In the late eighteen hundreds to the start of the twentieth century the United States is on the brink of reformation but the remnants of a societal barrier between different classes, and races of people is still very prominent. Jacob Riis the Author of “How the Other half lives” approaches this issue in an expose that literally sheds light on the darkness of poverty as well as the tenements the lower class is forced to live and in most cases die in. Riis can be seen as a forerunner of progressivism as he uses photojournalism and his firsthand personal involvement, to pinpoint causes of problems in lower class housing in the city. There are three significant reasons he believes tenements have become a dilemma, individual action by the poor, …show more content…
He talks in numerous chapters about drinking, drug use, gambling, and lack of hygiene and race of those living in such terrible conditions as to slightly lift the focus off those seemingly responsible (those who provide this housing) to the poor. Riis talks about runaways and labels them as “Street Arabs” then further goes on the blame the poor for their own misfortune when he states “It is a mistake to think that they are helpless little creatures, to be pitied and cried over because they are alone in the world” He references the other half hostilely, he is speaking to the upper and middle class all throughout the book but then in the same breath blames the victim “those who would fight for the poor must fight the poor to do it.” Riis’ negative connotation towards the poor puts a thought in the readers mind that he believes their struggles are their own making. Specifically when he says they are “shiftless, destructive and stupid” and “they are what the tenements have made …show more content…
Focusing mainly on urban sharecropping in sweatshops in Jew town and cigar making factories, the people there were forced to work for low wages in poor conditions, in their homes where their employer was also their landlord. Riis describes this activity in the form of “slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the south.” In conditions such as these it is hard for the poor to ever make anything of themselves and overcome their disadvantages. Riis even goes further and compares the landlords of tenements to The Czar of all Russia. He points the finger at them metaphorically comparing the situation to a color line where “The landlord does the drawing, does it with an absence of pretense, a frankness of despotism that is nothing if not
Jacob A Riis said “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives” (1) in the introduction of his great book How the Other Half Lives, which was published in 1890. It was simply because the one half did not care how the other half lived. Although unknowing how the other half lives had not been a matter, it brought into relief the gap between people over middle-class and the poor around 1900s in New York City where was the youngest city in the world.
How truly grateful are we for our possessions and what we have earned from the work we have done? Are we thankful for what we possess, or are we still jealous of that one friend, colleague, coworker, or even extended family member that has nicer belongings than we do? Jacob Riis opened our eyes and gave us a true, vivid description and idea of how American families in New York during the late 1800’s lived and worked. This eye opening account shows us today that we should be grateful for what we have and never think that everyone is better than us. Throughout How the Other Half Lives, Riis uses a variety of writing techniques such as word choice, imagery, and .
A big disadvantage that the lower class has compared to the wealthy is a lack of quality education. While serving as a waitress, Ehrenriech learned about many different people. Some of these co-workers were immigrants who had recently come to this country. “I learn that he [George] is not paid by Jerry’s but the ‘agent’ who shipped him over--$5 an hour, with the agent getting the dollar or so difference between that and what Jerry’s pays dishwashers”(38). Their contracts lacked any benefits, and they were paid below minimum wage. People, like George, cannot read their contracts before they sign because they don’t understand the language. The critic would argue, “…They are baffled at the idea of fighting the class struggle of which…Ehrenriech appears to be the only person complaining about the situation…” In Georg...
In America, many people are divided by a class system. Within our society, many people find themselves not interacting much with people outside of their class and can rarely find something in common with people of different financial backgrounds. In Andre Dubus the Third’s writing “The Land of No: Love in A Class-Riven America, he speaks about his experience with his roommate who comes from an affluent background opposed to his less advantaged upbringing. In “The Land of No: Love in A Class-Riven America, Andre Dubus the Third displays that the experiences the people face from different classes can differ entirely and therefore it makes it difficult to identify with someone outside of your class. Dubus introduces his writing by describing
In the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families as he exposes how the lack of affordable housing perpetuates a state of poverty. He even goes so far as to assert that it is eviction that is a cause of poverty, not the other way around (Desmond 229). While this latter argument is as engrossing and it is striking, analyzing it with justice is simply not possible within the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is these two factors—inescapable poverty and eviction—that engender an unrelenting condition of financial, emotional, and communal instability, effectively hindering any chance of upward mobility.
Foreigners, who were uneducated about America’s customs, were unable to find jobs or prevent swindlers from causing their already insufficient wealth to subside. Because of this, Jurgis and his family’s economic and social lives have changed drastically. For instance, in Lithuania, Jurgis and his family had many friends and, therefore, were well-respected in their community.... ... middle of paper ...
Public housing was designed to liberate the city and streets of vagrants and paupers; however, in spite of strong support and investment, in practice it did not achieve that feat. The article The Beginning of the End of a Modern Ghetto by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh discusses the racial and class stereotypes that obscured the way Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes functioned. When it opened in November 1962, Robert Taylor Homes, were twenty-eight sixteen-story buildings containing 4,300 units on Chicago's South Side, and was considered the world's largest public housing project. This demonstrated how much space and money was invested into this public housing project. The managers of the Chicago Housing Authority at first tried to work with the tenants but were quickly overwhelmed by the task of maintaining the enormous physical plant inhabited by thousands of children. The tenant applicant screening committees of managers and tenants eventually stopped meeting, the population grew steadily poorer, and by the 1970s single mothers on welfare made up the majority of the adult residents. This was the beginning of a failed experiment because after this things only worsened. The young...
Shorris wanted to explore on poverty in America and write a book based on opinions on what keeps people poor. Therefore, as results of varied conversations with special people in prison, Shorris came to support the prisoner, Viniece Walker’s, argument that destitute students are those most in need of a liberal education. Viniece introduced Shorris to the thought of the “moral life of downtown”, meaning to expose them to museums, lectures, etc. (Page 2), which he understood as the need for reflection for the poor. This emphasizes the very fact that in order for the poor to escape from their “surround of force” (Page 1) they must undergo a transformation rooted in reflection and self-realization. Shorris believes that “the surround of force is what keeps the poor from being political and the absence of politics in their lives is what keeps them poor.”(Page 1) He further explains that by political he means: “activity with other people at every level, from the family to the neighborhood to the broader community city-state”(Page 1). This idea of a different type of learning, instead of your everyday math and English, but a broader education where there isn’t always a right or wrong answer is what Shorris believes is the key difference maker. Thus with these new realizations, Shorris set up an experiment to verify his theory of the importa...
A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night." The writer uses immense detail to help the reader visualise the scene. She also uses a simile to help the reader compare the circumstances in which the children are in. This shows that the poor children had to live on the streets and fend for themselves during the 18th century. Another example involves a brief description of the city in which the poor people lived in. This is "nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules" This gives a clear example of the state of the city. It is unclean and rancid and the writer includes this whilst keeping to her fictional storyline.
Urban growth became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century due to the fact of industry on the rise. Urban growth brought on many unsafe living places for many people. Jacob Riis was a photographer who snapped some pictures of the living conditions of some people in the city. He is able to convey in these pictures how people slept or did their laundry or even stayed warm. Riis was able to show the rest of the world, including the higher classes, how the lower classes lived and worked and learned.
The 19th century was an era of reform where journalist and crusaders alike helped shape some of the crucial laws that form our nation today, among the abundant problems that existed in our nation at that time a vast issue was housing, more specifically tenements, and in the middle of one of Americas most important reform which aided in originating the aggressive investigative journalism was Jacob A. Riis. Jacob Riis was born on May 3, 1849, in a small rural Denmark town third oldest out of 15 children to a highly educated school teacher and a homemaker, who was a former governess. Strong-willed and confident Riis was a natural born activist who assisted needy families in his town from a young age. One noticeable moment of his charity was when
...stic things in order to live a better, more sound, and overall healthier life. Juxtaposition makes the audience want to follow through with the purpose. Exemplification causes the audience to realize the extent of their materialistic nature. A definition of the average homeless person’s terms allows him to build his ethos and consequently allow the audience to believe and follow his purpose. A majority of people are a part of the middle class, and this majority tends to judge the poor for their lifestyle whether it be through Dumpster diving or begging on the streets. However, as proven by the essay, these people have no right to do so because the poor do, in reality, have a greater sense of self than these middle-class people, similar to the rich. The middle-class citizens must no longer act the victim; instead, they should be working on becoming more sentimental.
He shows us that every privilege, and attitude that the middle class have, is a direct result, of the exploitation of the working class; and their deplorable
I also find it interesting how Rivoli described the conditions of a garment worker. She described a child in Vietnam chained to a sewing machine without access to food or water, and spoke about a young girl from India who earned 18 cents per hour and is allowed to visit the bathroom only twice per day. This young girl lived in a room with 12 other girls; she shares a bed and only has gruel to eat. She is forced to work 90 hours each week, without overtime pay, and lives not only in poverty, but also in filth and sickness.
Throughout Society, many families have seen struggle and lived through poverty. The economy is not always thriving which takes a toll on people who suffer through unemployment or low wage jobs. The Frontline documentary, “Two American Families”, is the perfect example of struggle in the United States. It shows the lives of two struggling families and their efforts to survive. Two essays, “The Sociological Imagination” by C. Wright Mills, and “The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All” by Herbert J. Hans, support the analysis of the video strongly. They express many ideas that relate to the world and struggle throughout society. Also, there are many sociological terms that depict the events that occurred in the documentary.