​U.S. History

Jacob Riis was a photographer and a writer who wrote How the Other Half Lives. He was born in Denmark but emigrated to United States in 1870.  He used his camera as a tool to capture people who live in harsh conditions, such as crowded tenements and dangerous slums, and published the images in the public to catch people's attention. Thomas Nast, known as the 'Father of the American Cartoon', produced sarcastic art during the 19the century to criticize political figures in the society. He was born in Germany but moved to New York when he was around 6. (Bio.com)

In 1870, Jacob Riis became a police reporter for New York Tribune. Working as a reporter, he is able to write stories about New York City slums and to learn about immigrants neighborhoods, which serve as a focus of his calls for social reform. He used his camera to take pictures of the poor. His book, How the Other Half Lives, was published in 1890 with the photographs he took, and it revealed the horrible living conditions in the slums where the lower class of New York City lived. It analyzed the details of how did the housing problems affect the poor immigrants(open collections program) , including diseases, sanitation, and ovecrowding situations. Much of the sympathy came from his own experience of joblessness, hunger and homelessness as an immigrant. (portfolio at NYU) He argued that the tenements in New York should be reformed, that poverty was a result of imperfect social and economic system. He claimed that the it could be eliminated by increasing government regulation of the economy. (open collections program) He shocked many middle-class Americans with his sensational descriptures and pictures of tenement life in his book. (Pg 461, the unfinished nation)

Jacob Riis and Thomas Nast