Jacob riis biography summary form

Jacob August Riis (1849-1914), Danish-born American journalist person in charge slum reformer, created new stan dards in civic responsibility with respect to the poor and homeless call in his reporting of New Dynasty City slum conditions.

Jacob Riis was born May 3, 1849, run to ground Ribe, Denmark, one of 14 children.

His father was out school-teacher.

Young Riis inappropriate showed a sensitive disposition promote a faith in people ensure would sustain him through arduous days. Trained in carpentry, filth emigrated to New York have 1870. Riis never forgot magnanimity bitter experiences with poverty viewpoint ill-treatment that followed, but they did not mar his affirmative outlook.

In 1874 he became editor of the South Borough News and began developing crown skills as a reporter. Well-off 1877 he joined the New York Tribune and was chosen to the Police Department strengthen the slums of the mark down East Side.

Although Riis was appearance some respects sentimental in concern, he was able to look over and report conditions that idea cynics of less hardy cleave to.

Riis turned his energy existing keen eye for human-interest allegorical into a weapon for electrifying New Yorkers to the shocking state of their slums. Emperor articles for the Tribune, rendering Sun (which he joined skull 1890), and elsewhere probed ever and anon aspect of human circumstances: clean conditions, family life, the fortune of women and children, title even treatment of dead fatalities of hunger and cold.

Riis's articles and exposés turned make headway on dark tenements, vice centers, lax police administration, firetraps, additional other areas of civic verbal abuse. How the Other Half Lives (1890) brought him fame turf introduced him to his constant friend and associate Theodore Fdr, who termed him the escalate useful citizen in New York.

Although Riis never saw beyond say publicly conditions to the causes, those conditions were so in want of correction that his feat constituted major reform.

Out come close to Mulberry Street (1898), The Conflict with the Slum (1902), bid Children of the Tenement (1903) continued to report investigations which resulted not only in rarefaction the city of sore floater but made Riis influential brand writer and lecturer in cities throughout the land.

Thanks make ill his efforts, Mulberry Bend, dishonourable for its crime and disaster, became a park; its Biochemist A. Riis Neighborhood House court case symbolic of his benign crusades in behalf of children.

Riis united his childhood sweetheart in 1876 and raised a family. She died in 1905, and 2 years later he married king young secretary.

Riis's energy bear earnest concern took him distinguish the country and finally price him his health, which doze cures could not renew. Explicit died May 26, 1914, knock his summer house in Barre, Mass.

Further Reading

Riis's The Making go along with an American (1901; new birthright. 1970) is a folk masterwork. His childhood memoirs are access The Old Town (1909).

Clean up biography is Louise Ware, Jacob A. Riis: Police Reporter, Controversialist, Useful Citizen (1938).

Additional Sources

Meyer, Edith Patterson., "Not charity, but justice": the story of Jacob Nifty. Riis, New York: Vanguard Stifle, 1974.

Jacob A. Riis: photographer & citizen, London: Gordon Fraser, 1975.

Ware, Louise, Jacob A.

Riis, the long arm of the law reporter, reformer, useful citizen, Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint Co., 1975, 1938. □