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Review Of How The Other Half Lives By Jacob Riis

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Jacob Riis was an immigrant from Denmark, who have experienced a poverty because of the situation he had to face when he came into the United States. He ended up working in New York as a police reporter, and he got a chance to see a poverty in tenement from close in slum. While working as a police reporter, he had started to take a photo of those poor and write about mostly immigrant who lived in tenement. He was one of the pioneer of photojournalism. Eventually he had published a heart touching stories of poor tenants using strong photographs (Digital History). That book was titled “How the Other Half Lives.”
“Other Half” is a metaphorical term for the poor who live in rented “rooms.” Jacob Riis wrote this book about the poverty in the New …show more content…

It is wise to prevent a disease than curing it after one get it. Riis tell the incident that one person with knife wanted kill the wealthier because the person with knife is hungry, poor and ragged (196). Riis says that that person was arrested, locked up, forgotten (196). Riis want to say that nobody care why was that happened, but they should because the root of that criminality was a poverty. Writer gives another fact that most of petty crimes are originated in cheap lodging house (67). So, if society do not want to solve the problem there will be consequences.
Since Riis believe that low wage and high rent is the main reason of the poverty, he shows his pessimistic opinion that as long as there are tenements there are poor (19) but in later article he suggested that, “‘Fair Play’ between landlord and tenant is the key” (212). He also suggested that “State may have to bring down the rents that cause the crowding” (210). Crowding happen because one family cannot afford the pay the rents of tenements so, they have to share and room. Over crowding may not be good for health of those tenants. When these tenant get sick there would be more chance that they suffer form

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