaneous, unspoiled, always the gayest and most exciting of companions. His unrestrained exuberance was on occasion mistaken for roughness or crudity, but at heart was a tenderness as of a woman, and a sensitiveness as of a child. What moved him was the spectacle of helpless human beings robbed of that sheer joy of living which was his own richest treasure. Called a reformer, he disliked the word, as it seemed to imply the improving of people. He was certain that the poor he knew needed not a change but a chance. So he sought to free them, and thus became the "great emancipator" of the slums.
On March 5, 1876, Riis had married Elizabeth Nielsen, of Ribe, a sweetheart of his boyhood. She died in 1905, but their five children, three sons and two daughters, survived him. On July 29, 1907, he married Mary A. Phillips, who had for some time been his secretary.
