also included Americans who had migrated from the poverty of rural lives as sharecroppers to cities where they hoped to better themselves. In his book, Riis explains that as populations grew in New York and the demand for urban housing increased, building owners and their middlemen realized that more profit could be made by converting houses into barracks and by dividing and subdividing living quarters into progressively smaller spaces.
It is hard to know whether Riis blames the landlords for the conditions in New York's tenements, or the city planners and health officials that permitted such housing conditions to exist. Riis decries the squalor, the overcrowding, the lack of sanitation and the lack of fresh air as much as he criticizes landlords for the exorbitant rents charged for substandard housing. In detail, Riis describes buildings I various areas of New York City that are fire traps in which it would be practically impossible to escape. He describes buildings so poorly designed that fire escapes do not connect to windows, and other fire escapes so crowded with personal belongings due to overcrowding that they would be useless in a fire. Riis tries to describe the conditions of these tenements on a hot and humid day in summer with little breeze, no cross ventilation and no running water with entire families living, eating, cooking and sleeping in single rooms - some of which have no windows.
Riis also writes that with overcrowding came corruptio
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