How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1890

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Chapters 22-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 22-23 Summary and Analysis: “The Wrecks and the Waste” and “The Man with the Knife”

Riis visits a penitentiary, where the “toughs” described in Chapter 19 often appear as repeat offenders. Next, he describes a workhouse filled with “broken-down hordes from the dives, the lodging-houses, and the “tramps’” nests,” where “patrons drift back periodically” and “take their chances on the island when there is no escape from the alternative of work in the city” (256-57). At an almshouse, Riis finds impoverished old women and men, many of whom “have been sent to the almshouse to die by their heartless children” (258). None of these scenes, however, appear to Riis as “[p]itiful” as the “hundred upon hundreds” of women he observes at Blackwell’s Island psychiatric facility, “taking their afternoon walk” while tied to a wagon because they have “suicidal mania” and “cannot be trusted at large for a moment with the river in sight” (259). Riis does not attempt to diagnose the mental health conditions these women exhibit, but he does blame poverty, claiming that “these are all of the poor” (260). Having observed and described the bleakest of human existences, Riis concludes Chapter 22 with hard statistics: “the first cost of maintaining our standing army of paupers, criminals, and sick poor, by direct taxation, was last year $7,156,112.94” (262).

Riis opens Chapter 23 with an anecdote about a knife-wielding man on the corner of 5th and 14th Streets who began slashing at random into crowds of people passing by the shops. The man was detained and is now largely “forgotten,” but “the man and his knife had a mission” and gave a “warning” (263). Other knife-wielding men, destitute and vengeful, are likely to follow unless New Yorkers address the conditions that make such men possible. New Yorkers can be charitable, but they are also busy and thus complacent. They do not see what lurks inside and around the tenements. The knife-wielding man and others like him are more dangerous “because of the criminal ignorance of those who are not of their kind” (265). Riis concludes this brief chapter—the book’s briefest—by urging wealthy New Yorkers to adopt “the gospel of justice”: a Christian philosophy of “‘Philanthropy and five per cent”—that is, humane treatment of tenants while resting content with five percent annual profit from rent (266). This is Riis’s major solution to the tenement problem.

Chapter 24 Summary and Analysis: “What Has Been Done”

Riis describes past successes but also identifies significant obstacles to tenement reform. The law has acted through the Health Department to bring air and sunlight while eradicating the rear-tenements that blocked both for decades. Public opinion also has changed for the better “but very far from enough” (270). As a class, landlords have fought reform, though most have yielded to the law, and a few even have taken the initiative to improve their own properties. Riis views this as the key to humane profitability. Thanks to private initiative, some of the worst tenements, including the ones that plagued Five Points, have disappeared, and the Mulberry Street Bend soon will follow. Unfortunately, in many cases, the tenants themselves stand in the way of reform. Many are, as Riis describes them, “shiftless, destructive, and stupid; in a word, they are what the tenements have made them” (273). Indeed, the tenement itself seems to act as an organic life form in its own defense of its own existence, “appropriating to itself every foul thing that comes within its reach” (274). The greatest pressure of all comes from the movement of human beings across the ocean.

Twenty years earlier, the tenement population was 468,492. At the time of the book’s publication, the most recent count showed a population of 1,093,701. In a generation, as the number of tenants has more than doubled so has the number of tenements. The sheer pace of growth poses an immense challenge, but it cannot be ignored. Furthermore, the absentee landlord must be held accountable. Finally, while the most impoverished tenants often obstruct reform, Riis argues that as a whole “the tenants respond to intelligent efforts in their behalf,” citing both the Black population and the Italians (278). Riis concludes the chapter on a hopeful-yet-cautious note, citing “many philanthropic efforts” that appear as “bright spots in a dreary picture,” even if they are “too often bright only by comparison” (280-81).

Chapter 25 Summary and Analysis: “How the Case Stands”

Riis opens his final chapter with eight “bald facts” about the tenement problem, listed in Roman numerals. In sum, New York’s working impoverished populations have a right to decent and affordable housing, and landlords will profit themselves, their tenants, and society at-large by providing said housing. Legal authorities can enforce health codes and punish guilty landlords, but the impetus for genuine reform must come largely from private sources. The key to this chapter—in fact to Riis’s entire argument—is his insistence that tenement reform “can be made to pay” (285). He cites several examples of enlightened landlords, such as Miss Ellen Collins, who have improved the lives of their tenants while earning a consistent, reasonable profit. Charity will not be sufficient. Reform requires the landlords’ “personal interest” (287). This is true whether they remodel old tenements or build new ones. Riis quotes letters from other landlords who, like Miss Collins, have made successful experiments in tenement reform. The common thread among all these experiments—and what constitutes the core of Riis’s plan—is the requirement that landlords restrict their own profits to a reasonable rate of 5 or 6%. In fact, it appears that Riis might have settled on those numbers because of feedback from these successful landlord-reformers. To illustrate how a model tenement might look, Riis provides two pages’ worth of sketches from A. T. White, “who has devoted a life of beneficent activity to tenement building” in Brooklyn (291). Riis concludes with a metaphor of a rising sea, which he uses to describe the swelling tenement population and the myriad dangers it portends.