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A review by skusaroo
How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis
3.0
An interesting time capsule of Victorian philanthropy, the pre-social movement state of industrialised society, and bourgeois snobbery and racism.
No doubt the book was instrumental in convincing those with the power to improve the state of the New York tenements and no doubt it helped convince those with power redact the Chinese Exclusion Act and no doubt it helped pave the way for the early twentieth century shift towards social reform. However, a lot of Riis' causes are problematic. Whilst at the close of the book he correctly identifies the issues of absentee landlords and hints at the issues of uncaring politicians, throughout his fingering of social ills as the causes of poverty rather than the symptoms are equally part of the mindset that would lead to Prohibition. His Christian hysteria; perhaps a precursor to the anti-abortionists and myriad anti-secular chuckleheads who would prefer a Victorian landscape as well as mindset.
He's also pretty racist. That's not entirely surprising - a lot of Victorians were - and especially in a city as diverse as NYC in 1890. But he's almost clinical in his classification of the differences in the races, and oddly specific in which races he prefers. He likes Jews, Czechs ('Bohemians'), Italians and pities Africans, but dislikes Irish and Chinese, the latter to extremes. However, he states that he is in favour of allowing the door to be opened to Chinese immigration, but only to stop them bothering white women and to curb opium dens. Eh.
He's also very concerned about making money, displaying his bourgeois tendencies. His is an American view: if a thing does not profit, it is not worth doing. It is the root of all of the USA's problems. However, without incentive for this problem, how is it to be fixed? I do not think he adequately deals with this question, beyond a vague appeal to landlords to be less greedy. He also does not particularly touch on working conditions in a city of sweatshops only 21 years away from the worst workplace disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which I think is a massive oversight and inextricably linked to the problems he tackles. He does at least mention, in great detail, low wages and high rents, but does not outright state that either are major issues. His conclusions are legislative, which is valid but not the entire picture.
For a Danish-speaker, his prose is pretty damn good in parts. However, he will lose you in other parts by how overcomplicated he likes to make his prose. More of the same. Often you felt you were walking in 19th century New York. The pictures were also mostly fantastic, though the equipment, I imagine, was not as good as his eye or good enough for the dingy places he liked to photograph.
No doubt the book was instrumental in convincing those with the power to improve the state of the New York tenements and no doubt it helped convince those with power redact the Chinese Exclusion Act and no doubt it helped pave the way for the early twentieth century shift towards social reform. However, a lot of Riis' causes are problematic. Whilst at the close of the book he correctly identifies the issues of absentee landlords and hints at the issues of uncaring politicians, throughout his fingering of social ills as the causes of poverty rather than the symptoms are equally part of the mindset that would lead to Prohibition. His Christian hysteria; perhaps a precursor to the anti-abortionists and myriad anti-secular chuckleheads who would prefer a Victorian landscape as well as mindset.
He's also pretty racist. That's not entirely surprising - a lot of Victorians were - and especially in a city as diverse as NYC in 1890. But he's almost clinical in his classification of the differences in the races, and oddly specific in which races he prefers. He likes Jews, Czechs ('Bohemians'), Italians and pities Africans, but dislikes Irish and Chinese, the latter to extremes. However, he states that he is in favour of allowing the door to be opened to Chinese immigration, but only to stop them bothering white women and to curb opium dens. Eh.
He's also very concerned about making money, displaying his bourgeois tendencies. His is an American view: if a thing does not profit, it is not worth doing. It is the root of all of the USA's problems. However, without incentive for this problem, how is it to be fixed? I do not think he adequately deals with this question, beyond a vague appeal to landlords to be less greedy. He also does not particularly touch on working conditions in a city of sweatshops only 21 years away from the worst workplace disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which I think is a massive oversight and inextricably linked to the problems he tackles. He does at least mention, in great detail, low wages and high rents, but does not outright state that either are major issues. His conclusions are legislative, which is valid but not the entire picture.
For a Danish-speaker, his prose is pretty damn good in parts. However, he will lose you in other parts by how overcomplicated he likes to make his prose. More of the same. Often you felt you were walking in 19th century New York. The pictures were also mostly fantastic, though the equipment, I imagine, was not as good as his eye or good enough for the dingy places he liked to photograph.