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• 1 2016-12-11T17:52:27-08:00 Jacob Riis' "How the Other Half Lives" 7 A look at Jacob Riis' photojournalistic effort to shed light on tenement housing plain 2016-12-11T19:03:47-08:00 Jacob Riis was a muckraker before the term was used to describe journalists in America. His photo-journalistic effort, How the Other Half Lives, exposed the general public to the tenement housing that served as home to thousands of working class families in New York. After the great immigration into the United States throughout the 19th century New York's population had increased 25%, most of that increase was unskilled immigrants that became the backbone of the industrial revolution in America. Since many of these families were of the lower class, they were forced to live in crammed apartment buildings that were well below the standard of quality housing that the upper and middle class took for granted. A photo of a family living in their one room apartment can be seen below.
  Riis began his mission by photographing the terrible conditions these people were subjected to. These photographs provided the visuals for his lecture series, "The Other Half: How it Lives and Dies in New York." The link below leads to a rendition of one of these lectures, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
  
  After two years of giving lectures on the tenement housing Riis immortalized his passion for reform in, "How the Other Half Lives." Originally an article in "Shribner's Magazine," he continued to speak on the reform needed in the housing sector, but also about the sweat shops that employed many of the tenants from the tenement housing and paid well below a living wage; sometimes as low as just a few cents a day. Not only did he describe the conditions these people suffered, he articulated a solution. He explained how renovating the housing could be profitable to those of the upper classes and that they also had an obligation to help the poor. 
  
  Riis' work inspired reform not only immediately after it was published but also inspired low income housing reform that is still an important part of our society structure. The "New York Housing Tenement Act" may have never passed without the public outcry for reform that followed the publication of "How the Other Half Lives." This act helped increase fire safety, space per family, and the amount of light that each apartment received. Theodore Roosevelt was a big supporter of Jacob Riis and together they worked to increase the amount of inspections that factories had to undergo and the amount of regulations on child labor along with several other forms of labor reform.