Reformer Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1870 , but 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 ref

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e many of the problems of economic equality and social justice that Riis addressed more than 100 years ago. In contemporary society, Riis would be classified as a bigot. His generalizations of the characteristics of racial and ethnic minorities are shocking to a reader in the 21st century, but it was accepted in the 19th century as factual or at least partly true. However, this particular style does not change the power or the authenticity of Riis' description of the deplorable conditions that tenement residents tolerated in New York and other urban centers toward the end of the 19th century. Jane Addams was part of the first generation of American women to attend college in large numbers. Addams was financially independent, energetic, well educated and privileged. Adams was limited by social convention, gender based discrimination and family pressure from entering politics or business and was left to begin forging her own destiny. Addams is remembered as a leader of the progressive movement in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Addams founded the Settlement House Movement. Addams was also active in labor reform, particularly relating to laws governing working conditions for children and women. Addams came

Category: History - R