According to Len Bernstein's personal website, Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1870 with the hope of making enough money to marry the daughter of a wealthy man in his native Denmark. Riis he was not prepared for what he found when he arrived in New York City. In 1870, America was in the grip of a depression. There were thousands of people in New York City alone who were homeless and jobless. For three years, Riis suffered poverty and near starvation. In 1877, he found stable employment as a police reporter for the New York Tribune. In the 1880s he gravitated toward social reform, and he worked alongside other New York reformers campaigning for better living conditions for the thousands of immigrants then flocking to New York City in search of work (Bernstein).
According to the American Studies section of the University of Virginia website, Riis' work has been credited with encouraging the creation of new regulations and laws that addressed basic human needs. Jacob Riis shocked middle and upper class Americans with his photographs and descriptions of slum conditions in his book How the Other Half Lives. Inspired by Riis, Theodore Roosevelt the president of New York City's police board, closed down the unsanitary, unhealthful and dangerously overcrowded police lodging houses in 1896. With the help of Roosevelt, Riis fought for housing laws that probably saved the lives of thousands of people living in New York City tenements (Davis).
Riis' most popular book: How The Other Half Lives became a pivotal work that hastened much needed social reforms. Riis proposed nothing short of the reform of the tenement housing situation. He advocated more government interventions, ore fines of landlords, and more property confiscations. The book chronicles life in New York City's largest slums. The 'other half' were often immigrants. They often spoke little English and had few marketable skills. The 'other half' ...